Which Statement Correctly Describes the Literature Review Section in a Scientific Paper?
Chapter 2: Getting Started in Research
Reviewing the Research Literature
- Define the enquiry literature in psychology and give examples of sources that are part of the research literature and sources that are not.
- Describe and employ several methods for finding previous inquiry on a particular research idea or question.
Reviewing the inquiry literature means finding, reading, and summarizing the published research relevant to your question. An empirical research report written in American Psychological Clan (APA) manner ever includes a written literature review, but information technology is important to review the literature early in the inquiry process for several reasons.
- It tin can aid you turn a research thought into an interesting inquiry question.
- It tin can tell you if a research question has already been answered.
- Information technology tin assist yous evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
- It tin give you ideas for how to conduct your own study.
- It tin can tell yous how your study fits into the research literature.
What Is the Research Literature?
The in any field is all the published inquiry in that field. The research literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the get-go 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 considering they are not reviewed by other researchers and are ofttimes based on little more than than mutual sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable information, but the fact that its authors are anonymous and may not take any formal training or expertise in that subject area, and its content continually changes makes information technology unsuitable every bit a basis of sound scientific research. For our purposes, it helps to define 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 research articles. There are thousands of professional journals that publish enquiry in psychology and related fields. They are usually published monthly or quarterly in private issues, each of which contains several articles. The bug are organized into volumes, which usually consist of all the issues for a agenda year. Some journals are published in difficult copy but, others in both hard copy and electronic form, and withal others in electronic course just.
Nearly manufactures in professional journals are one of two basic types: empirical research reports and review articles. depict ane or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors. They introduce a research question, explain why it is interesting, review previous enquiry, 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 often referred to as a .
Almost professional journals in psychology undergo a process ofdouble-bullheaded peer review. Researchers who want to publish their work in the journal submit a manuscript to the editor—who is by and large an established researcher too—who in turn sends it to two or 3 experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a disquisitional but constructive review, and sends the review back to the editor forth with his or her recommendations. The editor and so decides whether to accept the article for publication, enquire the authors to make changes and resubmit information technology for farther consideration, or reject information technology outright. In whatsoever case, the editor forwards the reviewers' written comments to the researchers then that they can revise their manuscript appropriately. This entire process is double-bullheaded, equally the reviewers do non know the identity of the researcher(s), and vice versa. Double-bullheaded peer review is helpful because information technology ensures that the piece of work meets basic standards of the field earlier it tin enter the inquiry literature. However, in order to increase transparency and accountability some newer open access journals (e.g., Frontiers in Psychology) employ an open up peer review process wherein the identities of the reviewers (which remain concealed during the peer review process) are published alongside the journal commodity.
Scholarly Books
are books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for utilize by other researchers and practitioners. A is written by a unmarried author or a small grouping of authors and usually gives a coherent presentation of a topic much similar an extended review commodity. have an editor or a small-scale grouping of editors who recruit many authors to write split chapters on unlike aspects of the same topic. Although edited volumes can as well give a coherent presentation of the topic, it is non unusual for each affiliate to take a different perspective or fifty-fifty for the authors of different chapters to openly disagree with each other. In general, scholarly books undergo a peer review process similar to that used by professional person journals.
Literature Search Strategies
Using PsycINFO and Other Databases
The main method used to search the research literature involves using 1 or more than electronic databases. These include Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and ProQuest for all bookish disciplines, ERIC for educational activity, and PubMed for medicine and related fields. The most important for our purposes, withal, is PsycINFO, which is produced by the APA. is and so comprehensive—covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books going dorsum more 100 years—that for most purposes its content is synonymous with the research literature in psychology. Like most such databases, PsycINFO is usually available through your academy library.
PsycINFO consists of individual records for each article, volume chapter, or book in the database. Each tape includes bones publication information, an abstract or summary of the work (similar the 1 presented at the starting time of this chapter), and a list of other works cited past that work. A computer interface allows entering one or more search terms and returns any records that contain those search terms. (These interfaces are provided by different vendors and therefore can expect somewhat different depending on the library you use.) Each tape also contains lists of keywords that describe the content of the work and too a list of index terms. The index terms are specially helpful because they are standardized. Inquiry on differences betwixt women and men, for example, is always indexed under "Human Sex Differences." Research on notetaking is always indexed under the term "Learning Strategies." If you practise not know the appropriate index terms, PsycINFO includes a thesaurus that can help you lot find them.
