RESEARCH IN DAILY LIFE 2

Prepared by:

Mark Anthony A. Dalumpines

MODULE 4
Literature Search and Review
This chapter presents the concepts and processes that could lead you in refining your research
topic and completing the background of your study. In here, skills that require both an engagement with
your proposal and with external tools will be put to test as you will be dealing with reading books, search-
ing the internet, and synthesizing what you read and comprehended.

Likewise, this will lead you to the improvement of your topic and research problem based on what
you have read and synthesized.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the chapter, you should be able to:

 Define what literature search and review are;

 Define what is related literature and related studies;

 Know the importance, Purposes, and Functions of Related Literature ;

 Know the characteristics of related literature and studies;

 Identify when and how literature search and review are done;

 Identify various resources to look for supporting literature;

 Synthesize related materials effectively to show relevance of your research; and

 Explain the concept of plagiarism and the ways to avoid committing mistakes related to intellectual
property in research.
 Before you can make a research proposal, it is important to scan the literature because this could
help you in coming up with a topic and give you a more extensive knowledge on the topic that you intend
to discuss. To do this, you must read previous studies as well as theories related to your topic.
By doing a proper literature search and review, you are ensuring that you are duplicating what has
been made by other researchers and you are able to show that you are familiar with what you are
studying.
The literature review is seen as one of the most important parts of the research process. However,
students tend to take this phase for granted because it is seen as a daunting task as it requires
reading, digesting and summarizing what has been read. However, it is also important to realize that do-
ing this will make your research more authoritative and substantiate its novelty.
 Literature review is a systematic, thorough, detailed searching and synthesizing of materials
available on a topic that you are going to study. As much as possible, the search for literature should be
extensive but as soon as the appropriate literature or materials are found, the discussion or review
should be focused.
But how and where do we start?
Literature search and review are done in all aspects of the research process — as soon as you
thought about your topic, until you are already writing your manuscript, and even while gearing up for
presentation or publication.
Nonetheless, the process starts with knowing where to look for literature. There are thousands of
papers written about a single topic. Although there might be topics that are relatively under-researched
as of present, there are related that could be used as reference or included in justifying the need and in-
terest in conducting your study. Knowing what and where to search are already half the battle. So let us
get started!
Related literature is composed of discussions of facts and principles to which the present study is
related. For instance, if the present study deals with drug addiction, literature to reviewed or surveyed
should composed of materials that deal with drug addiction.
These materials are classified as
1. Local, if printed in the Philippines; and
2. 2. Foreign, if printed in other lands.
Related studies, on the other hand, are studies, inquiries, or investigations already conducted to
which the present proposed study is related or has some bearing or similarity. They are usually
unpublished materials such as manuscripts, theses, and dissertations.
They may be classified as
1. Local, if the inquiry was conducted in the Philippines; and
2. 2. Foreign, if conducted in foreign lands.

A. Importance, Purposes, and Functions of Related Literature and Studies

A survey or review of related literature and studies is very important because such reviewed
literature and studies serve as a foundation of the proposed study. This is because related literature and
studies guide the researcher in pursuing his research venture. Reviewed literature and studies help or
guide the researcher in the following ways:

1. They help or guide the researcher in searching for or selecting a research problem or topic.
By reviewing related materials, a replication of a similar problem may be found better than
the problem already chosen. Replication is the study of a research problem already
conducted but in another place.
2. They help the investigator understand his topic for research better. Reviewing related
literature and studies may clarify vague points about his problem.
3. They ensure that there will be no duplication of other studies. There is duplication if an
investigation already made is con. ducted again in the same locale using practically the
same respondents. This is avoided if a survey of related literature and studies be made
first.
4. They help and guide the researcher in locating more sources of related information. This is
because the bibliography of a study already conducted indicate references about similar
studies.
 5. They help and guide the researcher in making his research design especially in:

• the formulation of specific questions to be researched on;

• the formulation of assumptions and hypotheses if there should be any; c, the formulation of
conceptual framework;

• the selection and application of the methods of research;

• the selection and application of sampling techniques;

• the selection and/or preparation and validation of research instruments for gathering data;

• the selection and application of statistical procedures;

• the analysis, organization, presentation, and interpretation of data;

• the making of the summary of implications for the whole study; and

• the formulation of the summary of findings, conclusions, and recommendations.

