Literature Review

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Literature Review

• AD700 9 November, 2005
• College of Advancing Studies Brendan Rapple

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• Without a Lit. Review, an integrated and
  comprehensive picture of the research topic
  cannot be constructed.

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Researchers must assess and present their own
ideas in the context of existing knowledge and
established thinking.
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Researcher must be a skilled information
processor and evaluator
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RESEARCHER must be proficient in

• locating
• accessing
• evaluating
• organizing
• analyzing
• synthesizing
• writing

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Purpose of a Lit. Review to

• get familiar with background/history of problem
  you are researching
• synthesize results into a summary of what is and
  is not known
• identify possible ways to study the problem
• assess strengths and weaknesses of previous
  studies
• identify areas that are controversial
• formulate questions requiring further research
• clarify relationship between your study and
  previous work on topic
• help you to define your topic
• suggest new ideas to you

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Timeliness/Currency of Material Cited

• Timeliness is more significant for some subjects
  than others.
• Scientists generally need timely material. Just
  think of AIDS research or research in nuclear
  physics.
• Scholars in many of the arts and humanities,
  however, often need not worry about timeliness.
• An historian researching some aspect of Thomas
  Jefferson's political philosophy might, for
  example, find research written in 1920, or even
  1820, more relevant than recent literature.

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Literature Review Process

• Five Phases

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Phase 1Specifying the Research Question

• What is the precise research question being
  studied?
• What's the essential PURPOSE of the research
  study?

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To know what is DIRECTLY RELEVANT to the
research question, one must know precisely what
research question is.
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Topic Should have Precise Focus

• "The Teaching of English as Revealed in the
  Courses of Study of the English-Speaking Nations
  of the World. Too broad
• English Language Teaching in Massachusetts High
  Schools. Better but still broad
• Video in the English Language Curriculum of a
  Brighton secondary school. Good focus

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Unlimited Topic (MUCH TOO BROAD)

• "Life and Times of Sigmund Freud"

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Slightly Limited Topic (STILL TOO BROAD)

• "Psychological Theories of Sigmund Freud"
• "An Examination of Different Emphases in the
  Psychological Views of Sigmund Freud and Carl
  Jung"

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Appropriate/Manageable Topics

• "Freud's Theory of Personality Applied to Mental
  Health"
• "Freud's Theory of Infantile Sexuality"
• "An Analysis of the Relationship of Freud and
  Jung in the International Psychoanalytic
  Association, 1910-1914"

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Too Narrow a Topic

• "Freud's Pets

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Another Example of an Excessively Broad Topic

• "Who Gossips and Why?"

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Slightly Limited Topic (Still Too Broad)

• "When Do People Gossip?"

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Adequately Limited Topic

• Content Analysis of Selected Gossip Columns in
  Five Women's Magazines During the Decade
  1980-1989

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Topic

• Suppose you wish to evaluate a certain number of
  social studies textbooks used in a certain School
  District for evidence of sex role stereotyping.

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Clearly One Must Examine the Books Themselves

• Possible Problems that One may Face
• They may not be in the local college/public
  library
• They may not be accessible through Inter Library
  Loan

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Think of Broader Context

• Perhaps you might want to examine areas other
  than social studies.
• Essential to examine very carefully the concept
  of "sex role stereotyping" -- not easy to
  define and measure

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• Look at general "philosophical" studies of this
  concept.
• Look at sex role stereotyping in history.
• Look at changing sex roles in home, workplace,
  wider community.

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• In short, it's good to broaden one's reading, to
  place your own study in context.

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Another Error to Avoid

• Choosing a topic that is not manageable
• Important factors to bear in mind
• time
• resources
• energy
• travel
• researcher's knowledge and experience (e.g. do
  you speak Chinese?)

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Another Possible Error

• Choosing a topic that will not keep your
  interest, enthusiasm.

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Questions to Bear in Mind

• Is the research politically acceptable? (to the
  funding agency or the individual/committee who
  decides)
• Is the research socially acceptable? (to the
  funding agency or the individual/committee who
  decides)
• (What about an advocacy of euthansia to raise the
  per capita income)
• N.B. Remember The Audience

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Definition of Terms

• STATEMENT OF PROBLEM How is intellectual
  potential and performance in high school related
  to success in college? Intellectual potential
  student's scores on the verbal and quantitative
  components of the Scholastic Aptitude
  Test.Performance in high school G.P.A.
  combined with assessment of activities outside
  the classroom (e.g. editing the school paper,
  playing the cello in the school
  orchestra).Success in College G.P.A., length
  of stay in college, extracurricular activities.

