1. UNIT IV: THE REVIEW OF
RELATED LITERATURE
By: Jennifer D. Firat
MAM
Methods of Research (2nd Semester) 2016 - 2017
2. What is Related Literature?
Composed of discussions of facts and
principles to which the present study is
related
Materials which are usually printed and found
in books, encyclopedias, professional journals,
magazines, newspapers, and other
publications
4. IMPORTANCE, PURPOSES, AND
FUNCTIONS OF RELATED LITERATURE
1. It helps or guides the researcher in searching for or selecting a
better research problem or topic
2. It helps the investigator understand his topic or research better
3. It ensures that there will be no duplication of other studies
4. It provides the conceptual or theoretical framework of the
planned research
5. It gives the researcher a feeling of confidence
6. It provides information about the research methods used
7. It provides findings and conclusions of past investigations
6. CHARACTERISTICS OF RELATED
LITERATURE MATERIALS
1. The surveyed materials must be as recent as possible
2. Materials reviewed must be objective and unbiased
3. Materials surveyed must be relevant to the study
4. Surveyed materials must have been based upon
genuinely original and true facts or data to make
them valid and reliable.
8. PRIMARY SOURCE
Primary Source
provides direct or firsthand evidence about an event,
object, person, or work of art.
provide the original materials on which other research is
based and enable students and other researchers to get
as close as possible to what actually happened during a
particular event or time period.
9. Primary Sources Examples
Autobiographies and memoirs
Diaries, personal letters, and correspondence
Interviews, surveys, and fieldwork
Internet communications on email, blogs, listservs, and
newsgroups
Photographs, drawings, and posters
Works of art and literature
Books, magazine and newspaper articles and ads published at
the time
Public opinion polls
10. Primary Sources Examples
Speeches and oral histories
Original documents (birth certificates, property deeds, trial transcripts)
Research data, such as census statistics
Official and unofficial records of organizations and government agencies
Artifacts of all kinds, such as tools, coins, clothing, furniture, etc.
Audio recordings, DVDs, and video recordings
Government documents (reports, bills, proclamations, hearings, etc.)
Patents
Technical reports
Scientific journal articles reporting experimental research results
11. SECONDARY SOURCE
Secondary Source
describe, discuss, interpret, comment upon, analyze,
evaluate, summarize, and process primary sources.
generally one or more steps removed from the event or
time period and are written or produced after the fact
with the benefit of hindsight.
12. Secondary Sources Examples
Bibliographies
Biographical works
Reference books, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases
Articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers after the event
Literature reviews and review articles (e.g., movie reviews, book reviews)
History books and other popular or scholarly books
Works of criticism and interpretation
Commentaries and treatises
Textbooks
Indexes and abstracts
14. 6 Steps Involved in Conducting
Literature Review
Step One: Define the area you will be studying.
Step Two: Search for the literature.
Step Three: Find relevant excerpts. Skim the content of each book and
article and look for these five things:
1. Claims, conclusions, and findings about the constructs you are
investigating
2. Definitions of terms
3. Calls for follow-up studies relevant to your project
4. Gaps you notice in the literature
5. Disagreement about the constructs you are investigating.
15. 6 Steps Involved in Conducting
Literature Review
Step Four: Code the literature.
Step Five: Create your conceptual schema.
Step Six: Write it up.
17. Questions your literature review should
answer:
What do we already know in the immediate area concerned?
What are the characteristics of the key concepts or the main
factors or variables?
What are the relationships between these key concepts,
factors or variables?
What are the existing theories?
Where are the inconsistencies or shortcomings in our knowledge
and understanding?
18. Questions your literature review should
answer:
What views need to be (further) tested?
What evidence is lacking, inconclusive, contradictory or too
limited?
Why study (further) the research problem?
What contribution can the present study be expected to make?
What research designs or methods seem unsatisfactory?
19. How to Write a Good Literature Review?
Remember the purpose. Use the literature to explain your
research
Read with a purpose. Summarize the work you read but you
must also decide which ideas or information are important you.
Write with a purpose. Your aim should be to evaluate and show
relationships between the work you already done and between
this work and your own.
20.
21. References:
Foss S. K. & Waters J. C., (2007). Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a
Done Dissertation, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Maryland USA.
