Using the literature

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Using the literature

• JN602
• Week 04
• Veal Chapter 4

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Lecture Outline

• The research process
• The research proposal
• Why do a literature review
• Finding literature
• Writing a literature review
• Referencing and citation

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The Research Process (Figure 3.1)

• Desire to do research
• Select the topic formulating and clarifying
• Review the literature
• Develop a conceptual framework
• Determine research questions
• List information needs and operationalise
• Choose a research strategy
• Conduct research
• Collecting data
• Analysing data
• Report the findings (write-up)

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The Research Process
0
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2. Reviewing the literature
0

• Roles of the literature in research
• The entire basis of the research
• A source of ideas on topics for research
• A source of information on research already done
  by others
• A source of methodological or theoretical ideas
• A source of comparison between your research and
  that of others
• A source of information that is an integral or
  supportive part of the research (for example,
  data on a local market)

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3. Devising a conceptual framework
0

• What are concepts?
• General representations of the phenomena to be
  studied building blocks
• What is a conceptual framework?
• Verbal and/or diagrammatic representation of the
  possible relationships between concepts
• In academic contexts may be theoretical
  framework or a model

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The process of devising a conceptual framework
0
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4. Deciding Research Questions
0

• Alternative formats
• Research question eg. What is the relationship
  between advertising expenditure and revenue?
• Research objective eg. The aim of the study is
  to discover the relationship between advertising
  expenditure and revenue.
• Hypothesis eg. There is a positive relationship
  between advertising expenditure and revenue (True
  or false?)

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II Research Proposals
0

• Self-generated eg. theses, academic research
• Responsive eg. consultancy response to briefs
  and tenders
• Content
• What is to be done
• Why it is to be done (Self-generated)
• How it is to be done
• When it will be done
• What it will cost
• Who will do it

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Self-generated proposal (1-5)
0

• Background and justification for selection of
  topic.
• (Preliminary) review of the literature.
• Conceptual/theoretical framework.
• Statement of research problems, questions or
  hypotheses.
• Outline of data requirements and overall research
  strategy. Division of project into elements,
  stages and tasks.

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Self-generated proposal (6)

• Details of information collection methods
• types of information collection
• sample or subject selection methods - measures to
  ensure data quality
• justification of sample size (where appropriate)
• data and information to be generated by each
  method
• outline of any ethical issues and how they will
  be addressed

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Self-generated proposal (7-9)

• Details of data analysis methods.
• Timetable (NB some tasks will be concurrent)
  Fig. 3.9
• preparatory work
• ethics approval if required
• fieldwork - data collection tasks
• Analysis
• draft report or thesis
• feedback on draft
• final report or thesis presentation.
• Budget, where applicable - costing of each
  element, stage and task
• project staff costs (n days at x per day)
• permissible overheads
• fieldwork or data collection costs
• additional items - travel, printing, telephone,
  postage, c.

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Self-generated proposal (10-11)

• NOT REQUIRED FOR THE GROUP PROPOSAL
• Report or thesis chapter outline or indication of
  no. type of publications.
• Resources, skills and experience available
  (necessary when seeking funds)
• researchers' curricula vitae, especially
  experience relevant to the proposed project
• availability of computers, equipment, library
  resources, c.

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Responsive proposal

• Brief summary of key aspects of the proposal,
  including any unique approach and particular
  skills or experience of the consultants.
• Re-statement of the key aspects of the brief.
• Interpretation of key concepts in the brief.
• Overall 'approach' to the problem.
• Division of project into elements, stages and
  tasks - related to structure of brief.
• Information collection methods
• Timetable (NB some tasks will be concurrent)
• Budget Costing of each element, stage and task.
• Chapter outline of report and, if appropriate,
  details of other proposed reporting formats-
  interim reports, working papers, articles.
• Resources available

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The purpose of the research proposal

• Organising your ideas
• Convincing your audience
• Contracting with your client
• Because it is part of your assessment? ?

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Evaluating a research proposal

• The extent to which the components of the
  proposal fit together
• The viability of the proposal
• The absence of pre-conceived ideas
• You dont already know the answer!!

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The literature review

• Project assessment criteria require you to
  demonstrate awareness of the current state of
  knowledge in your subject, its limitations, and
  how your research fits into this wide context
  (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2003, p.43)
• A literature review is designed to identify
  related research, to set the current research
  project within a conceptual and theoretical
  context. (Trochim, 2002)

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I. The roles of the literature review

• The entire basis of the research - the research
  project will be based entirely on the literature.
  