6. They help and guide the researcher in making comparison between his findings with the
findings of other researchers on similar studies with the end in view of formulating
generalizations or principles which are the contributions of the study to the fund of
knowledge.
B. Characteristics of Related Literature and Studies
There are certain characteristics of related materials that make them of true value. Among these
characteristics are:

1. The surveyed materials must be as recent as possible. This is important because of the
rapid social, economic, scientific, and technological changes. Findings several years ago
may be of little value today because of the fast-changing life style of the people.
There are exceptions, however. Treatises that deal on universals or things of more or
less permanent nature may still be good today. There are mathematical laws and formulas
and statistical procedures that had been formulated a long, long time ago which am being
used today with very, very little improvement. This is also true with natural and physical laws.
Books on these, though written a long time ago, are still being cited today.

Another exception is when a comparison or contrast is to be made between the

conditions of today and those of a remote past, say ten or twenty years ago. Naturally, liter-
ature and studies about that remote past, have to be surveyed and reviewed.
2. Materials reviewed must be objective and unbiased. Some materials are extremely or subtly one
-sided, either political, or religious, etc. Comparison with the materials cannot be made
logically and validly. Distorted generalizations may result.
3. Materials surveyed must be relevant to the study. Only materials that have some bearing or
similarity to the research problem at hand should be reviewed.
4. Surveyed materials must have been based upon genuinely original and true facts or data to
make them valid and reliable. There are cases where fictitious data are supplied just to
complete a research report (thesis or dissertation). Of course, this kind of deception is hard
to detect and to prove. Thus, this is a real problem to honest researchers.
5. Reviewed materials must not be too few nor too many. They must only be sufficient enough to
give insight into the research problem to indicate the nature of the present investigation
number may also depend upon the availability of materials.

C. Sources of Related Literature and Studies

The sources of related literature and studies may include the following:
1. Books, encyclopedias, almanacs, and other similar references.
2. Articles published in professional journals, magazines, periodicals, newspapers, and other
publications.
3. Manuscripts, monographs, memoirs, speeches, letters, and diaries.
4. Unpublished theses and dissertations.
5. The Constitution, and laws and statutes of the land.
6. Bulletins, circulars, and orders emanating from government offices and departments, espe-
cially from the Office of the President of the Philippines and the Department of Education,
Culture and Sports.
7. Records of schools, public and private, especially reports of their activities.
8. Reports from seminars, educational or otherwise.
9. Official reports of all kinds, educational, social, economic scientific, technological, political,
etc. from the government and other entities.

D. Where to Locate the Sources of Related Literature and Studies

Generally, the sources of related literature and studies are located in the following places:
1. Libraries, either government, school, or private libraries.
2. Government and private offices
3. The National Library
4. The Library of the Department of Education, Culture and Sports.
 E. Tools for Literature Search and Review
Traditionally, there are many available print materials in libraries that you can use as part of your
research. Aside from journal publications and textbooks, conference proceedings, newspapers,
magazines, video materials, and other resources can also be used. Nevertheless, there is a hierarchy of
materials based on scholarship or quality of materials and its newness or novelty, indicated by its
publication date.

With the advent of technology seen in this generation, students are now more dependent on the
internet than books. On the other hand, not many teachers advocate the use of books and proper way to
use internet sources for the students’ research needs.

Figure 2 shows the hierarchy of literature sources to be used by students in doing their research.
Note that figure shows an inverted triangle, with various levels containing different sizes per level. This
indicates the differences in the importance and amount of materials to be seen in the manuscript.

The topmost materials (journal articles) should be used most often because they are assured of
quality and they are up-to-date, while those at the bottom (webpages and blogs) have to be used for
citation less (in frequency and number) because they have less scholarship or quality. This is further
explained below.

The two topmost levels are called peer-reviewed materials while those from the third and down
below are known as gray literature.

Types of Literature

Figure 2
Hierarchy of literature in research
 F. Hierarchy of Literature in Research
Journal articles are at the topmost level of the inverted triangle because they are being
peer-reviewed by experts in the discipline, which means that the topic has been
thoroughly researched and reviewed before it was released for public consumption.
The reviewers are experts in the field so it is understood that they know what
has been done about the particular subject. In terms of the newness of materials,
journals publish an average of three issues per year. This means that a topic could
be constantly revised due to Updating of knowledge being discovered.
These may be found in the library or on the internet, through dedicated journal
websites or publisher websites (e.g., Sage, Taylor & Francis, ScienceDirect,
Elsevier, Philippine E-journals, Philippine Journals Online, University of the Philip-
pines Journals Online).