Kumar R., (2011). Research Methodology A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners 3rd
Edition, Sage Publication, LTD., London.
Subhani R., Research Guideline Handbook pdf.
For further information, consult the following links:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sources/contents.html
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite6.html#1
http://www.acls.org/pub-list.htm.
https://www.sccollege.edu/Library/Pages/primarysources.aspx
Notas do Editor
Step One: Define the area you will be studying. Before you begin to search for articles or books, decide beforehand what areas you are going to research. Make sure that you only get articles and books in that area, even if you come across fascinating books in other areas.
Step Two: Gather the literature. Conduct comprehensive bibliographic search of books and articles in your area. Read abstract online and download and print those articles that pertain to your area of research. Find books in the library that are relevant and check them out.
Step Three: Find relevant excerpts. Skim the content of each book and article and look for these five things:
Claims, conclusions, and findings about the constructs you are investigating
Definitions of terms
Calls for follow-up studies relevant to your project
Gaps you notice in the literature
Disagreement about the constructs you are investigating.
When you find any of these five things, type the relevant excerpt directly into a Word documents. Don’t summarize, as that takes longer than just typing the excerpt. Make sure to note the name of the author and the page number following the passage. Do this for each article and book that you have in your stack of literature. When you are done, print out the document.
Step Four: Code the literature. Get out a pair of scissors and cut each note apart. Now, sort the pieces of paper into similar topics. Figure out what the main themes are and place the notes each into a pile. Make sure that each note goes into pile.. If there are excerpts that you can’t figure out where they belong, separate those and go over them again at the end to see if you need new categories. When you finish, place each stack of notes into an envelope labeled with the name of the theme.
Step Five: Create your conceptual schema. Go to your computer and type, in large font, the name of each your coded themes. Print this out, and cut the themes into individual slips of paper. Take the slips of paper to a table or large workspace and figure out the best way to organize them. Are there ideas that go together or that are in dialogue with each other? Are there ideas that contradict each other? Move around the slips of paper until you come up with a way of organizing the codes that makes sense. Write the conceptual schema down before you forget or someone cleans up your slips of paper!
Step Six: Write it up. Choose any section of your conceptual schema to begin with. You can begin anywhere, because you already know the order. Find the envelope with the excerpts in them and lay them on the table in front of you. Figure out a mini-conceptual schema based on that theme by grouping together those excerpts that say the same thing. Use the mini-conceptual schema to write up your literature review based on the excerpts that you have in front of you. Don’t forget to include the citations as you write, as as not to lose track of who said what. Repeat this for each section of your literature review.
Here are some of the questions your literature review should answer:
1. What do we already know in the immediate area concerned?
2. What are the characteristics of the key concepts or the main factors or variables?
3. What are the relationships between these key concepts, factors or variables?
4. What are the existing theories?
5. Where are the inconsistencies or shortcomings in our knowledge and understanding?
6. What views need to be (further) tested?
7. What evidence is lacking, inconclusive, contradictory or too limited?
8. Why study (further) the research problem?
9. What contribution can the present study be expected to make?
10. What research designs or methods seem unsatisfactory?
Remember the purpose: It should answer the questions we looked at above. Look at how published writers review the literature. You'll see that you should use the literature to explain your research - after all, you are not writing a literature review just to tell your reader what other researchers have done. You aim should be to show why your research needs to be carried out, how you came to choose certain methodologies or theories to work with, how your work adds to the research already carried out, etc.
Read with a purpose: You need to summarize the work you read but you must also decide which ideas or information are important to your research (so you can emphasize them), and which are less important and can be covered briefly or left out of your review. You should also look for the major concepts, conclusions, theories, arguments etc. that underlie the work, and look for similarities and differences with closely related work. This is difficult when you first start reading, but should become easier the more you read in your area.
Write with a purpose: Your aim should be to evaluate and show relationships between the work already done (Is Researcher Y's theory more convincing than Researcher X's? Did Researcher X build on the work of Researcher Y?) and between this work and your own. In order to do this effectively you should carefully plan how you are going to organize your work.
Have another look at the questions a literature review should answer. See if you can answer the following questions about the literature review above:
•Which of the questions does this literature review answer?
•Which of them doesn't it answer?
•What system has the writer used to organize the literature review?
•Is it a good literature review? Why/why not?