Literature Review
Literature review is to summarize and synthesize the critical points of the previous studies and to point out the weakness or gaps of the existing literature related to your research question.
A Step-by-Step Guide
- http://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/literature-reviews/
How to Define a Research Question
- https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/c.php?g=1060589&p=7710320 8 things to consider
- https://www.vanderbilt.edu/writing/wp-content/uploads/sites/164/2016/10/Formulating-Your-Research-Question.pdf Formulate research question
- http://libguides.mjc.edu/c.php?g=255631&p=1706368 Develop research questions - Many sample questions
HOW TO EVALUATE, SUMMARIZE AND SYNTHESIZE SOURCES
-http://libguides.apsu.edu/c.php?g=36165&p=230247 Evaluate the sources.
- http://libguides.apsu.edu/c.php?g=36165&p=230248 Organize the sources.
HOW TO WRITE A LITERATURE REVIEW
- https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html Writing the introduction, body and conclusion.
- http://libguides.bc.edu/litreview/phase6 Tips on writing.
- https://laverne.libguides.com/c.php?g=34942&p=222060 12 sample reviews with topics on business, education, gerontology, psychology, public administration, and sociology
Searching Strategies
Breaking a Search Query into 2 or 3 Concepts
Topic: Looking for survey articles investigating the causes of college student drinking
Break it into 3 or 4 key concepts: alcohol > college > causes > survey
Boolean Connector OR
Use Boolean connector OR and synonyms to expand each concept. For example, alcohol OR drinking OR alcohol consumption
Boolean Connector: AND
Use AND to combine the concepts. For example, alcohol AND (causes OR reasons OR factors)
Let's compare the following two searches. The 2nd one may yield more and better results.
drinking AND college students AND causes AND survey
------------------- vs -------------------
alcohol or drinking or alcohol consumption
AND
college or university
AND
causes or reasons or factors
AND
survey or questionnaire [Ti Title]
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[Note: Ti Title searching retrieves articles that match the search terms with that appearing in the articles' title. Similarly, you can run an abstract searching by switching to AB Abstract searchable field. Ti Title or AB Abstract searching is an effective way to highlight a targeted search concept, for example, survey or questionnaire. ]
Scholarly Sources
Scholarly papers are written by researchers to share their original findings. The manuscripts are usually evaluated by peer experts before they get published. This process is called peer-reviewing. There are many ways to determine if a source is scholarly or not. The easiest way is to run a search against a topic and then apply the "Scholarly (Peer-reviewed) journals" filter provided by the database to restrict the results of retrieval to scholarly sources only.
