You Would Expect a Literature Review to Show All of the Following Characteristics Except
Chapter 2: Getting Started in Enquiry
Reviewing the Enquiry Literature
- Define the research literature in psychology and requite examples of sources that are role of the enquiry literature and sources that are not.
- Depict and employ several methods for finding previous research on a item research thought or question.
Reviewing the research literature means finding, reading, and summarizing the published research relevant to your question. An empirical research report written in American Psychological Association (APA) style always includes a written literature review, merely it is important to review the literature early on in the research process for several reasons.
- Information technology can help you turn a research idea into an interesting research question.
- Information technology tin tell y'all if a enquiry question has already been answered.
- It can help you lot evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
- It tin can requite you ideas for how to comport your own report.
- It can tell you how your study fits into the research literature.
What Is the Research Literature?
The in any field is all the published research in that field. The research literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the beginning of the field—and information technology continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does not include self-aid and other pop psychology books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries, websites, and similar sources that are intended mainly for the full general public. These are considered unreliable considering they are not reviewed by other researchers and are often based on little more than common sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable information, simply the fact that its authors are anonymous and may not have any formal grooming or expertise in that field of study area, and its content continually changes makes it unsuitable equally a basis of sound scientific enquiry. For our purposes, information technology helps to define the research literature as consisting almost entirely of two types of sources: articles in professional person journals, and scholarly books in psychology and related fields.
Professional Journals
are periodicals that publish original inquiry articles. There are thousands of professional journals that publish research in psychology and related fields. They are usually published monthly or quarterly in private issues, each of which contains several articles. The issues are organized into volumes, which usually consist of all the bug for a agenda yr. Some journals are published in hard copy only, others in both difficult copy and electronic course, and still others in electronic form only.
Most articles in professional person journals are one of 2 bones types: empirical research reports and review articles. draw ane or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors. They introduce a research question, explain why information technology is interesting, review previous research, draw their method and results, and draw their conclusions. summarize previously published research on a topic and ordinarily present new means to organize or explain the results. When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory, it is frequently referred to as a .
Most professional journals in psychology undergo a process ofdouble-blind peer review. Researchers who desire to publish their work in the journal submit a manuscript to the editor—who is mostly an established researcher too—who in turn sends it to two or 3 experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a critical but constructive review, and sends the review back to the editor forth with his or her recommendations. The editor then decides whether to take the article for publication, enquire the authors to make changes and resubmit it for further consideration, or reject it outright. In any instance, the editor forwards the reviewers' written comments to the researchers so that they can revise their manuscript accordingly. This entire process is double-blind, as the reviewers do not know the identity of the researcher(due south), and vice versa. Double-blind peer review is helpful considering it ensures that the piece of work meets basic standards of the field earlier it can enter the research literature. All the same, in order to increase transparency and accountability some newer open access journals (e.thousand., Frontiers in Psychology) utilize an open peer review process wherein the identities of the reviewers (which remain concealed during the peer review process) are published alongside the periodical article.
Scholarly Books
are books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for utilise by other researchers and practitioners. A is written past a single author or a small-scale group of authors and usually gives a coherent presentation of a topic much like an extended review article. have an editor or a small group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic. Although edited volumes can also give a coherent presentation of the topic, it is not unusual for each chapter to accept a different perspective or fifty-fifty for the authors of unlike chapters to openly disagree with each other. In full general, scholarly books undergo a peer review process similar to that used by professional journals.
Literature Search Strategies
Using PsycINFO and Other Databases
The master method used to search the research literature involves using one or more electronic databases. These include Bookish Search Premier, JSTOR, and ProQuest for all academic disciplines, ERIC for didactics, and PubMed for medicine and related fields. The near important for our purposes, even so, is PsycINFO, which is produced by the APA. is so comprehensive—covering thousands of professional person journals and scholarly books going back more than than 100 years—that for nigh purposes its content is synonymous with the enquiry literature in psychology. Similar near such databases, PsycINFO is normally bachelor through your university library.
PsycINFO consists of individual records for each article, book chapter, or book in the database. Each tape includes basic publication data, an abstruse or summary of the work (similar the one presented at the start of this chapter), and a listing of other works cited past that work. A computer interface allows entering one or more search terms and returns whatsoever records that comprise those search terms. (These interfaces are provided by different vendors and therefore tin look somewhat different depending on the library yous use.) Each record also contains lists of keywords that describe the content of the work and besides a list of index terms. The index terms are peculiarly helpful considering they are standardized. Enquiry on differences between women and men, for example, is e'er indexed under "Human Sex Differences." Enquiry on notetaking is always indexed under the term "Learning Strategies." If you practice not know the advisable index terms, PsycINFO includes a thesaurus that can aid yous find them.
