Beginning a study - Literature reviews

Ed 510 Applications of Educational Research
 
 
 

Here is some terminology that will help you to understand the following material.  Define each term and think of  your own example.     Empirical  Methodology  Review of relevant literature  Theory

Introduction
 

Although most books and guides that discuss research design start exploring  the nature of research problems and questions, researchers themselves do not usually begin with a clearly defined idea of what their research question actually is. Questions are starting points in articles and reports, but not starting points for research. The beginning for researchers is not so neatly buttoned down. Instead real research begins with research problems. As a rule a researcher begins with a number of unanswered concerns or questions. Many of them are soft boiled, that is, they are not finely tuned nor do they open the door to a research strategy.

 

Researchers begin with a broad sense of what they want to explore. This is probably best termed a research topic. Research questions come only later and only when a researcher has a better sense of the components of an overall research problem. So where do researchers begin?

 

What are typical sources for research problems? Researchers may find problems in one or more of the following ways;

 

Researchers have been conducting research in an area for some time. They think they already know a bit about the problem. However their own prior research has led them to unanswered questions, ambiguous aspects of the problem, contradictory findings. The desire to clear up these unresolved issues motivates them to ask more questions and to conduct further investigations into an existing problem.

 

They are aware of research that has been conducted in an area for some time by other researchers. The published research has come to tentative conclusions; however there are still many aspects of that are unclear. Perhaps findings are contradictory within a single study. Perhaps a single study contradicts much of what a line of research states is consistently true. Perhaps prior research has suffered obvious flaws in method-- for example, samples were too restrictive and it is difficult to generalize; or data collection methods were not statistically reliable or valid. Perhaps prior research failed to detect biases in the methods used. Perhaps the statistical methods used to analyze information were limited in some way. When any of these conditions hold, researchers may want to enter the research area and correct past mistakes. This becomes the source of new research goals and questions.

 

New information about a long standing problem surfaces. It stands to contradict much of what has been previously thought to be true. Resolving novel contradictions stirs an interest in new research problems and stimulates new questions.

 

New ways of measuring human behavior have been developed. This new development makes it possible to study long standing problems in new ways. The desire to test the validity of new measurement tools stimulates new lines of research.

 

Problems arising in clinical or professional practice stimulate research questions. This occurs because patterns of behavior seem to the clinician or professional educator to be interesting enough to make systematic exploration worthwhile.

 

Testing theories is another source of research problems.

 

The desire to formulate theories from a body of empirical research is another source of research problems.

 

Most research problems are initially very broad in scope. This makes them unmanageable and difficult to investigate. Researchers begin the task of narrowing a topic before they begin the task of designing a study or writing research questions. An initial step is to gather published information about the research topic. This first step refers to a literature review. A subsequent step is to narrow that information even further in order to give shape and form to the investigation. This second step refers to the review of relevant literature.

A literature review - This is an exhaustive search of published information about a research topic. Usually researchers collect far more information from previously published sources than they will actually use within the boundaries of a single original study. This step is important because it helps researchers know what has already been discovered along the way. Why is this valuable information and what mistakes can be avoided?
 
 

Benefiting from the work of others
 

• previous studies are often sources of questions and these are listed at the end of an article
• new research has a context for being understood in the work of others
• scholarship establishes a dialog about the conceptual boundaries of problems and scholars learn from published contributions to an area
• new lines of inquiry can be linked to established understanding
• theoretical importance of individual studies can be established
• information about methods that work and those that don't is available
• theoretical and empirical studies are referenced and help to guide new investigations

• research topics that are dead end lines of investigation.
• research topics that are difficult to explore for political, economic, social reasons.
• resources on topics that have been
• Thoroughly researched and little that is new can be added.
• mistakes and mis-steps in the use of methods that have already proved to be flawed.

Techniques for note taking and summarizing - do list
 

Writing a Review of Relevant Literature

An important use of a literature review is to guide a researcher regarding most matters related to research design: focusing on one or more research questions, selecting variables, developing hypotheses, choosing tools for data collection, deciding on a statistical design and interpreting findings. An important purpose of a review of relevant literature is to further narrow these efforts. A review of relevant literature, when well written, zeroes in on specific connections between concepts, issues, variables and theories. After these connections are made and written about in some detail, a review of relevant literature leads both researchers and readers to anticipate that some choices of method and research strategy are more obvious, more logical and more suited to the problem under study.
 

