Literature Review Introduction Not to be confused with
Literature Review: Introduction • Not to be confused with a book review, a literature review surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources (e. g. dissertations, conference proceedings) relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work. The purpose is to offer an overview of significant literature published on a topic.
• A literature review is not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. It's usually a bad sign to see every paragraph beginning with the name of a researcher. Instead, organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. You are not trying to list all the material published, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your thesis or research question.
A literature review may constitute an essential chapter of a thesis or dissertation, or may be a self-contained review of writings on a subject. In either case, its purpose is to: • Place each work in the context of its contribution to the understanding of the subject under review. • Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
• A literature review is a summary and analysis of current knowledge about a particular topic or areas of enqiry.
• Identify new ways to interpret, and shed light on any gaps in, previous research.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies. • Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort • Point the way forward for further research. • Place one's original work (in the case of theses or dissertations) in the context of existing literature.
• Literature reviews, including research syntheses and meta-analyses, are critical evaluations of material that has already been pubished. • In meta-analyses authors use quantitative procedures to statistically combine the results of studies.
• By organising, integrating, and evaluating previously published material, authors of literature reviews consider the progress of research toward clarifying a problem.
Review Activities Literature reviews include the following activities: 1. Define and clarify the problem; 2. Summarize previous investigations to inform the reader of the state of research; 3. Identify relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature; and 4. Suggest the next step or steps in solving the problem
Purpose • The purpose of this chapter is to show that you are aware of where your own piece of research fits into the overall context of research in your field.
To do this you need to: • describe the current state of research in your defined area; • consider whethere any closely related areas that you also need to refer to;
• identify a gap where you argue that further research is needed; and • explain how you plan to attend to that particular research gap. This can lead logically into a clear statement of the research question(s) or problem(s) you will be addressing.
• In addition to the research context, there may be other relevant contexts to present for example: • theoretical context; • methodological context; • practice context; and • political context.
• It can be difficult to identify the best order for sections in this chapter because the rationale for your choice of specific research question can be complicated, and there may be several inter-linked reasons why the research is needed.
• It is worth taking time to develop a logical structure as this will help to convince examiners of the relevance of your research, and that you understand its relevance.
Reasons for writing a literature review • You need to know what is already known in connection with your research area because you do not want to be accused of reinventing the wheel
• You can learn from other researchers’ mistakes and avoid making the same ones
• You can learn about different theoretical and methodological approaches to your research area
• It may help you to develop an analytic framework
• It may lead you to consider the inclusion of variables in your research that you might not otherwise have thought about
• It may suggest further research questions for you
• It will help with the interpretation of your findings
• It gives you some pegs on which to hang your findings
• It is expected!
Literature Survey 1. Suggest ideas for research problems Well before the time you actually start work on your project, you can be on the lookout for potential research topics. While reading a textbook, listening to a lecture, or browsing through a journal, your intuitive reaction to items may signal potential topics.
2. Identify strengths and weaknesses of others’ theories and empirical studies. Authors of books, articles, and book reviews in your discipline frequently offer assessments of work in that field. Those analyses can prove useful for your own work by alerting you to weaknesses to avoid and suggesting good ideas to incorporate in your own study.
3. Suggest methodological approaches. The word methodology is used here to mean the steps you will follow in answering your research question, including the kinds of information you collect, how you collect it, and how you classify and interpret the results. The professional literature is a valuable source of methodological possibilities, including the advantages and limitations of different approaches.
4. Explain data-gathering techniques and instruments. Each research design includes ways of collecting information, such as, analyzing the contents of documents, conducting an opinion survey, observing people’s behavior, administering tests, or carrying out an experiment.
5. Provide typologies and taxonomy for classifying data. A quantity of collected information - such as historical accounts, survey responses, and test scores - is typically an incomprehensible mess until it’s been classified and summarized. The professional literature contains alternative ways this can be done.
6. Suggest statistical and graphic treatments. Numbers, tables, diagrams, and pictures are among the devices useful for classifying and summarizing data. Therefore, as you peruse the literature, you may benefit from contemplating the kinds of data you intend to collect and from taking notes about authors’ statistical techniques, kinds of tables, and graphic displays that you might wish to include in your own study.