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Another Example

• STATEMENT OF PROBLEM "An Examination of How
  Feminist Organizations in West Berlin Helped in
  the Reunification and Democratization of Germany
  during the latter part of the 1980s."Possible
  problem words Feminist DemocratizationWe
  must know how the RESEARCHER defines the term.

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Parameters of Your Topic

• If research question is specified too broadly or
  defined too vaguely or abstractly, researcher may
  be overwhelmed with information.
• If research question specified too narrowly or
  defined too concisely or concretely, researcher
  may miss out on peripheral and more general info.
• If research question is very current, scholarly
  books and articles may not be up to date.

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Keep Your Audience in Mind

• Keep the type of audience in mind
• Your writing should be pitched at level of
  expected readers
• Use the terminology appropriate to them
• Physics terms for physicists sociology terms for
  sociologists
• No jargon, e.g., for ordinary reader
• Generally, "plain English" is the best strategy

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Researchers must avoid tendency to shun info.
that contradicts preconceived notions

• They must keep open minds
• They must look at question from different vantage
  points.

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Scope of the Literature Review

• What exactly will you aim to cover in your
  review?
• How comprehensive will it be? How detailed?
• Some topics might demand a review of all relevant
  material others might limit the survey to
  recently published material, e.g., the last five
  years.
• Are you focusing on methodological approaches on
  theoretical issues on qualitative or
  quantitative research?

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Scope of the Literature Review

• Will you need to broaden your search to seek
  literature in related fields or disciplines?
• Clearly, deciding length will be important.
• About how many citations will you use?
• What type of material/documents will you use?
• Will you confine your material to that written in
  English or will you include research in other
  languages too?

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Limitations of Study

• Important to state precisely what you intend to
  do.
• Important to state precisely what you do NOT
  intend to do.

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Limitations may be, e.g., of

• time
• personnel
• gender
• age
• geographic location
• nationality
• (and an infinite number of others)

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Advantages of Precisely Limiting

• Makes the topic more focused.
• Researcher covers herself from possible criticism
  for ignoring areas.

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Schedule/Timetable

• Set out a timetable -- should be a realistic
  estimate of time required to complete the
  project.

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Phase 2

• Locating and Accessing Information

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Some Difficulties -- Leading to Anxiety

• not understanding information
• overwhelmed by amount of info.
• not knowing if certain info. exists
• not knowing where to find info.
• knowing where to find info. but not having key to
  access.

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Encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, textbooks
etc. very useful to get beginning and broad
overview

• a) introduce unique vocabulary and terminology
• b) identify key authors and extent of research
  available
• c) reveal approaches taken to previous research
• investigations of it
• often reveal multidisciplinary nature and
  connections of question -- scholars of
  Shakespeare might study medicine, law,
  psychology, history etc.
• e) Often have good basic bibliographies

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Using Existing Literature Review

• Literature reviews may already exist on some
  aspect of your topic.
• It is useful to search online databases for
  literature reviews.
• ERIC Database
• DE(Literature Reviews) and standardized tests.
• PsycInfo Database
• DE(Monozygotic Twins) and ptliterature review.
  
• Sociological Abstracts Database
• KWeuthanasia and KW(literature review)

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Classic and Landmark Studies

• Sociological Abstracts Database
• DEsuicide and ABclassic

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Next Logical Research Steps

• Use Quest to find materials in BC libraries.
• Use WorldCat to find books in other libraries.
• Use subject specific databases to locate journal
  articles and chapters in books.
• Use multidisciplinary databases to locate
  journal articles and chapters in books.
• Use the Web.

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Phase 3 Evaluating the Information
Some Useful Sites http//www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/u
lib/ref/guides/gen/eval.html http//www2.bc.edu/
rappleb/evaluatingwebsites.html

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Phase 4 Recording the Information

• We all have different ways of recording info.,
  making notes etc.
• But particularly useful is the Web-based
  bibliographic citation management tool RefWorks
• http//www.bc.edu/libraries/services/ref-instruc/s
  -productivity/refworks

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Important to know when to stop the research
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Phase 5

• Organizing the Information

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Examining Themes and Variations

• What fundamental beliefs are expressed in each
  item? Does the author have an ideological
  stance?
• What is being described? Is it comprehensive or
  narrow?
• What is being predicted? Does it predict
  outcomes satisfactorily?
• How applicable, transferable, or generalizable is
  the information?

