Seminar on Literature Review

Presented by Mamata Manandhar M Sc Nursing , Batch 2011.

Literature Review

Content
Introduction and definition of literature review Purpose of the literature review Types of information to seek Major steps and strategies in doing a literature review Locating relevant literatures for a research review Preparing a written literature review Components of a good literature review

Literature Review
Literature Review is the process of reading, analyzing, evaluating, and summarizing scholarly materials about a specific topic.

Literature Review cont

A literature review is a description of the literature relevant to a particular field or topic. It gives an overview of what has been said, who the key writers are, what are the prevailing theories and hypotheses, what questions are being asked, and what methods and methodologies are appropriate and useful. As such, it is not in itself primary research, but rather it reports on other findings.

Literature Review cont

A literature review is a critical analysis of a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies, reviews of literature, and theoretical articles (University of Wisconsin Writing Center).

A literature review should not be confused with an annotated bibliography.

Literature Review cont

Most often associated with academic-oriented literature, such as a thesis, a literature review usually precedes a research proposal and results section. Its ultimate goal is to bring the reader up to date with current literature on a topic and forms the basis for another goal, such as future research that may be needed in the area.

Literature Review cont

A well-structured literature review is characterized by a logical flow of ideas; current and relevant references with consistent, appropriate referencing style; proper use of terminology; and an unbiased and comprehensive view of the previous research on the topic.

Purpose of the Literature Review

It gives readers easy access to research on a particular topic by selecting high quality articles or studies that are relevant, meaningful, important and valid and summarizing them into one complete report. It helps to identify research problem and development or refinement of research questions or hypothesis.

Purpose of the Literature Review cont..

It provides orientation to what is known and not known about an area of inquiry, to ascertain what research can best make a contribution to the existing base of evidence
It identifies inconsistencies and gaps in the literature.

It helps in the identification of relevant theoretical and conceptual frameworks for a research problems.

Purpose of the Literature Review cont..

Enable the researcher to identify suitable designs and data collection methods for the study. It determines a need to replicate a prior study in a different setting or with a different study population.

It highlights key findings, implications and recommendations.

Purpose of the Literature Review cont..

It can provide clues as to where future research is heading or recommend areas on which to focus. For those developing research proposals for funding, it helps to identify experts who could be use as consultant.

It ensures that researchers do not duplicate work that has already been done.

Types of Information to Seek

For a literature review, two types of sources are used namely, primary source and secondary sources. Primary sources are research reports, which are descriptions of studies written by the researchers who conducted them

secondary source of research documents are descriptions of studies prepared by someone other than the original researcher..

Types of Information to Seek

Examples of primary and secondary sources: Secondary source, a review of the literature on patient experiences in the ICU: Stein-Parbury, J. & McKinley, S. (2000). Patients experiences of being in an intensive care unit: A select literature review. American Journal of Critical Care,9, 2027. Primary source, an original qualitative study on patient experiences in the ICU: Hupcey, J. E. (2000). Feeling safe: The psychosocial needs of ICU patients. Journal of Nursing Scholarship,32, 361367

Major steps and strategies in doing a literature review

Formulate and refine primary and secondary questions Devise search strategy (e.g., select databases, identify keywords, etc) Search for, identify, and retrieve potential primary source materials Screen sources for relevance, appropriateness

Major steps and strategies in doing a literature review cont

Read source materials Abstract, encode information from the studies

Critique/evaluate studies
Analyze, integrate information, search for themes Prepare synthesis/critical summary

Locating relevant literatures for a research review

1. Formulating a Research Strategy:
searching for references through the use of bibliographic databases Using ancestry approach Using descendancy approach
2. Searching Bibliographic Databases By performing computer search in databases, and examining books and periodicals manually.

Locating relevant literatures for a research review cont

Reviewers typically begin by searching bibliographic databases that can be accessed by computer. Several commercial vendors (e.g., Ovoid, EbscoHost, Pro-Quest) offer information An early task in doing an electronic search is to identify keywords to lunch the search.

