Grad workshop lit review spr11

Researching & Writinga Literature Review NCSU Libraries... Expectations of graduate students Grad students have different backgrounds ◦ Not every grad student has done research ◦ Not ev

Researching & Writing

a Literature Review

NCSU Libraries

Expectations of graduate students

 Grad students have different backgrounds

◦ Not every grad student has done research

◦ Not everyone has experience reading the

literature

 No problem

 You are learning to ask questions

 Do so! No one expects you to know everything Your job is to learn to seek out answers

 Knowing that information is out there can be empowering!

Talking about the literature…

◦ “What does the literature show us?”

◦ “Connect your ideas to the literature ”

◦ “Survey the literature on the topic.”

Talking about the

Talking about the

 This distinction can be transparent on

campus: the “free” internet vs library

subscriptions

X X

Talking about the literature…

◦ Let’s focus on “What are lit reviews?” and

“Why?” and the conceptual approach first…

◦ Follow-up workshops will tackle the “How?”

 But we’ll look at a examples as we go

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review

 Surveys scholarly sources relevant to a

particular issue, area of research, or theory

 Provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work

 Offers an overview of significant literature published on a topic

 Gives future research context by telling the story of work done so far

(adapted from

http://library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/ literaturereview.html )

Functions of Literature Reviews

Establish research context

Show why the question is significant

Illustrate and describe previous research, including gaps and flaws

Ensure that research has not been done before

Hey, did you notice that the bullets here are

checkboxes?

Functions of Literature Reviews

Understand the structure of the problem

Demonstrate your knowledge of the field

Synthesize previous perspectives and

develop your own perspective

Point the way to future research

Review article examples: http://go.ncsu.edu/litrev 1

http://go.ncsu.edu/litrev 2

Review article examples: http://go.ncsu.edu/litrev 1

http://go.ncsu.edu/litrev 2

Digging Into the Literature

A

= Major works

C B

Digging Into the Literature

A

= Major works

C B

= Studies that rely on major works

Digging Into the Literature

A

= Major works

C B

= Studies that rely on major works

New!

= Something new!

Digging Into the Literature – How?

Aspect How?

Major works •Literature databases

•Colleague recommendations

•Cited workRelated works Citation searching:

•Web of Science

•Google ScholarNew information •Articles alerts/RSS feeds

•Tables of ContentsPut it all together, you have a literature review!

Writing

and revision

Topic

Overview of the Process

Topic

Initial topic won’t be your final topic!

Choose, explore, focus

Refine as you go based on:

Availability of research – too much? too little?

Discovering new ideas

Writing progress

Overview of the Process

Research and Collect Information

Topic

Search databases

Find, evaluate, and select articles

Writing

and revision

Topic

Proceeding…(use worksheet handout)

Develop draft topic

 Discuss with advisor, colleagues

Find a literature review (or book/chapter)

 Identify key terms and concepts

 Use bibliography to find sources

Search the major disciplinary database

 Check with colleagues, a librarian

 Each will have different ideas of where to search!

 Determine scope and facets of topic

 Collect useful, current sources

Search a Citation database

 Best ones: Web of Science, Google Scholar

 Web of Science has better tools

 Scholar can complete picture

 Identify key/seminal papers/research

 Identify key researchers, research centers, journals

 Trace citations back and forward

Questions that come up…

◦ How do I know I have the “right stuff”?

◦ How do I know when I’m done?

◦ How do know what’s important?

◦ No set answers…for each individual to decide.

Housekeeping Tips

 Use a citation management system

◦ Such as RefWorks, Zotero, Mendeley, etc.

◦ One word for these: invaluable You are absolutely doing more work in NOT learning about these.

 Always get the complete citation

Read Synthetically: Pull it All Together

 Look at all articles to identify

relationships

 Classify or group papers, or paper

sections, by topic, method, theme

similar questions

◦ Discover relationships between sources

◦ Discover critical gaps and disagreements

 Fit within the generated outline, or adapt outline

The Synthesis Matrix

 Tool to aid in writing a document showing synthesis

Models of Paper Structures

theme, discuss/compare the relevant parts of papers 1, 3, and 4

theme, discuss/compare the relevant parts of papers 2,4, and 5

theme, discuss/compare the relevant parts of papers 5 and 6

highlight conclusions, unresolved issues, identify possible next steps in research and/or practice.

Some Tips for Writing

finished searching the literature

the introduction)

handy

straightforward

Moving forward

◦ How to identify good databases

◦ Maximizing your use of them

◦ How to save all of this work