Formal Review of the Literature/existing Works on the Topic Includes All of the Following Except
Chapter ii: Getting Started in Research
Reviewing the Research Literature
- Define the research literature in psychology and give examples of sources that are role of the research literature and sources that are not.
- Describe and use several methods for finding previous research on a detail enquiry idea or question.
Reviewing the research literature means finding, reading, and summarizing the published inquiry relevant to your question. An empirical research written report written in American Psychological Clan (APA) style e'er includes a written literature review, simply it is of import to review the literature early in the inquiry process for several reasons.
- It can help you turn a research idea into an interesting research question.
- It tin tell you if a enquiry question has already been answered.
- Information technology tin assist you evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
- It tin can requite y'all ideas for how to conduct your ain study.
- Information technology tin can tell you how your written report fits into the inquiry literature.
What Is the Research Literature?
The in any 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 starting time of the field—and it continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does non include self-assist and other pop psychology books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries, websites, and similar sources that are intended mainly for the general public. These are considered unreliable because they are not reviewed by other researchers and are ofttimes based on little more than common sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable data, but the fact that its authors are anonymous and may not take any formal training or expertise in that bailiwick area, and its content continually changes makes it unsuitable every bit a basis of sound scientific enquiry. For our purposes, it helps to define the enquiry literature as consisting almost entirely of ii types of sources: articles in professional person journals, and scholarly books in psychology and related fields.
Professional Journals
are periodicals that publish original research articles. There are thousands of professional journals that publish enquiry in psychology and related fields. They are commonly published monthly or quarterly in individual issues, each of which contains several manufactures. The issues are organized into volumes, which normally consist of all the issues for a calendar year. Some journals are published in hard re-create only, others in both difficult copy and electronic course, and still others in electronic course just.
About manufactures in professional person journals are one of two basic types: empirical research reports and review articles. describe one or more new empirical studies conducted past the authors. They innovate a research question, explain why it is interesting, review previous research, draw their method and results, and draw their conclusions. summarize previously published research on a topic and usually present new means to organize or explicate the results. When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory, it is often referred to equally a .
Almost professional journals in psychology undergo a process ofdouble-blind peer review. Researchers who want to publish their work in the periodical submit a manuscript to the editor—who is generally an established researcher too—who in turn sends it to 2 or three experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a critical but constructive review, and sends the review back to the editor forth with his or her recommendations. The editor so decides whether to accept the commodity for publication, enquire the authors to make changes and resubmit it for further consideration, or decline information technology outright. In any instance, the editor forward the reviewers' written comments to the researchers so that they tin can revise their manuscript accordingly. This entire procedure is double-bullheaded, as the reviewers practice not know the identity of the researcher(s), and vice versa. Double-bullheaded peer review is helpful because it ensures that the piece of work meets basic standards of the field before information technology can enter the research literature. However, in order to increase transparency and accountability some newer open up access journals (east.g., Frontiers in Psychology) utilize an open peer review process wherein the identities of the reviewers (which remain concealed during the peer review process) are published alongside the periodical commodity.
Scholarly Books
are books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for use by other researchers and practitioners. A is written past a single author or a small group of authors and commonly gives a coherent presentation of a topic much similar an extended review article. have an editor or a pocket-sized group of editors who recruit many authors to write carve up chapters on different aspects of the aforementioned topic. Although edited volumes can also give a coherent presentation of the topic, it is not unusual for each affiliate to have a different perspective or even for the authors of different chapters to openly disagree with each other. In full general, scholarly books undergo a peer review process similar to that used by professional journals.
Literature Search Strategies
Using PsycINFO and Other Databases
The primary method used to search the research literature involves using one or more electronic databases. These include Bookish Search Premier, JSTOR, and ProQuest for all academic disciplines, ERIC for education, and PubMed for medicine and related fields. The about of import for our purposes, however, is PsycINFO, which is produced by 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. Similar well-nigh such databases, PsycINFO is usually available through your academy library.
PsycINFO consists of individual records for each article, volume affiliate, or book in the database. Each record includes bones publication information, an abstract or summary of the work (like the i presented at the start of this chapter), and a listing of other works cited past that work. A computer interface allows inbound one or more search terms and returns any records that contain those search terms. (These interfaces are provided by different vendors and therefore tin can look somewhat unlike depending on the library y'all use.) Each record also contains lists of keywords that describe the content of the work and also a listing of alphabetize terms. The index terms are especially helpful considering they are standardized. Research on differences between women and men, for case, is e'er indexed under "Human Sex Differences." Research on notetaking is always indexed under the term "Learning Strategies." If you do non know the appropriate index terms, PsycINFO includes a thesaurus that can help you detect them.