A common mistake made by many beginners is to write a review that is nothing more than a series of synopses of articles, papers and reports that were part of the literature review. Nothing is said about some very important aspects of a relevant review:
 

• How do studies fit together, present similar findings, explore contradictory findings
• What are the important variables, concepts, ideas and issues that have surfaced across all the literature that has been examined?
• What are the connections between these concepts
• What summarizing comments can and should be made that delineate general patterns that cut across the literature as a whole

 

How do we avoid traps that steer understanding away from important connections and meaningful writing?
 

Well written literature reviews not surprisingly share many characteristics with well written texts in general. Respecting the needs of the reader is an important priority. This is achieved by creating an organizing structure in advance, and by matching the type of structure to the way in which the research problem is to be understood.
 

A literature review doesn't work from the point of view of the reader when it is difficult to understand a researcher's goals and objectives.
 
 
 

Literature reviews can and should be outlined in advance so that its organization is clear to a researcher, and so that a researcher can efficiently edit and amend the review when necessary. When studies need to be added or subtracted from a review that is under construction, or when new ideas and arguments seem important to include, or when one wants to modify parts of a review it is important not to loose focus. In other words, one should ask, "What kind of review do I want to create?" Thus one can begin thinking early on about the underlying structure, or skeleton, on which the specifics will hang. Moreover, one can be more conscious of one's plan, monitor the progress of the review and be more aware of the need to make changes.
 

Some typical ways of organizing a review of relevant literature
 

• Thematic organization - themes that emerge from literature are listed and information is included from previous studies that define, explore, illustrate and explain the themes and their importance to the research problem.
• Arguments in the field - major positions or stands on the issues surrounding the research problem are presented in a point/counterpoint fashion and the studies that illuminate these positions are introduced accordingly.
• Conceptual analysis - the concepts that define a research problem are organized in terms of part-whole relationships and studies that expand on the meaning of each concept are integrated in each section.
• Critical review of methodology - major flaws in the ways in which previous studies have investigated a research problem are explored and the studies that demonstrate these flaws are reviewed critically.

Outlines and graphic organizers
 

Outlining is a well known approach to organizing information prior to writing. An outline provides a linear structure that can be follow in sequence. Major ideas and subordinate ideas are grouped together in a logical way and after one idea is developed the outline moves writing forward in the direction of the next idea and so on. A major disadvantage of outlines for writing literature reviews is that many research problems do not have a linear structure. Instead they have a branching organization. Consider the point/counterpoint model mentioned above In that model each section of the review may consist of two main ideas that stand side by side and contradict each other. Each idea may have several sub ideas that need to be nested inside the larger issue and discussed in that relationship. An outline is not a successful way to organize a point/counterpoint review.

Using Venn diagrams to organize reviews of relevant literature
 

This is an approach that is helpful when it is important to examine areas of consensus in literature and areas of disagreement side by side. The figure demonstrates why this is so.

 

Ideas are summarized from various studies. Main ideas are highlighted in some way. Whenever two or more studies share a common finding or discovery that area of agreement defines a common opinion oar consensus. One can look at each instance where two ore more authors agree, discuss that and then move on to the next area of consensus. Perhaps others share a point of view in a second area of the research problem or a third area, and so on. Venn diagrams thus make it clear where generalizations are possible.

 

Those areas where consensus is not present can also be seen clearly. Disagreements in the literature don't move into the common set but occupy areas unique to a particular point of view. As such they should be discussed and described as areas where consensus in a field could not be reached.

Webbing
 

Webbing is a strategy that connects ideas and concepts.
 

Webs are based on the identification of one or major ideas or concepts. Major ideas and concepts are probably made up of sub concepts or smaller but related ideas. If each concept or sub concept is assigned a circle or node in the web one can then begin to think explicitly about how these ideas are inter-connected. Researchers may make any number of webs to think about possible connections and use literature as the basis for this connecting activity. Webs thus aid analysis (sorting out ideas and defining them; and they aid synthesis (thinking of ways to reconnect main and supporting ideas). Webs are extremely helpful when one wants to integrate the work of more than one author inside the task of analyzing and defining concepts, or when speculating as to how ideas are connected.
 

Summarizing questions
 

What have you learned from this lesson that can be applied to your work as an educator?
 

What questions remain that you would like to have answered?
 
 

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