Given that at that place are nearly iv million records in PsycINFO, you may have to try a variety of search terms in different combinations and at different levels of specificity before you find what you are looking for. Imagine, for example, that you are interested in the question of whether women and men differ in terms of their power to recall experiences from when they were very immature. If you were to enter "memory for early experiences" as your search term, PsycINFO would return only half dozen records, most of which are not specially relevant to your question. However, if you lot were to enter the search term "memory," it would return 149,777 records—far as well many to look through individually. This is where the thesaurus helps. Entering "memory" into the thesaurus provides several more than specific index terms—ane of which is "early on memories." While searching for "early memories" among the index terms returns 1,446 records—still too many too await through individually—combining it with "human sex differences" as a 2nd search term returns 37 articles, many of which are highly relevant to the topic.
Depending on the vendor that provides the interface to PsycINFO, you may be able to save, print, or eastward-mail the relevant PsycINFO records. The records might even contain links to full-text copies of the works themselves. (PsycARTICLES is a database that provides full-text access to articles in all journals published by the APA.) If not, and you want a copy of the piece of work, yous will have to discover out if your library carries the periodical or has the book and the hard copy on the library shelves. Exist sure to ask a librarian if you need assistance.
Using Other Search Techniques
In addition to entering search terms into PsycINFO and other databases, there are several other techniques you can use to search the research literature. Beginning, if you have one good article or book chapter on your topic—a recent review commodity is best—you can look through the reference listing of that commodity for other relevant articles, books, and book chapters. In fact, you should do this with whatsoever relevant article or volume chapter you observe. You can also start with a classic article or book chapter on your topic, find its record in PsycINFO (by entering the author's name or article'south title as a search term), and link from there to a list of other works in PsycINFO that cite that classic article. This works because other researchers working on your topic are likely to be aware of the classic commodity and cite it in their own work. You tin can also do a general Internet search using search terms related to your topic or the name of a researcher who conducts research on your topic. This might lead y'all directly to works that are part of the inquiry literature (eastward.one thousand., articles in open-access journals or posted on researchers' own websites). The search engine Google Scholar is particularly useful for this purpose. A full general Internet search might also lead yous to websites that are not part of the research literature merely might provide references to works that are. Finally, you can talk to people (eastward.g., your instructor or other faculty members in psychology) who know something about your topic and tin can propose relevant articles and book chapters.
What to Search For
When you exercise a literature review, y'all demand to exist selective. Non every commodity, book affiliate, and book that relates to your research idea or question will be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, you want to focus on sources that help you do iv basic things: (a) refine your research question, (b) place advisable research methods, (c) identify your inquiry in the context of previous research, and (d) write an constructive research report. Several basic principles tin assist you detect the most useful sources.
First, information technology is best to focus on recent research, keeping in mind that what counts every bit recent depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively beingness studied, "recent" might mean published in the past year or two. For older topics that are receiving less attending correct now, "contempo" might mean within the past 10 years. Y'all volition get a feel for what counts as recent for your topic when you start your literature search. A good full general rule, still, is to start with sources published in the past 5 years. The principal exception to this rule would be classic manufactures that turn upward in the reference listing of nearly every other source. If other researchers think that this work is important, even though it is old, then by all means yous should include information technology in your review.
Second, y'all should look for review articles on your topic because they will provide a useful overview of information technology—often discussing important definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving you a good sense of where your own enquiry fits into the literature. You should also wait for empirical inquiry reports addressing your question or similar questions, which can requite you ideas about how to operationally define your variables and collect your data. Every bit a full general rule, information technology is proficient to utilize methods that others have already used successfully unless you lot have expert reasons not to. Finally, you should look for sources that provide data that tin help yous debate for the interestingness of your research question. For a study on the effects of prison cell telephone use on driving ability, for example, y'all might look for information about how widespread cell telephone utilize is, how frequent and costly motor vehicle crashes are, and and then on.
How many sources are enough for your literature review? This is a difficult question because it depends on how extensively your topic has been studied and also on your own goals. I study plant that across a variety of professional journals in psychology, the average number of sources cited per commodity was about 50 (Adair & Vohra, 2003)[1]. This gives a crude idea of what professional researchers consider to be acceptable. As a educatee, you might be assigned a much lower minimum number of references to apply, but the principles for selecting the nearly useful ones remain the same.
- The research literature in psychology is all the published research in psychology, consisting primarily of articles in professional journals and scholarly books.
- Early on in the inquiry process, information technology is important to carry a review of the research literature on your topic to refine your research question, place appropriate research methods, place your question in the context of other research, and prepare to write an effective research report.
- There are several strategies for finding previous research on your topic. Among the all-time is using PsycINFO, a computer database that catalogs millions of manufactures, books, and book chapters in psychology and related fields.
- Practice: Utilise the techniques discussed in this section to find 10 journal manufactures and book chapters on 1 of the following research ideas: retentivity for smells, ambitious driving, the causes of narcissistic personality disorder, the functions of the intraparietal sulcus, or prejudice against the physically handicapped.
- Lookout the following video clip produced past UBCiSchool about how to read an academic paper (without losing your mind):
Video Attributions
- "Sample PsycINFO Search on EBSCOhost" by APA Publishing Training. Standard YouTube Licence.
- "Using Google Scholar (CLIP)" by clipinfolit. CC BY (Attribution)
- "How to Read an Bookish Paper" by UBCiSchool. CC BY (Attribution)
Source: https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/reviewing-the-research-literature/
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