2. Review the Literature

1. Introduction

Once you have an idea of a research question, you need to see what others have already done. Alternatively, you may browse the literature to get ideas of what to research

2. Why look at what others have done?

- learn from other's mistakes
- don't unnecessarily repeat research effort
- learn a method from another area which could be used for your question
- learn a theory which could be used for your question

3. How to find relevant literature?

- see library notes on manual or electronic searches
- use the internet and google it

4. How to organise the relevant literature?

- always take full reference details when copying article
- keep a list of all references you have
- store articles by subject or by author/year

5. What to do with the relevant literature?

- honestly summarise shat the authors have done/said
- note the particular circumstances
- critically review what they did, how they did it and what they concluded

6. References

HOW TO CRITICALLY REVIEW AN ARTICLE?

- read an article from beginning to end to get a sense of the whole article

- note any areas which were unclear on the initial read

- now now work through the article checking the following points, scoring 0 for absence of trait, 1 for partial presence, 2 for clear and adequate presence

Introduction and Literature Review

clear description of problem given

significance of problem clearly stated

aim of paper clearly stated

important related research referred to

research cited clearly

literature review suggests competent understanding of areas

Method

research question/hypothesis clearly stated

research design clearly described

subject recruitment, selection and allocation clearly stated

independent variables clearly defined

dependent variables clearly and operationally defined

method suitable to answer question

method detailed to allow reasonable replication of study

Results and Discussion

data analysis clearly explained

data analysis suitable to data and question

test statistics, degrees of freedom and alpha probabilities reported

discussion of results suggests competent understanding of area

Conclusion

conclusion clearly stated

conclusions adequately supported by data

- summarise paper's main findings, main weaknesses/problems and overall score

HOW TO COMBINE CRITICAL REVIEWS OF ARTICLES

- it is usually clearer for a reader if you arrange your review issue by issue, rather than paper by paper

- for each issue present a summary of the main findings from the literature, then present your evaluation of the quality of support these finding have (by discussing the weaknesses you have identified in your review of each article). Finish your review of all literature on the issue with a summary of the knowledge that is well supported and indicate what is not known or what has insufficuent support to be considered working knowkledge