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1° Summary: Educational Research, Chapter 3 - Reviewing The Literature

1. A literature review summarizes past and current research on a topic, organizes subtopics, and establishes the need for a proposed study. It is conducted using research from journal articles and documents how the study adds to existing literature. 2. The common steps to conduct a literature review are to identify key terms, locate relevant literature from various sources and databases, critically evaluate sources, organize selected literature through notes and diagrams, and write a literature review summarizing the literature. 3. To locate literature, key terms are identified and a search is conducted of academic library resources, prioritizing refereed journal articles. Located literature is assessed for quality, relevance, and whether it presents research through questions, data

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48 views4 pages

1° Summary: Educational Research, Chapter 3 - Reviewing The Literature

1. A literature review summarizes past and current research on a topic, organizes subtopics, and establishes the need for a proposed study. It is conducted using research from journal articles and documents how the study adds to existing literature. 2. The common steps to conduct a literature review are to identify key terms, locate relevant literature from various sources and databases, critically evaluate sources, organize selected literature through notes and diagrams, and write a literature review summarizing the literature. 3. To locate literature, key terms are identified and a search is conducted of academic library resources, prioritizing refereed journal articles. Located literature is assessed for quality, relevance, and whether it presents research through questions, data

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1° Summary: Educational Research, Chapter 3 – Reviewing the literature

A literature review is a written summary of journal articles, books, and other


documents that describes the past and current state of information on the topic of a research
study. It also organizes the literature into subtopics, and documents the need for a proposed
study. In the most rigorous form of research, researchers base this review mainly on
research reported in journal articles.

Reviewing the literature has many functions. A literature review is conducted to


document how the study adds to the existing literature. A study will not add to the literature
if it duplicates research already available. Conducting a literature review also builds the
research skills of using the library and being an investigator who follows leads in the
literature, all useful experiences to have as a researcher. Reading the literature also helps to
learn how other researchers compose their research studies and helps to find useful
examples and models in the literature for your own research.

Regardless of whether the study is quantitative or qualitative, common steps can be


used to conduct a literature review. learning all five steps will provide a sense of how
researchers proceed in reviewing the literature. These steps are: 1. Identify key terms to use
in your search for literature. 2. Locate literature about a topic by consulting several types of
materials and databases, including those available at an academic library and on the
Internet. 3. Critically evaluate and select the literature for your review. 4. Organize the
literature you have selected by abstracting or taking notes on the literature and developing a
visual diagram of it.5. Write a literature review that reports summaries of the literature for
inclusion in your research report.

Begin your search of the literature by narrowing your topic to a few key terms using
one or two words or short phrases. To identify these terms, you can use several strategies,
outlined below: (1) Write a preliminary “working title” for a project and select two to three
key words in the title that capture the central idea of your study. (2) Pose a short, general
research question that you would like answered in the study. (3) Use words that authors
report in the literature.
Look in a catalog of terms to find words that match your topic. Go to the
bookshelves in a college or university library, scan the table of contents of education
journals from the last 7 to 10 years, and look for key terms in titles to the articles.

Having identified key terms, you can now begin the search for relevant literature.
You might be tempted to begin your search by accessing the Internet and exploring the
electronic literature available on a topic. Although this process may be convenient, not all
literature posted on the Internet is dependable.

A sound approach is to begin your search in an academic library. By physically


searching the stacks, reviewing microfiche, and accessing the computerized databases, you
will save time because you will find comprehensive holdings not available through other
sources.

Once you locate the literature, you need to determine if it is a good source to use
and whether it is relevant to your particular research. In order to accomplish this part of the
process, here there are some tips: (1) Rely as much as possible on journal articles published
in national journals. (2) Use a priority system for searching the literature. Start with
refereed journal articles; then proceed to non-refereed journal articles; then books; then
conference papers, dissertations, and theses; and finally non-reviewed articles posted to
Web sites. (3) Look for “research” studies to include in your literature review. This
research consists of posing questions, collecting data, and forming results or conclusions
from the data. (4) Include both quantitative and qualitative research studies in your review,
regardless of the approach you might use in your own study.

Once you have located the literature, assessed its quality, and checked it for
relevance, the next step is to organize it for a literature review. This process involves
photocopying and filing the literature. After locating books, journal articles, and
miscellaneous documents in a library, you should make copies of the articles, scan the
articles, or download the articles (as html or pdf files) and develop some system to easily
retrieve the information. During the process of reading the literature, researchers take notes
on the information so that a summary of the literature is available for a written review. A
systematic approach for summarizing each source of information is to develop an abstract
for each one. An abstract is a summary of the major aspects of a study or article, conveyed
in a concise way (for this purpose, often no more than 350 words) and written with specific
components that describe the study.

As you organize and take notes or abstract articles, you will begin to understand the
content of your literature review. In other words, a conceptual picture will begin to emerge.
Having a diagram or visual picture of this conceptualization allows you to organize the
literature in your mind. This visual picture results in a literature map, literally a map of the
literature you have found. A literature map is a figure or drawing that displays the research
literature (e.g., studies, essays, books, chapters, and summaries) on a topic.

Now that you have scanned the literature to determine its relevance, abstracted it,
and organized it into a literature map, it’s time to construct the actual written summary of
the literature.

We have already seen how abstracts can include a complete reference (or citation)
to the information in the literature. In writing these references, you should use an accepted
style manual. Headings, tables, figures, and the overall format also require use of a specific
style manual. A style manual provides a structure for citing references, labeling headings,
and constructing tables and figures for a scholarly research report. The most used approach
The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition (APA,
2010), style manual is the most popular style guide in educational research.
References

Creswell, J. W. (2013). Educational Research: Pearson New International Edition:


Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research.
Boston, United States of America: Pearson. (pp. 79-103).

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