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Contextual and Perceptual Implications

• Who posed the research question?
• Who funded the research study?
• What were the political, economic, and social
  conditions of the time and place of the research
  study?

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• Researcher/reviewer must
• categorize
• compare
• make connections among various forms and sources
  of information

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Perhaps she groups findings according to whether
they provide

• strong support . . .
• medium support . . .
• low support
• to her own hypothesis/theory

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• Perhaps she groups them by themes
• Perhaps she groups them chronologically

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Often Good to Organize Ones Lit. Review
Thematically

• A lit. review on aspects of standardized testing
  might be organized according to the following
  themes or issues
• Background
• History of Standardized Tests
• Different Types of Standardized Tests
• Rationale of Standardized Tests
• Role of High Stakes Tests
• Standardized Tests and the Law
• Standardized Tests in Practice
• Testing at Elementary School
• Testing at Secondary School
• Statistics

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• Critics and Proponents of Standardized Tests
• Testing of Students with Disabilities
• Testing of Minority Students
• Testing of Students from Different Social
  Backgrounds
• Gender Differences in Testing
• Case for Bias
• Case against Bias
• Teachers Perspectives
• School Administrators Perspectives
• Students Perspectives
• Alternative Assessment Methodologies

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One Might Include Comments on

• methods of analysis employed
• quality of the findings or conclusions
• major strengths and weaknesses
• any other pivotal information

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Many Similar Studies?

• Describe most important one and simply say that
  the results were confirmed in the other studies
  listed.Still, to include only germane studies,
  you must examine many.

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Essential

• to aim at an INTEGRATED treatment that explains
  why the studies and theories cited are important
  to your work.
• to avoid a series of abstracts, one per
  paragraph.
• to keep reader constantly aware that the
  literature reviewed is related to the research
  problem.

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• Lit. Review can be time consuming
• Usually too much rather than too little to survey
  (especially in science and in technology)
• Not a list of everything ever written on subject

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At End of Review, Reader Should Be Able To
Conclude

• "Yes, of course, this is the exact study that
  needs to be done at this time to move knowledge
  in this field a little further along."

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Lit. Review -- Tips

• Begin with most recent studies and work
  backwards.
• If the report/article has an abstract, read it
  first.
• Before taking notes, skim the document to get to
  the most relevant part.
• Most important part of a scholarly book is the
  index.
• Write out complete bibliographic citation for
  each work. Add library call no.

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• 6. Indicate carefully any direct quotations and
  your paraphrases.
• 7. Generally, paraphrase is better than lengthy
  quotation.
• 8. Avoid "grandfather" citations. Return to
  original source.
• 9. Don't cite references that you haven't read.
• 10. Use headings and subheadings for clarity.

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• 11. Evaluate carefully everything you read. Just
  because PLATO or EMILE DURKHEIM or
  JOHN DEWEY or ROUSSEAU or EINSTEIN
  or Your GREAT AUNTargued something, that
  doesn't mean that you have to accept it.
• 12. Lit. Review can be time consuming -- usually
  too much rather than too little to survey
  (especially in science and in technology)
• 13. Not a list of everything ever written on
  subject.
• 14. Important to know when to stop the research

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Title/Cover Page

• Title
• Author's name, address, phone no.,
• e-mail, fax no.
• Name of the institution
• Date

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Bibliography

• Normal scholarly process.
• Should include all resources used in the
  proposal.
• Should adopt a particular style, e.g. MLA, APA,
  Chicago etc. -- style must be consistent.
• Helps the reader to form an opinion of quality
  of the sources available (and your ability to
  find them).

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Appendices

• Charts, graphs and other information which may
  interfere with the flow of the proposal or
  lengthen it may be placed in the appendices.

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Writing

• Always worthwhile to lavish care on a research
  paper.
• Writing is perhaps the most important skill in
  todays workplace.

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Paragraphs

• Keep paragraphs short

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Subheadings

• Use subheadings to clarify the structure
• they break up the material into more readable
  units.
• they give the reader a place to "dive in" if she
  doesn't want to read all of the material.

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Writing Drafts

• Write the first draft straight through
• Do it quickly -- this preserves continuity --
  gives coherence
• So easy to revise using word-processors

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Common Errors

• Unattainable goals
• Failure to focus -- going on tangents
• Failure to cite essential pertinent studies
• Failure to maintain a coherent, logical thesis
• Poor organization of paper
• Poor language, grammar etc.