• A source of ideas on what topics need
  researching.
• An exercise to ensure that the proposed research
  has not already been done by someone else.
• A source of ideas about the proposed topic of
  research - in terms of theories or methodology.
• A source of comparison - findings from previous
  studies are compared with those of the proposed
  project.
• Information may be an integral/supportive part of
  the research
• eg. population census data or business customer
  records used in conjunction with survey data.

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Why conduct a lit. review?(Macauley, 2006)

• to identify gaps in the literature
• to identify seminal works in your area
• to identify information and ideas (concepts) that
  may be relevant to your project
• to identify methods that could be relevant to
  your project
• To find out the extent (what is known) and
  limitations (not known) of existing research

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Other purposes (SLT p.46)

• To help you further refine your research
  questions and objectives
• To highlight research possibilities that have
  been overlooked to date
• To discover explicit recommendations for future
  research
• To avoid repeating work that has been done
  already
• To discover and provide insight into relevant
  research approaches, strategies and techniques

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Content of the critical review (SLT, p.47)

• Include the key academic theories within your
  chosen area
• Demonstrate that your knowledge of your chosen
  area is up to date
• Show how your research relates to previous
  published research
• Assess the strengths and weaknesses of previous
  work
• Justify your arguments by referencing previous
  work, providing citations

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UB General Guide to Academic Work (2007)

• A summary of the arguments or findings of the key
  thinkers or researchers in the field
• A comparison and/or reconciliation of these
  argument or findings
• Your conclusions on the state of knowledge or
  opinion on the topic
• A note of apparent gaps in the literature with a
  summary of needs for further research
• An explanation of how your investigation will
  contribute to the state of knowledge (where the
  review is part of a longer piece of work)

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II Sources of literature

• Library catalogues
• Published indexes
• Electronic databases
• The internet
• General management books
• Reference lists
• Published bibliographies
• Library browsing
• Asking (librarians and academics)

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Other sources of information

• Primary sources
• Organisational records, information from staff
• Government reports
• Conference proceedings and theses
• Secondary sources
• Books, journals
• Internet
• Industry associations
• Government sources

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Literature searching

• Planning
• Defining parameters
• Generating keywords
• Brainstorming
• Relevance trees
• Discussion with others

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Database searching

• Use Boolean searches
• AND Look for both terms
• OR Look for either term
• NOT Exclude items with this term
• Useful business databases
• EBSCOHost Business Source Premier
• EBSCOHost Academic Source Premier
• EBSCOHost A-Z (for locating journals)
• Others? Vary by your topic

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III Compiling/maintaining a bibliography

• Compiling a bibliography on a topic - a useful
  research exercise in its own right.
• Compiling/maintaining a personal bibliography or
  literature database - an investment in
  time-saving for the future.
• Always record full details of any reference used.
• Use a software package such as Refworks
• store, format and retrieve references from all
  your work - any single reference should only ever
  need to be typed out once!

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Next Steps

• Obtaining the literature
• Evaluating the literature
• Recording the literature

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IV Reviewing the Literature

• Types of literature review
• Inclusive
• Inclusive/evaluative/meta-analysis
• Exploratory
• Instrumental
• Content analysis/hermeneutics

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Structure of the review

• Funnel approach (SLT 2003, p.48)
• Start at the general level before narrowing
• Provide a brief overview of key ideas
• Summarise, compare and contrast the work of the
  key writers
• Narrow down to highlight the most relevant
  material for your research
• Provide a detailed account of this work
• Highlight issues where your research will provide
  new insight (the research gap)
• Lead the reader into subsequent sections of your
  proposal

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Elements of the Lit. Review

• An overview of the subject, issue or theory under
  consideration
• Division of works under review into categories
• Comparison of each work to others
• Conclusions as to which pieces are best
  considered in their argument, are most convincing
  of their opinions, and make the greatest
  contribution to the understanding and development
  of their area of research
• (UCSC, 2002)

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The GAP

• The research issues which remain unanswered by
  the literature
• The questions that remain
• The justification for conducting your own primary
  research

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1. Inclusive review

• Seeks to identify all published material on the
  topic.
• An annotated bibliography includes an abstract of
  each item.