Locating relevant literatures for a research review cont

For most bibliographic databases searches, there are various types of search approaches Most software use mapping, a feature that allows a person to search for topics using ones own keywords. For e.g., if lung cancer is searched in the MEDLINE database, the search would retrieve citations coded for the subject code of lung neoplasms, and also any citations in which the phrase lung cancer appeared.

Locating relevant literatures for a research review cont

One tool available in most databases is wildcard characters. It is a symbol such as $ or *, depending upon the database and search program. For e.g., if the word nurs* is entered in MEDLINE search field, the computer would search for any words that begins with nurs, such as nurse, nurses and nursing.

Locating relevant literatures for a research review cont

Another way to force a textword search is to put quotation marks around a phrase. In other words, lung cancer and lung cancer might yield different results. One strategy for a thorough search might be to do a search with and without quotation marks.

Boolean operators
Boolean operators are another useful tool that can be used to expand or restrict a search. For e.g., lung cancer and smoking, you could enter the following: lung cancer AND smoking. The Boolean operator AND would instruct the computer to restrict the search to citations that had both lung cancer and smoking as textwords or subject headings.

Boolean operators
The Boolean operator OR would expand the search if you entered lung cancer OR smoking, you would get citations to all references with either term.

Searching nursing literature on the Internet

Useful electronic databases for nurses are : CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Litrature) and MEDLINE (Medical Literature Online). Other useful bibliographic databases for nurse include the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)s Web of Knowledge, and EMBASE( the Excerpta Medica database).

Searching nursing literature on the Internet

MEDLINE is a comprehensive database for health literature which is managed by National Library of Medicine, USA. International nursing index and Index Medicus are included in MEDLINE.

Cochrane Review (http://www.cochrane.org/) is another database which gives extensive search options. Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (http://www.ebscohost.com/cinahl/) is a database of exclusive nursing articles

Searching nursing literature on the Internet

Internet search engine Google has developed Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com ), which helps to confine search options to academic papers only.

Elsevier publications internet database for nursing journals is accessible at http://sciencedirect.com/.

The Nursing Center (http://nursingcenter.com ) is the online access site for Lippincott Williams & Wilkins nursing journals.

Locating relevant literatures for a research review cont

3. Screening and gathering References References that have been identified through the literature search need to be screened. One screen is totally practical- is the reference readily accessible? For e.g., full dissertations may not be easy to revive.

Locating relevant literatures for a research review cont

A second screen is the relevance of the reference by reading abstract A third criteria may include the studys methodologic quality- the quality of evidence the study yields

Also a full copy of relevant study should be obtain and stored for future need.

Locating relevant literatures for a research review cont

4. Documentation in Literature Retrieval It is wise to maintain a notebook ( or computer database program) to record search strategies and results. e.g., database searched; limits put on search, specific keywords, subject headings etc. and any other information that would help a person keep track of what had been done

Locating relevant literatures for a research review cont

5. Abstracting and Recording Information Tracking down of useful articles once done needed to develop a strategy for making sense of mass of information contained in the articles. If incase of elaborated literature review, review protocol can be used. For complex reviews coding scheme and set of matrices can be used.

Preparing a written literature review

Organizing the Review Writing a Literature Review

Content of the Written Literature Review

Style of a Research Review Length of a Research Review

What makes a good literature review?

A good literature review: clearly delimits the subject matter to be reviewed covers all important relevant literature is up-to-date

What makes a good literature review?

provides an insightful analysis of the ideas and conclusions in the literature points out similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses in the literature identifies gaps in the literature for future research

identifies the context for which the literature is important.

References
Basavanthappa BT. Nursing Research. Jaypee publications. 2006. Reprint of 1st edition. Polit and Beck. Nursing Research. Lippincott. 2010 .7th edition.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE Last updated on January 4, 2012 retrived from http://nursingplanet.com/Nursing_Research/ebook/review_literature.html The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting literature review retrived from http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-ofwriting/literature-review

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