The Review of Literature Is Important to the Research Process for Which of These Reasons
Chapter 2: Getting Started in Research
Reviewing the Inquiry Literature
- Define the research literature in psychology and requite examples of sources that are part of the research literature and sources that are not.
- Describe and utilize several methods for finding previous research on a detail research thought or question.
Reviewing the research literature ways finding, reading, and summarizing the published inquiry relevant to your question. An empirical inquiry study written in American Psychological Association (APA) style always includes a written literature review, but it is important to review the literature early in the research process for several reasons.
- Information technology can assist you turn a research idea into an interesting research question.
- It can tell you if a research question has already been answered.
- It tin help you evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
- It can give you lot ideas for how to comport your own written report.
- Information technology can tell you how your study fits into the inquiry literature.
What Is the Research Literature?
The in whatsoever field is all the published research in that field. The inquiry literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the outset of the field—and information technology continues to abound. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does not include self-help and other popular psychology books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries, websites, and like sources that are intended mainly for the full general public. These are considered unreliable because they are not reviewed by other researchers and are often based on little more than mutual sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable information, only the fact that its authors are anonymous and may not have whatsoever formal training or expertise in that subject field, and its content continually changes makes information technology unsuitable as a basis of sound scientific research. For our purposes, it helps to ascertain the inquiry literature as consisting almost entirely of ii types of sources: articles in professional journals, and scholarly books in psychology and related fields.
Professional Journals
are periodicals that publish original enquiry articles. In that location are thousands of professional journals that publish inquiry in psychology and related fields. They are unremarkably published monthly or quarterly in individual issues, each of which contains several manufactures. The problems are organized into volumes, which usually consist of all the issues for a calendar yr. Some journals are published in hard copy only, others in both hard copy and electronic form, and withal others in electronic form merely.
Most articles in professional journals are one of two basic types: empirical inquiry reports and review articles. describe one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors. They introduce a research question, explicate why it is interesting, review previous research, describe their method and results, and draw their conclusions. summarize previously published enquiry on a topic and usually present new ways to organize or explain the results. When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory, it is oft 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 likewise—who in plough sends it to two or three experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a critical merely constructive review, and sends the review dorsum to the editor along with his or her recommendations. The editor and then decides whether to take the article for publication, inquire the authors to make changes and resubmit it for further consideration, or refuse it outright. In whatsoever case, the editor forward the reviewers' written comments to the researchers then that they can revise their manuscript accordingly. This entire process is double-blind, as the reviewers exercise not know the identity of the researcher(due south), and vice versa. Double-bullheaded peer review is helpful because it ensures that the work meets basic standards of the field before it can enter the research literature. However, in lodge to increase transparency and accountability some newer open admission journals (e.grand., Frontiers in Psychology) utilise an open up 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 use by other researchers and practitioners. A is written by a single author or a small-scale group of authors and normally gives a coherent presentation of a topic much like an extended review commodity. have an editor or a pocket-size group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on unlike aspects of the aforementioned topic. Although edited volumes tin can also give a coherent presentation of the topic, information technology is not unusual for each chapter to take a different perspective or even for the authors of unlike capacity to openly disagree with each other. In general, scholarly books undergo a peer review process similar to that used by professional journals.
Literature Search Strategies
Using PsycINFO and Other Databases
The principal method used to search the research literature involves using ane or more than electronic databases. These include Bookish Search Premier, JSTOR, and ProQuest for all academic disciplines, ERIC for pedagogy, and PubMed for medicine and related fields. The most of import for our purposes, however, is PsycINFO, which is produced past the APA. is so comprehensive—covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books going back more than 100 years—that for most purposes its content is synonymous with the inquiry literature in psychology. Like most such databases, PsycINFO is usually available through your university library.
PsycINFO consists of individual records for each article, book chapter, or book in the database. Each record includes basic publication information, an abstract or summary of the work (like the one presented at the start of this chapter), and a list of other works cited by that work. A reckoner interface allows entering ane or more search terms and returns any records that incorporate those search terms. (These interfaces are provided by different vendors and therefore can wait somewhat dissimilar depending on the library you use.) Each tape likewise contains lists of keywords that describe the content of the work and besides a list of index terms. The index terms are especially helpful considering they are standardized. Research on differences between women and men, for example, is ever indexed under "Human being Sex Differences." Enquiry on notetaking is always indexed nether the term "Learning Strategies." If y'all do not know the appropriate alphabetize terms, PsycINFO includes a thesaurus that tin can help y'all observe them.