Textbooks are also important especially when it comes to searching theories and ideas
that have been established through time. The contents of textbooks are the same essential
theories and concepts as those that are presented in journal articles.

However, textbooks are not always updated by the author nor the publisher, since this is
not easy to do. Retaining the same concepts even if there have been a lot of researches
that, for example, already challenges the dominant theory written in the book about a certain
topic; so an author should be proficient in his field to be able to monitor such changes and
update the book.

Books are usually revised between three to five years, if there are necessary changes in
the content, making it less up-to-date than journal articles.

Conference proceedings are also important resources for researchers. This helpful
material is on the third level since they were originally research papers and could possibly
have undergone peer-review. This, however, depends on the quality of paper presented,
quality of the conference, and how rigorous is the process of peer-review by the organizers of
conferences where the paper was presented. It is recommended that you should probe
further on the literature that has been found in the proceedings.

Another problem with conference proceedings is the limited public access on the materials
that have been presented in the conferences. only those who registered and/or presented in the
conference get access to the materials produced and distributed in the conference.
Further, only abstracts are usually published in conference proceedings, making the full
paper and other details of the paper inaccessible for researchers, especially for students.
Nonetheless, you may get access to the materials upon sending an email to the authors or
conference organizers.
 Similarly, government reports are on the same level because it is based on data from an
authoritative source the government agency. However, the report is not based on academic
research, which means that it is not peer-reviewed, and most often not refereed by independent
academic consultant.

This characteristic mainly treats the material with less rigor. Nonetheless, government reports
are still valuable to be cited in a research, especially when citing background data about a
certain topic (e.g. education data from the Commission on Higher Education or Department of
Education). The good thing about government reports is that they are often open access,
although they may also be outdated, depending on the data and agency.

Theses and dissertations are important documents to cite when doing your research
because they were done in the same vein as what you are going to do in the course of your
own research. It underwent the process of literature review, data gathering and analysis.
However, this should be done carefully as some theses were only done for compliance. This
lessens the quality and novelty of the output, especially if the students were not taught the
proper execution of the research processes. Although theses and dissertations are academic in
nature and have been evaluated by teachers, the evaluators and the students are not
guaranteed to be experts in the field of inquiry.

Magazines and newspapers are helpful in terms of getting superficial information about a
phenomenon being studied. However, these are written in a romanticized and non-academic
way. Still, it can be used during the exploration phase of your literature search and review, but it
should be done critically and sparingly. The last in the tier are webpages and blogs. These
materials can easily be found because they are written by a lot of people. You just type your
search term or keyword in the search box of search engines such as google.com or
yahoo.com, then it will generate more than a thousand results based on the topic being search.

However, the abundance of pages may not guarantee robustness and credibility since there
are webpages, especially blogs, that are purely personal, opinionated and non-academic,
making it unsuitable to be cited in your research. (http://www.newryandmourne.org.uk).

Although there are some blogs that contain academic materials in nature, it would be better
to go back to the original source cited by the blogger than to rely on the opinions mentioned in
the blog. This is also important for you as researcher to establish your credibility and ability to
discern materials to read and to use for your own research.

Remember, not all materials are credible and to be used for research. Research is a formal
and systematic activity that needs scholarship to ensure quality.

G. Reviewing the Literature

Now that you know what to look for and how to look for essential materials for your
research, it is important to understand the process of reviewing and synthesizing what you
have gathered.