7. Illustrate ways of interpreting research results. The word interpreting in the present context refers to explaining to readers what your classified information means. This is the "so what? " phase of research. The professional literature can help prepare you for the interpretation task by illustrating the diverse conclusions authors have drawn from their data. It’s useful for you to note which modes of interpretation in the literature you find most convincing, and why.
8. Show ways of presenting the completed research project. Throughout the literature, the quality of presentations is remarkably varied. Some authors write well, some moderately well, and others very badly, indeed.
9. Suggest outlets for publishing the completed product. You will reach a broader audience with your project if the results can be disseminated in some form other than that of an unpublished thesis or dissertation.
Literature Review: Elements • An overview of the subject, issue or theory under consideration. Division of works under review into categories (e. g. those in support of a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative theses entirely)
• Explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others • Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research
Literature Review: Considerations • Provenance ( a record of ownership of work)—What are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence (e. g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings)? • Objectivity—Is the author's perspective fair and impartial or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point? • Persuasiveness—Which of the author's theses are most/least convincing? • Value—Are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?
Literature review: Must do these things • be organized around and related directly to thesis or research question you are developing • synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known • identify areas of controversy in the literature • formulate questions that need further research
Literature review: Ask Yourself • • • What is the specific thesis, problem, or research question that my literature review helps to define? What type of literature review am I conducting? Am I looking at issues of theory? methodology? policy? quantitative research (e. g. on the effectiveness of a new procedure)? qualitative research? What is the scope of my literature review? What types of publications am I using (e. g. , journals, books, government documents, popular media)? What discipline am I working in (e. g. , nursing psychology, sociology, medicine)?
• • How good was my information seeking? Has my search been wide enough to ensure I've found all the relevant material? Has it been narrow enough to exclude irrelevant material? Is the number of sources I've used appropriate for the length of my paper? Have I critically analysed the literature I use? Do I follow through a set of concepts and questions, comparing items to each other in the ways they deal with them? Instead of just listing and summarizing items, do I assess them, discussing strengths and weaknesses? Have I cited and discussed studies contrary to my perspective? Will the reader find my literature review relevant, appropriate, and useful?
Literature review: Trap • Trying to read everything! As you might already have discovered, if you try to be comprehensive you will never be able to finish the reading! The idea of the literature review is not to provide a summary of all the published work that relates to your research, but a survey of the most relevant and significant work.
• Reading but not writing! Writing is a way of thinking, so allow yourself to write as many drafts as you need, changing your ideas and information as you learn more about the context of your research problem.
• Not keeping bibliographic information! The moment will come when you have to write your references page. . . and then you realize you have forgotten to keep the information you need, and that you never got around to putting references into your work.
Sources of Literature Review • • • Books Research articles Abstracts Dissertation Reports The internet
Employee Empowerment in Manufacturing: A study of organisations in the UK • Empowerment has come to be widely regarded as a potentially effective way to manage organisations (Blanchard et al. , 1996; Bowen and Lawler, 1992; Byham and Cox, 1991). • Employee empowerment and involvement—as it was known in the 1970 s and 1980 s– has been a topic of recurring interest in management, particularly in manufacturing (Batstone, 1984, …)
• Global competition and the turbulent business environment have put pressure on companies to constantly improve efficiency and performance (Lawler et al. , …). • This pressure has raised concerns regarding: effectiveness of the organisational structure and process; cost control, flexibility and speed of response to market demands; quality improvement.
• These concerns are all indirectly related to empowerment. • However, argyris (1998) claims that , despite all the attention and effort, empowerment has not delivered the promised benefits and still remains mostly an ‘illusion’. Claydon and Doyle (1996) argue that empowerment seems to be more a myth rather than a reality.
• Accordingly, we decided to investigate the practice of empowerment in UK manufacturing organisations. One area of this study, concerning the relationship of empowerment and information, is published elsewhere (Psoinos et al. , 2000). This research concentrates on the current practice of empowerment itself.
Why in Manufacturing ? • We focused on manufacturing organizations because their empowerment practices seem to be more common, and the impact stronger, that in service firms (Bowen and Lawler, 1992; 1995).