Given that at that place are nearly four million records in PsycINFO, you may have to try a variety of search terms in different combinations and at different levels of specificity before y'all find what you are looking for. Imagine, for instance, that you are interested in the question of whether women and men differ in terms of their ability to call back experiences from when they were very young. If you lot were to enter "retentivity for early experiences" as your search term, PsycINFO would render only six records, about of which are not specially relevant to your question. Still, if you were to enter the search term "memory," it would return 149,777 records—far also many to look through individually. This is where the thesaurus helps. Entering "memory" into the thesaurus provides several more specific index terms—one of which is "early on memories." While searching for "early memories" among the index terms returns 1,446 records—still also many too look through individually—combining it with "human being sex differences" equally a second search term returns 37 manufactures, many of which are highly relevant to the topic.
Depending on the vendor that provides the interface to PsycINFO, you lot may be able to save, print, or east-mail the relevant PsycINFO records. The records might even contain links to full-text copies of the works themselves. (PsycARTICLES is a database that provides full-text access to articles in all journals published by the APA.) If not, and you want a copy of the piece of work, you will have to find out if your library carries the periodical or has the volume and the difficult copy on the library shelves. Exist sure to inquire a librarian if you lot need help.
Using Other Search Techniques
In addition to inbound search terms into PsycINFO and other databases, there are several other techniques you tin utilise to search the inquiry literature. First, if you have one good article or book chapter on your topic—a recent review article is best—you can look through the reference listing of that article for other relevant articles, books, and book chapters. In fact, you should practice this with whatsoever relevant commodity or volume chapter you find. You can also beginning with a classic article or book chapter on your topic, observe its tape in PsycINFO (by inbound the writer's name or article'due south title as a search term), and link from there to a list of other works in PsycINFO that cite that classic article. 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 do 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 pb yous direct to works that are role of the research literature (east.g., articles in open-admission journals or posted on researchers' ain websites). The search engine Google Scholar is especially useful for this purpose. A general Net search might also lead yous to websites that are not office of the enquiry literature but might provide references to works that are. Finally, yous can talk to people (e.one thousand., your instructor or other faculty members in psychology) who know something about your topic and can suggest relevant articles and volume chapters.
What to Search For
When you exercise a literature review, you need to be selective. Not every article, book affiliate, and book that relates to your inquiry thought or question will be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, yous want to focus on sources that assistance you lot do four basic things: (a) refine your inquiry question, (b) identify appropriate research methods, (c) place your research in the context of previous research, and (d) write an effective research report. Several basic principles can help y'all find the near useful sources.
First, it is best to focus on recent enquiry, keeping in heed that what counts equally recent depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively being studied, "recent" might hateful published in the past year or two. For older topics that are receiving less attention right at present, "recent" might mean within the by 10 years. Y'all will go a experience for what counts as recent for your topic when you lot start your literature search. A skilful general rule, however, is to start with sources published in the by five years. The primary exception to this rule would be classic articles that plough up in the reference list of about 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.
Second, you should wait for review articles on your topic because they will provide a useful overview of it—often discussing of import definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving you a good sense of where your own inquiry fits into the literature. You should as well look for empirical research reports addressing your question or similar questions, which can requite you ideas virtually how to operationally define your variables and collect your data. Equally a general dominion, it is good to apply methods that others have already used successfully unless you have skilful reasons non to. Finally, you should look for sources that provide information that tin help y'all argue for the interestingness of your research question. For a study on the effects of cell phone apply on driving ability, for case, you might await for data near 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. I study institute that across a variety of professional journals in psychology, the average number of sources cited per article was near fifty (Adair & Vohra, 2003)[1]. This gives a rough thought of what professional person researchers consider to be adequate. Equally a student, y'all might be assigned a much lower minimum number of references to use, but the principles for selecting the virtually useful ones remain the same.
- The enquiry literature in psychology is all the published research in psychology, consisting primarily of articles in professional journals and scholarly books.
- Early in the research process, information technology is of import to conduct a review of the research literature on your topic to refine your research question, place advisable research methods, place your question in the context of other enquiry, 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 book chapters in psychology and related fields.
- Practice: Use the techniques discussed in this section to find 10 journal articles and volume chapters on 1 of the post-obit research ideas: memory for smells, aggressive driving, the causes of egotistic personality disorder, the functions of the intraparietal sulcus, or prejudice against the physically handicapped.
- Watch the following video clip produced by UBCiSchool about how to read an academic newspaper (without losing your mind):
Video Attributions
- "Sample PsycINFO Search on EBSCOhost" by APA Publishing Preparation. Standard YouTube Licence.
- "Using Google Scholar (Prune)" by clipinfolit. CC Past (Attribution)
- "How to Read an Academic Paper" past UBCiSchool. CC BY (Attribution)
Source: https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/reviewing-the-research-literature/
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