As mentioned in this section, literature review is important in almost all phases of the
research process. This comes from the fact that it could help us in determining the novelty and
significance of your research, as mentioned in the first and second chapters. To do this,
analysis and synthesis of the materials into a coherent whole are needed.
 Reviewing the literature does not mean that you merely list down the materials that
you have read. You do not just enumerate the books you have scanned. You do not even
just summarize previous researches that are relevant to your study.
In here, you need to do critical evaluation, re-organization and synthesis of the topics
discussed about your topic.
To attain a successful literature review, you must be able to show your ability to digest
information from the different sources, critically evaluate them and its synthesis, and present
your understanding in a concise, logical and reader-friendly manner.
The following steps are recommended:
1. Identify potential references through the identification of keywords based on your topic,
objectives or problems.
2. Locate references by identifying appropriate and accessible materials (i.e., journal
articles, books, theses and dissertations, etc.).
3. Gather the literature by borrowing books or downloading the articles from the internet if
available. You can initially screen the article before getting it by referring to the abstract
first before taking time to reading the whole manuscript.
4. Screen the references based on relevance and appropriateness to your topic through
reading the whole article. Differentiate the literature that are considered and directly
talk about your topic or those that only slightly relate to your topic but are still useful
when it comes to explaining interconnected concepts.
5. Take down notes as you read the materials. Significant points from key authors should
be considered as this will show that you have read key literature. It is also important to
consider agreements and arguments about the topic since this will show that a
consensus is not yet achieved about the topic. This shows that a research gap exists.
6. Read the notes that you made and re-organize them in a way that it could generate
logical and coherent statements related to your research. • Organizing the background
should be written in an deductive manner — general to specific. It is recommended that
you make an outline during and even before this phase.
7. When you are done organizing the literature as they are, put your insights and be able
to show what is known and is not known, which could be used to develop further
research questions. In here, you should show your perspective and stance as a
researcher by evaluating what has already been done, showing the relationships
between the different works, and showing how it relates to your own study.
8. Lastly, read what you have written once again and see if it presents the issues in a-
coherent and logical manner. In addition, try to understand if it clearly leads to the point
stating your motivation and objective in solving the particular problem or understanding
a phenomenon.
H. Citation and Referencing
It is important to know and understand the proper citation format
being used by your school as this could be one of the grounds for the
disapproval of your research proposal or the final output.
Referencing is the act of attributing to a certain person, group or
entity a material, passage or words you used in your research by
putting the complete details of the material cited in a list of literature used in the study.

On the other hand, citation is giving credit to the person, group or entity who originally
wrote the material, passage or words you used in your research. This has become a prob-
lem to people through the years because of unfair, wrong and unethical practices that are
not clear to many, especially to students.
Citation problems can be addressed by complying with the standard format of refer-
ence citation set by your school. The following are the general citation in the American
Psychological Association (APA) style commonly used in the field of Social Sciences, Busi-
ness, and other related fields.
By using the APA standards, it allows the writer to (Seas & Brizee, 2012):
1. Provide readers with cues they can use to follow your ideas more efficiently and to lo-
cate information of interest to them
2. Allow readers to focus more on your ideas by not distracting them with unfamiliar for-
matting
3. Establish your credibility or ethos in the field by demonstrating an awareness of your
audience and their needs as fellow researchers
There are two ways to properly acknowledge a source of information in writing a
research proposal or manuscript in APA way: end-text citation, in-text citation and
Reference List.

In the end-text citation, the author's last name and the date of publication should
appear in the text. For example, (Anacin, 2012), and a complete reference information
should appear in the reference list. Sometimes, the author's name also appears as part
of a sentence, this way, only the year of publication should be enclosed in parenthesis. For
example, according to Anacin (2012), proper citation is achieved by acknowledging the
author and the year of publication... This type is called in-text citation.

If you are referring to an idea from another work but NOT directly quoting the material,
or making reference to an entire book, article or other work, you only have to make reference
to the author and year of publication and not the page number in your in-text reference.

Remember: All sources that are cited in the text must be reflected in the reference list,
and all items in the reference list must have been mentioned in the text through in-text or
end-text citation.
I. Reference List
Reference list appears at the end of the paper or proposal. Complete information of the
sources cited in the paper must be presented in this section. Reference list should be
formatted with hanging indention based on the APA format (American Psychological
Association, 2010).
Entries must be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work.
You should only capitalize the first word of the title of books, articles, or chapters.
Names of books or journals are italicized.
Some examples of most common materials cited in researches are presented below.

1. Journal Article with a single author

Author's Last name, First name initial. Middle name initial. Year of publication. Title of
the article. Title of the Journal Publication, Volume number (lssue number), Page
numbers.
Berndt, T. J. (2002). Entrepreneurial knowledge of MBA students. Journal of Business
Education, 11(2), 7-10.