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2. Inclusive/evaluative review

• Inclusive bibliography an evaluative
  commentary.
• Commentary considers coverage and contribution to
  knowledge and understanding
• Meta-analysis
• examines a number of publications in which
• results are comparable (usually quantitative)
  measures
• eg. correlation coefficients (see. Fig. 2.4 for
  examples)

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3. Exploratory review

• Identification of existing research to throw
  light on a specific research question or issue
• Common in academic research
• 4. Instrumental review
• Identification of a best methodology or framework
  for conducting the study in hand
• Common in consultancy/policy work

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5. Content analysis/hermeneutics

• Content analysis quantitative analysis of the
  content of specified documents
• eg. annual reports, ministerial speeches, journal
  contents over time.
• Hermeneutics qualitative version of content
  analysis (originally religious texts)

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Analysing references

• The criteria listed may assist you to evaluate
  information resources and sources.
• Relevancy, Currency, Reliability, Accuracy,
  Objectivity
• (UB, 2006)
• Provenance Objectivity Persuasiveness Value
• (UCSC, 2005)

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Critically reviewing individual items

• Questions to ask
• What is the (empirical) basis of this research?
• How does the research relate to other research
  writings on the topic?
• What theoretical framework is being used?
• What geographical area does research refer to?
• What social group does the research refer to?
• When was the research carried out and is it still
  likely to be empirically valid?

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Summarising/drawing conclusions about the
literature

• Questions to ask
• What is the range of research that has been
  conducted?
• What methods have been used and what methods
  neglected?
• What, in summary, does the existing research tell
  us?
• What does the existing research not tell us?
• What contradictions are there in the literature -
  recognised or unrecognised by the authors?
• What are the deficiencies - substantive or
  methodological?
• Which contributions will be most relevant to the
  research in hand and how will they shape the
  research?

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V Recording references

• See UBs General Guide for the Presentation of
  Academic Work for guidelines and examples
• Standard reference format (Italics in yellow)
• A book or report
• Author, A. A. (Year). Title Subtitle. Place
  Publisher.
• An article from a periodical (journal/magazine/new
  spaper)
• Author, A. (Year). Article title Subtitle.
  Journal Name, vol(issue), -.
• NB. Publisher and place of publication not
  included

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Referencing systems

• Author/date (Harvard/APA) system
• Footnote/endnote system

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Author/date system (as used in this unit)

• Reference within the text
• Author(date) eg. Bryman (1992) or (Bryman
  1992)
• For direct quotes, use page references eg.
  Bryman (1992 169)
• List of references at end of document
  alphabetical by author, then year (if multiple
  items by the same author)
• Appropriate for academic writing and for policy/
  management documents if the number of references
  is limited

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2. Footnote/endnote system

• Reference within the text
• Eg. Bryman1 suggests that
• Page numbers included in the note
• List of references/notes
• At foot of page or at end of chapter/document
• In numerical order
• Implemented by word-processing software
• Used in some academic disciplines (eg. History,
  law)
• Suitable for policy/management documents less
  obtrusive than author/date system

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Advantages and disadvantages
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Best of both worlds

• Use footnote/endnote system
• The notes contain author/date references
• An alphabetical list of references is added
• DO NOT USE THIS METHOD IN YOUR REPORT!!!

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Other Referencing Issues

• Internet/electronic references
• Include all information provided in print
  references including author, date, title,
  institution and place PLUS
• Website (URL) and date accessed
• See the General Guide to Academic Work
• Second-hand references
• Do not include the reference to a source if you
  have not read it yourself eg. Smith (quoted by
  Jones, 2002) says
• Include the Jones reference, which you have read,
  not the original Smith reference, which you have
  not read.
• Excessive referencing
• Dont over-do it! Every mention of an authors
  name does not need to be referenced.
• Once per paragraph is probably ok check the
  General Guide or with your tutor if you need
  further guidance

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Sources

• Cavana, Delahaye and Sekaran (2001) Ch.45
• Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2003), Ch.3
• Macauley, P. (2001). The Literature
  Review.Geelong, Victoria, Australia Deakin
  University.Retrieved 16th March 2003 from the
  World Wide Web http//www.deakin.edu.au/library/l
  itrev.html
• Lyons, K. (2002). How to Write a Literature
  Review, Santa Cruz, California University of
  California Santa Cruz. Retrieved 16th March 2003
  from the World Wide Web http//library.ucsc.edu/r
  ef/howto/literaturereview.html
• Trochim, W. (2002) Research Methods Knowledge
  Base. Ithaca, New York Cornell University.
  Retrieved 16th March 2003 from the World Wide
  Web http//trochim.human.cornell.edu/kb/probform.
  htm

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Next Week

• Research ethics
• Ethics and the research participant
• Negotiating access
• Read Veal Ch.3, pp.65-71
• There have been problems with Blackboard thus far
• For this reason, lecture notes will be posted on
  the web
• http//uob-community.ballarat.edu.au/smceachern/j
  n602/jn602main.html