Given that there are near four million records in PsycINFO, you may accept to try a multifariousness of search terms in unlike combinations and at dissimilar levels of specificity before you find what you lot are looking for. Imagine, for example, that you are interested in the question of whether women and men differ in terms of their ability to recall experiences from when they were very immature. If you were to enter "memory for early experiences" every bit your search term, PsycINFO would return but six records, most of which are not particularly relevant to your question. However, if you lot were to enter the search term "retentivity," it would render 149,777 records—far also many to wait through individually. This is where the thesaurus helps. Entering "retention" into the thesaurus provides several more specific index terms—one of which is "early memories." While searching for "early memories" among the index terms returns i,446 records—all the same too many too look through individually—combining it with "human sex differences" as a 2d 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, print, or e-mail the relevant PsycINFO records. The records might even comprise links to total-text copies of the works themselves. (PsycARTICLES is a database that provides full-text access to manufactures in all journals published past the APA.) If non, and yous want a copy of the work, y'all will accept to notice out if your library carries the periodical or has the book and the hard copy on the library shelves. Be sure to ask a librarian if you need help.
Using Other Search Techniques
In addition to entering search terms into PsycINFO and other databases, in that location are several other techniques you can use to search the enquiry literature. Start, if yous have 1 expert commodity or book affiliate on your topic—a recent review commodity is best—you can look through the reference listing of that article for other relevant articles, books, and book chapters. In fact, you should exercise this with whatever relevant article or volume chapter y'all find. You lot tin also starting time with a classic article or book chapter on your topic, find its record in PsycINFO (past entering the author's proper name or article's title as a search term), and link from there to a list of other works in PsycINFO that cite that archetype article. This works considering other researchers working on your topic are likely to be aware of the classic commodity and cite it in their ain work. You can also do a general Internet search using search terms related to your topic or the name of a researcher who conducts enquiry on your topic. This might atomic number 82 you lot directly to works that are part of the research literature (e.thousand., manufactures in open up-access journals or posted on researchers' own websites). The search engine Google Scholar is particularly useful for this purpose. A general Internet search might also atomic number 82 you to websites that are not office of the research literature but might provide references to works that are. Finally, y'all can talk to people (e.g., your teacher or other faculty members in psychology) who know something nearly your topic and tin can suggest relevant articles and book chapters.
What to Search For
When y'all do a literature review, you need to exist selective. Not every article, book chapter, and book that relates to your research thought or question volition be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, you desire to focus on sources that help you practice four basic things: (a) refine your inquiry question, (b) place appropriate research methods, (c) place your research in the context of previous research, and (d) write an effective research report. Several basic principles can aid you detect the about useful sources.
Offset, it is all-time to focus on recent research, keeping in mind that what counts as contempo depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively being studied, "recent" might hateful published in the past yr or two. For older topics that are receiving less attending right now, "contempo" might mean within the past 10 years. You will get a feel for what counts as recent for your topic when you outset your literature search. A adept general rule, however, is to showtime with sources published in the past five years. The chief exception to this rule would be classic articles that plow upwardly in the reference list of nearly every other source. If other researchers think that this piece of work is important, even though information technology is former, then by all means you should include it in your review.
2nd, you should look for review manufactures on your topic because they volition provide a useful overview of information technology—often discussing of import definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving you a good sense of where your ain research fits into the literature. Yous should also wait for empirical enquiry reports addressing your question or similar questions, which can give yous ideas virtually how to operationally ascertain your variables and collect your data. Equally a general rule, it is expert to employ methods that others have already used successfully unless you lot have good reasons not to. Finally, you should look for sources that provide information that tin assistance yous fence for the interestingness of your inquiry question. For a report on the effects of prison cell phone apply on driving ability, for example, y'all might look for information about how widespread cell phone use is, how frequent and costly motor vehicle crashes are, 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 establish that across a diverseness of professional journals in psychology, the boilerplate number of sources cited per article was about 50 (Adair & Vohra, 2003)[1]. This gives a crude idea of what professional researchers consider to be adequate. Equally a student, you might be assigned a much lower minimum number of references to utilise, but the principles for selecting the almost useful ones remain the same.
- The research literature in psychology is all the published inquiry in psychology, consisting primarily of articles in professional person journals and scholarly books.
- Early in the research process, it is of import to comport a review of the research literature on your topic to refine your research question, identify appropriate research methods, identify your question in the context of other research, and prepare to write an effective research report.
- There are several strategies for finding previous enquiry on your topic. Among the best is using PsycINFO, a computer database that catalogs millions of articles, books, and volume chapters in psychology and related fields.
- Practice: Use the techniques discussed in this section to find 10 journal manufactures and book chapters on one 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 against the physically handicapped.
- Scout the following video prune produced past UBCiSchool nearly how to read an academic paper (without losing your mind):
Video Attributions
- "Sample PsycINFO Search on EBSCOhost" by APA Publishing Grooming. Standard YouTube Licence.
- "Using Google Scholar (Prune)" by clipinfolit. CC BY (Attribution)
- "How to Read an Bookish Paper" by UBCiSchool. CC Past (Attribution)
Source: https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/reviewing-the-research-literature/
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