2. Journal Article with three or more authors

1st Author's last name, First name initial. Middle name initial., 2nd author's last name,
First name initial. Middle name initial., & 3rd author's last name, First name initial.
Middle name initial. Year of publication. Title of the article. Title of the Journal
Publication, Volume number (lssue number), Page numbers.

Kernis, M. H.. Cornell, D. R, Sun, C. R., Berry, A.. Harlow, T.. & Bach. J. S. (1993).
The role of self-esteem in the success of business: A managerial perspective.
Journal of Business Psychology , 65 (2), 1190-1204.
3. Book by a single author

Author's Last name, First name initial. Middle name initial. Year of publication. Title of work:
Capital letter also for subtitle if any. Place of publication: Name of Publisher.

Anacin, C. G. (2018). Doing practical research in business and marketing. Malabon City:
Mutya Publishing House, Inc.

4. Book by two or more authors

1st author's last name, First name initial. Middle name initial., & 2nd author's last name,
First name initial. Middle name initial. Year of publication. Title of work: Capital letter
also for subtitle if any. Place of publication: Name of Publisher.

Calfee, R. C. & Valencia, R. R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal
publication. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

5. Article in an edited book

Author's Last name, First name initial. Middle name initial. Year of publication. Title of arti-
cle: Capital letter also for subtitle if any. In Title of the book. Editor's first name initial.
Middle name initial. Lastname. (Ed.). Place of publication: Name of Publisher.
Plath, S. (2000). The unabridged journals. K. V. Kukil (Ed.). New York, NY: Anchor.

6. Encyclopedia entry

Author's Last name, First name initial. Middle name initial. Year of publication. Title of ency-
clopedia entry. Name of book. Volume number, Page number. Place of publication:
Name of Publisher.
Bergmann, P. G. (1993). Relativity. In The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Vol. 26, pp. 501-

7. Unpublished Dissertation/Thesis

Author’s Last name, First name initial. Middle name initial. Title of dissertation. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, Name of Institution, Location.

Anacin, C.G. (2016). Trajectories of nightlife culture in Baguio City. Unpublished Master’s
Because it is proper to observe ethical practices in conducting researches, it is also imperative that
literatures being cited in the literature review should be acknowledged accordingly. By properly citing
sources of information in our research, we are upholding our stand as an ethical researcher and avoiding
conflicts.
 J. Plagiarism

Plagiarism is basically the act and practice of directly copying an

idea or a quotation from an original source without properly
acknowledging or attributing the source of the idea, and passing this idea
as one's own. It is important for a researcher to be aware of the concept of
plagiarism and avoid it by all means because this is an indication of low
quality of the research, incompetence of the researcher and an unethical
practice.

PRO TIP
To avoid this to happen, be sure to properly cite and attribute
There are programs your sources. Try to paraphrase as much as possible (as opposed
or software that are to just merely quoting).
used to detect
originality or level of There are a couple of ways to do paraphrasing to avoid plagiarism
plagiarized items in a (University of North Dakota, 2011):
paper.
Save both you and 1. State a fact or make a claim in the text; then cite your , source
your teacher's time in in parentheses within the same sentence: "It has been demonstrated
checking plagiarism by that immediate recall is extremely limited for 5-year-old children
using online plagiarism (Jones, 1998)." or "Previous research has shown that response to
tools such as an auditory stimulus is much faster than response to a visual stimu-
Plagscan, Turnitin, lus (Smith & Jones, 2003)."
Grammarly, and oth-
ers. 2. You can also use the source as the subject of your sentence:
"In a related study, Jones (2005) found that..." or "In a similar study,
Jones and Smith (1999) found that..."

Strictly speaking, then, citing other authors only means referring to them or their work, and
bringing them into your text by making your idea and their idea 'argue' with each other. To attrib-
ute an idea is to publicly associate an author with a particular opinion, finding or actual state-
ment (perhaps quoted).

But more than just mere citing and attributing an idea to an author -- or listing down cita-
tions, you need to do and have a critical assessment or insight about the material or their ideas
and present your own understanding in a concise, logical and reader-friendly manner.
PRO TIP

There ore online tools that can be used

to easily make the APA citation for materi-
als that are coming from the internet. Two
of these that are easy to use are Bibme
and Citefast, which are both free online
tools. You just need to supply the title of
the article, or the Digital Object Identifier
(DOI), or the name of the author/s and it
will generate the referencing for you in a
matter of minutes.