The Advising Literature Review: Make it Systematic! Greg Mason Director, Academic Advising College of Education Penn State University

What is a Systematic Literature Review (SLR)? A means of identifying, evaluating and interpreting all available research relevant to a particular research question, or topic area, or phenomenon of interest (Kitchenham, 2004) How is this any different from any other search for literature on a given topic?

Common ISSUES with Literature Reviews… Their ad hoc nature ‘Throwing Darts’ How did you find this/how come you didn’t find that? Difficulty reporting findings How can this be used moving forward?

Systematic Review CORE CHARACTERISTICS (Budgen and Brereton, 2006) They have, at their core, a research question/problem question to be investigated, They define a search strategy for finding all relevant literature, The search strategy is well-documented, The inclusion and exclusion criteria for literature is clearly defined, and The review notes what each piece of literature contributes to the larger understanding of the initial research question or topic being studied 

Accounting for Researcher BIAS 'Cherry Picking’ the body of literature on a topic…why do we do this? Our ontological and epistemological stances Literature that we have previously discovered/used Comfort with methods employed Comfort (or discomfort) with results SLRs account for these tendencies by requiring rigorous documentation/reporting.

PRISMA GUIDELINES FOR CONDUCTING SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEWS (UpLOADED AS HANDOUTS ON THE CONFERENCE WEBPAGE)

Systematic Literature reviews & Academic Advising Promote a high standard of quality for empirical advising research Can support NACADA’s research agenda domains, Impact Context Theoretical Basis OK…so what are the steps in conducting your own SLR?

Part One: Scoping and PLANNING What are your research questions? These drive the review! Has this been done before? If so, not a problem… Break your research question down into useable search terms Synonyms (academic advisor, or academic counselor) Various spellings (adviser, or advisor) singular vs. plural

Part Two: The INCLUSION/EXCLUSION CRITERIA These criteria determine what will be kept/culled Can always justify by keeping the research question(s) in mind Common criteria are, Key variables or concepts (advising narratives, life stories) Research design (phenomenological, quasi-experimental) Participants (college or university students) Timeframe (1978 to present) DOCUMENT EVERYTHING!

PART Three: Conducting the Search Three places to look when conducting SLRs: Academic Databases Specific Journals Bibliographies I would recommend approaching them in this order!

Database searches If you do not know of good, relevant search engines based on your topic, enlist the help of a research librarian Google Scholar is one option, but using multiple databases is ideal (ERIC Proquest, JSTOR and Google Scholar) Each database has its own quirks…important to know (e.g., JSTOR does not collect many abstracts) The bulk of your time will be spent developing, trying and refining search terms! DOCUMENT EVERYTHING!

‘WITHIN JOURNAL’ Searches A database search is not the ‘be all-end all’ for SLR searches Conduct searches within specific journals that are in relevant fields You can do this with NACADA Journal online! Ensure that your inclusion/exclusion criteria is still relevant

Bibliographic SEARCHES Some articles from your database and within-journal searches will be a wealth of information that is applicable to your research question(s) Use these articles to conduct a bibliographic search (i.e., are the articles cited relevant, even if they were not in the results returned in my database search? Do they meet my inclusion/exclusion criteria?) Don’t go astray from your research question(s)!

PART FOUR: How to Track Recommend using citation management software (I use Mendeley) Create tables! Think about what needs to be included (Rows are each articles, Columns are the categories of relevant information) Do not discount the use of note taking and/or writing memos throughout the process

PART FIVE: Writing it up How you organize the review itself will likely depend upon your: Purpose for conducting the SLR in the first place Your results Any new synthesis of knowledge that has emerged from the process I recommend including tables and charts; allow the reader to easily digest your inclusion/exclusion criteria, number of ‘hits’ at each stage, etc.

PART Five, continued: WRITING IT UP If you keep the Core Characteristics in mind at all times, it will help to ensure that your criteria is justifiable Do not shy away (at least initially) from literature that is in seemingly unrelated fields (e.g., the case of nursing/healthcare)

Systematic Literature reviews & Academic Advising Promote a high standard of quality for empirical advising research Can support NACADA’s research agenda domains, Impact Context Theoretical Basis Do not do this alone; collaborate and enlist the help of a research librarian!

References Budgen, D., & Brereton, P. (2006, May). Performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Software engineering (pp. 1051-1052). ACM. Kitchenham, B. (2004). Procedures for performing systematic reviews. Keele, UK, Keele University, 33(2004), 1-26.

Questions? COMMENTS? Greg Mason Director, Academic Advising College of Education Penn State University gtm119@psu.edu 814-865-7497