HOW TO REVIEW THE LITERATURE BUSN 364 – Week 8 Özge Can

Today’s Outline:  Goals of a literature review  What is literature  Where to find it and what it contains  Techniques for systematically conducting a review  How to write a review

Basics...  Are there any past studies relevant to your research topic and question?  The logic of literature review:  Knowledge accumulates (principle of science)  We can learn from and build on what others have done

Goals of a Literature Review:  To demonstrate a familiarity with a body of knowledge  To integrate and summarize what is known in an area  To show the path of prior research and how a current project is linked to it  To learn from others and stimulate new ideas

Where to Find Literature Review?  You can find reports of research studies in several formats:  Periodicals  Scholarly journal articles  Books  Dissertations  Government documents  Policy reports and presented papers

Periodicals  Newspapers, popular magazines, Internet news, tv or radio broadcasts  Google  Not complete, full reports of research studies  Selected, condensed summaries for general audience  We need to move from these popular, lay sources and rely on serious scholarly publications

Where do professional researchers present their study results?  In one of the following forms:  Articles in scholarly journals  Academic research books  Chapters in edited academic books  Papers presented in professional meetings/ academic conferences

Scholarly Journals  The primary source to use for a literature review  Contain peer-reviewed reports of research in an academic field  Criticized and reviewed by other professional researchers. As a result of this review, they are either accepted or rejected by the journal.  The heart of scientific communication system  Specialized on certain topics (e.g. Law and Politics, Annual Review of Psychology)

Scholarly Journals  Full text of some scholarly journal articles available on internet  Google Scholar (Google Akademik)  But usually access from internet is limited and require subscription fees  Best and easiest way to reach them =>  Online article search engines at your library  Academic databases: Proquest, EBSCO HOST,...

Scholarly Journals  Citation => details of a scholarly publication’s location that helps people to find it quickly  Abstract => A short summary of a scholarly journal article that appears ath its beginning

Citation - Example: Citation in APA Style:  Ruef, M., and Patterson, K. (2009). Credit and Classification: The Impact of Industry Boundaries in Nineteenth-century America. Administrative Science Quarterly 54,

Abstract - Example:

Books  Best type of books for literature review:  containing reports of original research or collections of them  You should distinguish this type of books from other books (e.g. textbooks, encyclopedias, story books, novels, fiction)  Libraries have research-related books:  Citation info for them available in the library’s catalog system

Dissertations and Government Documents  Dissertation => A work of original research completed in order to receive doctor of philosophy (Ph.D) degree  Specialized indexes listing dissertations  YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi  Government documents => Turkish government, governments of other countries, United Nations, World Bank, OECD.

Policy Reports and Presented Papers  Policy Reports => published by research institutes, policy centers and other relevant associations  Presented Papers => Research presented in annual academic meetings (conferences).  Lots of researchers assemble to give, listen to or discuss recent research  Written papers as well as oral presentation

How You Can Access to Literature Online?  Yaşar University – Information Center:   Catalog Search:  Databases:  Google Akademik (Google Scholar):   Google Kitaplar (Google Books): 

How to Conduct a Literature Review? 1. Define and refine the topic  A clearly defined, well-focused research question 2. Design/plan the review  Planning the review strategy: its extensiveness, types of mateirlas to include, how much tome you have, number of research that you’ll examine 3. Locate the research reports  Scholarly journals, books, other

How to Evaluate Research Articles?  After you locate a published study, you need to read and evaluate it! 1. Examine the title 2. Read the abstract 3. Read the article 4. Take notes about the study

How to Take Notes?  As you discover new sources, you may want to create two types of files:  a source file => only bibliographic citations  a content file => summary of hypotheses tested, study’s major findings, its methodology, key concepts and their measurement, the sample used, ideas for future studies  Then you organize them:  How these findings fit together?  What are the gaps and interesting questions?

Use of Internet for Research  Advantages:  Easy, fast and cheap  Has “links” that provide additional ways to find and connect to other sources of information  Greatly speeds the flow of information  Provides access to a vast range of information sources, in very dynamic and interesting formats

Use of Internet for Research  Disadvantages:  No quality control over what can be put on the Internet! No standards of academic publications, no review process May be poor quality, incomplete, highly biased or invented fiction It takes skills to distinguish the “trash” from valid information  Many excellent sources are not available on Internet  Findings sources can be time consuming  Sources can be “unstable” and difficult to document

Next Week – Assignment #3:  Go to the database access page of YÜ Bilgi Merkezi website. Choose a database for your field of study, such as EBSCOhost, JSTOR or Science Direct. If given the options to limit your search, select journal articles only (referee or peer-reviewed), not books, book reviews, etc.  Enter your search term. Read the abstracts of the first few pages of results. Depending on the database and your default settings, you may need to click on the titles to see the abstracts.  List the 10 articles (in APA citation format) that you would like to read as sources for a potential study on your research topic

Next Week – Team Project: First part of your team project:  You have to formulate and propose a research hypothesis coming from a certain theory/ theoretical orientation.  Since we briefly introduced the types of research methods (experiment, survey, field research, etc.), you should also tentatively suggest a method of research for this proposed hypothesis.  Take special consideration in identifying the independent variable, dependent variable, level of analysis, direction of analysis (inductive/deductive) and whether this research is basic or applied.

Next Week:  Please read the rest of Chapter 5: Conducting Ethical Studies