Review of the Empowerment Literature • While it is easy to offer empowerment as a panacea for organisation’ performance problems, the concept does have various problems, both theoretically and in practice. However, the central concept of empowerment is the delegation of power to staff to make and implement decisions (Conger and Kanungo, 1988; …)
Research Method • Decided to adopt a ‘mixed method’ research design (Gallivan, 1997), undertaking both a large-scale exploratory postal survey and a number of case study interviews. The value of combining qualitative and quantative methods has often been highlighted (Attewell and Rule, 1991; …).
Presentations and Empirical Findings • _________________
Discussion and Conclusion • Empowerment, then, is often emergent or unintentional (see e. g. Foster-Fishman and Keys (1997) versus the results of Kanter (1984) and Fenton-O’Creevy (1998). • Managers perceive the adoption of empowerment as rather successful, although clearly the measurement of such success is difficult (Klose, 1993).
• We are sceptical about assessing empowerment based on external criteria. For example, criteria which are relevant to various industries in the USA (Lawler et al. , 1995) may not be totally relevant to British manufacturing (Kochan and weinstein, 1994), which has a very different history and culture (Batstone, 1984; …) We recommend an evaluation based on internal and more specific criteria.
Literature Review: Quoting and Paraphrasing • A quotation is the use of your source's exact words in your work. A quotation may be as short as one word but, if that word is significant, it must be put in quotation marks and referenced. • "In many academic circles in America, literary translation is still considered a secondary activity, mechanical rather than creative, neither worthy of serious critical attention nor of general interest to the public" (Gentzler 1993: 34).
• SHORTENED "In many academic circles in America, literary translation is still considered a secondary activity. . . neither worthy of serious critical attention nor of general interest to the public" (Gentzler 1993: 34).
• • • making small alterations/clarifications: ORIGINAL Raymond (1996) argues that, "The people never knew what good food was" (p. 245). ALTERED Raymond argues that "[t]he people [in England] never knew what good food was" (1996: 245). Here the writer clarifies who "The people" are, and changes capital T to small to fit the writer's sentence structure.
• Quotations should be included in your sentence. For example: • INCORRECT "Everything we do is an experience of a kind" (Kenny 1996: 45). • CORRECT It can be argued that "[e]verything we do is an experience of a kind" (Kenny 1996: 45). Here the writer has included Kenny's quotation in his/her own sentence.
Paraphrasing • Paraphrasing means putting an author's ideas or information into your own words: • Original "This has led to the conclusion that, out of the US population at large, 90% watch television to excess" (Wu, 1994). • Paraphrased In contradiction to Suzuki’s claim, Wu argues that 90% of Americans watch too much television (1994).
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (APA) FORMAT • Journal Article, One Author • Simon, A. (2000). Perceptual comparisons through the mind’s eye. Memory & Cognition, 23, 635 -647. • Journal Article, Two Authors • Becker, M. B. , & Rozek, S. J. (1995). Welcome to the energy crisis. Journal of Social Issues, 32, 230 -343.
• Magazine Article, one author • Garner, H. J. (1997, July). Do babies have a universal song? Psychology Today, 102, 70 -77. • Newspaper Article, No Author • Study finds free care used more. (1982, April 3). Wall Street Journal, pp. A 1, A 25.
• Book, Two Authors • Strunk, W. , & White, E. B. (1979). The elements of style (3 rd ed. ). New York: Macmillan. • Edited Book • Letheridge, S. , & Cannon, C. R. (Eds. ). (1980). Bilingual education. New York: Praeger.
• Report from a Private Organization • Kimberly-Clark. (2002). Kimberly-Clark (Annual Report). Dallas, TX: Author
• Dissertation • Olsen, G. W. (1985). Campus child care within the public supported post-secondary educational institutions in the state of Wisconsin (dare care) (Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin. Madison, 1985). Dissertations Abstracts International, 47/03, 783.
• Internet Article Based on Print Source The citation is done as if it were a paper article and then followed by a retrieval statement that identifies the date retrieved and source. Sahelian, R. (1999, January). Achoo! Better Nutrition, 61, 24. Retrieved September 17, 2001, from Academic Index. • Web Page with Private Organization as Author Midwest League. (2003). Pitching, individual records. Retrieved October 1, 2003, from http: //www. midwestleague. com/indivpitching. html • Chapter or Section in an Internet Document • Thompson, G. (2003). Youth coach handbook. In Joe soccer. Retrieved September 17, 2004, from • http: //www. joesoccer. com/menu. html
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