Given that at that place are nearly four one thousand thousand records in PsycINFO, you may have to effort a variety of search terms in different combinations and at different levels of specificity before you notice 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 y'all were to enter "retentiveness for early experiences" as your search term, PsycINFO would return only 6 records, near of which are not peculiarly relevant to your question. However, if you were to enter the search term "retention," it would return 149,777 records—far too many to look through individually. This is where the thesaurus helps. Entering "retention" into the thesaurus provides several more specific alphabetize terms—one of which is "early memories." While searching for "early on memories" amid the index terms returns 1,446 records—still too many too look through individually—combining information technology with "homo sex differences" equally 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, impress, or email the relevant PsycINFO records. The records might even contain links to total-text copies of the works themselves. (PsycARTICLES is a database that provides full-text admission to articles in all journals published past the APA.) If not, and you lot want a copy of the work, you will accept to find out if your library carries the journal or has the volume and the hard copy on the library shelves. Be sure to ask a librarian if you lot need help.
Using Other Search Techniques
In add-on to inbound search terms into PsycINFO and other databases, there are several other techniques you tin can use to search the inquiry literature. First, if you accept i good article or book chapter on your topic—a recent review commodity is best—y'all can wait through the reference list of that commodity for other relevant articles, books, and book capacity. In fact, yous should do this with whatever relevant article or volume affiliate you find. You can likewise start with a classic article or book chapter on your topic, find its record in PsycINFO (by entering the author'southward proper name or article's title as a search term), and link from at that place to a list of other works in PsycINFO that cite that classic commodity. This works because other researchers working on your topic are likely to be aware of the classic article and cite it in their own work. You can also practice 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 atomic number 82 you directly to works that are part of the enquiry literature (due east.chiliad., articles in open-access journals or posted on researchers' own websites). The search engine Google Scholar is especially useful for this purpose. A general Internet search might as well lead you to websites that are non function of the enquiry literature but might provide references to works that are. Finally, you can talk to people (east.m., your instructor or other faculty members in psychology) who know something near your topic and can suggest relevant articles and book chapters.
What to Search For
When y'all do a literature review, you lot need to exist selective. Non every article, book chapter, and book that relates to your research idea or question will be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, yous want to focus on sources that assistance y'all do 4 basic things: (a) refine your inquiry question, (b) identify advisable inquiry methods, (c) place your research in the context of previous research, and (d) write an effective inquiry report. Several basic principles can assistance y'all find the most useful sources.
First, it is best to focus on recent inquiry, keeping in mind that what counts equally contempo depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively being studied, "recent" might mean published in the past year or two. For older topics that are receiving less attending right now, "recent" might mean within the past 10 years. You will get a feel for what counts as contempo for your topic when you lot start your literature search. A proficient general dominion, all the same, is to start with sources published in the past 5 years. The main exception to this rule would be classic articles that plough upward in the reference list of nearly every other source. If other researchers call up that this work is important, even though it is old, then by all means you should include it in your review.
2d, you lot should expect for review articles on your topic considering they volition provide a useful overview of it—often discussing important definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving you lot a good sense of where your ain research fits into the literature. You should also expect for empirical research reports addressing your question or similar questions, which can give you ideas near how to operationally ascertain your variables and collect your data. As a full general rule, it is good to use methods that others take already used successfully unless you have practiced reasons not to. Finally, y'all should await for sources that provide information that tin help y'all argue for the interestingness of your research question. For a study on the furnishings of jail cell phone utilise on driving power, for example, you might await for information nigh how widespread cell phone use is, how frequent and costly motor vehicle crashes are, and and so on.
How many sources are enough for your literature review? This is a difficult question considering it depends on how extensively your topic has been studied and also on your own goals. One study found that beyond a variety of professional journals in psychology, the boilerplate number of sources cited per article was about fifty (Adair & Vohra, 2003)[1]. This gives a rough thought of what professional researchers consider to be adequate. As a student, you might exist assigned a much lower minimum number of references to use, but the principles for selecting the nigh useful ones remain the same.
- The research literature in psychology is all the published enquiry in psychology, consisting primarily of articles in professional person journals and scholarly books.
- Early in the research process, it is important to conduct a review of the research literature on your topic to refine your research question, identify appropriate enquiry methods, place your question in the context of other research, and prepare to write an constructive research report.
- In that location are several strategies for finding previous enquiry on your topic. Amid the best is using PsycINFO, a figurer database that catalogs millions of articles, books, and volume capacity in psychology and related fields.
- Practice: Employ the techniques discussed in this section to find 10 journal articles and book chapters on 1 of the post-obit research ideas: memory for smells, aggressive driving, the causes of narcissistic personality disorder, the functions of the intraparietal sulcus, or prejudice confronting the physically handicapped.
- Sentinel the following video clip produced by UBCiSchool most how to read an bookish newspaper (without losing your heed):
Video Attributions
- "Sample PsycINFO Search on EBSCOhost" past APA Publishing Grooming. Standard YouTube Licence.
- "Using Google Scholar (CLIP)" past clipinfolit. CC BY (Attribution)
- "How to Read an Academic Paper" by UBCiSchool. CC By (Attribution)
jenningssionerve1940.blogspot.com
Source: https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/reviewing-the-research-literature/
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