451449 Professional Development and Research Methods

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451-449 Professional Development and Research
Methods

• Literature Review and Structural Analysis of a
  Journal Paper

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• In last week's lecture we looked at methods of
  searching for literature related to the research
  topic.

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• WHY????
• Because we need to conduct a literature review as
  part of our research.

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What is a Literature Review? This is where most
of a dissertation's sources are cited. The
student must locate previous research studies
(usually found in professional journal articles)
that have contributed to the field in a theme
similar to what their own thesis or dissertation
proposes. In essence, the Literature Review
section serves to plant the seeds that will grow
the student's own experiment for those that came
before it.
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Why do a Literature Review? Besides enlarging
your knowledge about the topic, writing a
literature review lets you gain and demonstrate
skills in two areas information seeking the
ability to scan the literature efficiently, using
manual or computerised methods, to identify a set
of useful articles and books critical appraisal
the ability to apply principles of analysis to
identify unbiased and valid studies.
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• How to do a Literature Review?
• Mechanics of a literature review. Your literature
  review will have two components
• the search through the literature
• the writing of the review
• Obviously, the search is the first step. However,
  you must remember that you love knowledge and
  that academic databases can be seductive. You
  could spend untold hours clicking around the
  bibliographies of your favourite collections. You
  may have fun, but you might not advance your
  literature review. The solution? Have your
  research question written down and at hand when
  you arrive at the computer to search databases.
  Prepare in advance a plan and a preset time
  limit.

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How to do a Literature Review? Finding too much?
If you find so many citations that there is no
end in sight to the number of references you
could use, its time to re-evaluate your question.
It's too broad. Finding too little? On the
other hand, if you can't find much of anything,
ask yourself if you looking in the right area.
Your topic is too narrow. Leading edge
research. What if you are trying to research an
area that seems never to have been examined
before? Be systematic. Look at journals that
print abstracts in that subject area to get an
overview of the scope of the available
literature. Then, your search could start from a
general source, such as a book, and work its way
from those references to the specific topic you
want. Or, you could start with a specific source,
such as a research paper, and work from that
author's references. There isn't a single best
approach.
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How to do a Literature Review? Take thorough
notes. Be sure to write copious notes on
everything as you proceed through your research.
It's very frustrating when you can't find a
reference found earlier that now you want to read
in full. It's not hard to open up a blank
document in WordPad (Windows) or SimpleText
(Macintosh) to keep a running set of notes during
a computer search session. Just jump back and
forth between the Web browser screen and the
notepad screen. Using resources wisely.
Practice makes perfect. Learn how and then use
the available computer resources properly and
efficiently. Log onto the Internet frequently.
Visit the Research Engine regularly. Play with
the discipline resources. Enter the databases.
Scope out the reference desk materials.
Identify publications which print abstracts of
articles and books in your subject area. Look for
references to papers from which you can identify
the most useful journals. Identify those authors
who seem to be important in your subject area.
Identify keywords in your area of interest to
help when you need to narrow and refine database
searches. Read online library catalogs to find
available holdings. Be sure to write copious
notes on everything.
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How to do a Literature Review? Getting ready to
write. Eventually, a broad overview picture of
the literature in your subject area will begin to
emerge. Then it's time to review your notes and
begin to draft your literature review. But, where
to start? Suppose you have several WordPad or
SimpleText files full of notes you've written.
And a dozen real books and copies of three dozen
journal articles. Pile them on a table and sit
down. Turn to your research question. Write it
out again at the head of a list of the various
keywords and authors that you have uncovered in
your search. Do any pairings or groupings pop out
at you? You now are structuring or sketching out
the literature review which is the first step in
writing a research paper, thesis or dissertation.

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How to do a Literature Review? Writing the
review. One draft won't cut it. Plan from the
outset to write and rewrite. Naturally, you will
crave a sense of forward momentum, so don't get
bogged down. Don't restrict yourself to writing
the review in a linear fashion from start to
finish. If one area of the writing is proving
difficult, jump to another part. Edit and
rewrite. Your goal is to communicate effectively
and efficiently the answer you found to your
research question in the literature. Edit your
work so it is clear and concise. If you are
writing an abstract and introduction, leave them
for the last.
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• How to do a Literature Review?
• Organizing the review
• After you have decided which studies to review,
  you must decide how to order them. In making your
  selection, keep your research question in mind.
  It should be your most important guide in
  determining what other studies are revelant. Many
  people simple create a list of one-paragraph
  summaries in chronological order. This is not
  always the most effective way to organize your
  review. You should consider other ways, such
  as...
• By topic
• Problem -gt solution
• Cause -gt effect
• Another approach is to organize your review by
  argument and counter argument. For example, You
  may write about those studies that disagree with
  your hypothesis, and then discuss those that
  agree with it. Yet another way to organize the
  studies in your review is to group them according
  to a particular variable, such as age level of
  the subjects (child studies, adult studies, etc.)
  or research method (case studies, experiments,
  etc.).

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How to do a Literature Review? Writing the
conclusion. Throughout your written review, you
should communicate your new knowledge by
combining the research question you asked with
the literature you reviewed. End your writing
with a conclusion that wraps up what you learned
in the literature review process. While the
interaction between the research question and the
relevant literature is foreshadowed throughout
the review, it usually is written at the very
end. The interaction itself is a learning process
that gives researchers new insight into their
area of research. The conclusion should reflect
this.
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Here are some of the questions your literature
review should answer 1. What do we already know
in the immediate area concerned? 2. What are the
characteristics of the key concepts or the main
factors or variables? 3. What are the
relationships between these key concepts, factors
or variables? 4. What are the existing
theories? 5. Where are the inconsistencies or
other shortcomings in our knowledge and
understanding? 6. What views need to be (further)
tested? 7. What evidence is lacking,
inconclusive, contradictory or too limited? 8.
Why study (further) the research problem? 9. What
contribution can the present study be expected to
make? 10. What research designs or methods seem
unsatisfactory?
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Remember that nothing is completely black or
white. Only you can determine what is
satisfactory, relevant, significant or important
in the context of your own research.
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Some tips about conducting the literature review.
1. concentrate your efforts on the scientific
literature. Try to determine what the most
credible research journals are in your topical
area and start with those. Put the greatest
emphasis on research journals that use a blind
review system. In a blind review, authors submit
potential articles to a journal editor who
solicits several reviewers who agree to give a
critical review of the paper. The paper is sent
to these reviewers with no identification of the
author so that there will be no personal bias
(either for or against the author). Based on the
reviewers' recommendations, the editor can accept
the article, reject it, or recommend that the
author revise and resubmit it. Articles in
journals with blind review processes can be
expected to have a fairly high level of
credibility. 2. do the review early in the
research process. You are likely to learn a lot
in the literature review that will help you in
making the tradeoffs you'll need to face. After
all, previous researchers also had to face
tradeoff decisions
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Some tips about conducting the literature
review. 3. It is often important that the
Literature Review section of a dissertation or
thesis be written using objective language. It is
rarely the student's job to perform any critical
analysis in this chapter and is more commonly
their task to simply "report" on the results of
similar studies done previously. Subjective
analysis is usually not warranted until the
study's later chapters... 4. A literature
review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list
describing or summarizing one piece of literature
after another. It's usually a bad sign to see
every paragraph beginning with the name of a
researcher. Instead, organize the literature
review into sections that present themes or
identify trends, including relevant theory. You
are not trying to list all the material
published, but to synthesize and evaluate it
according to the guiding concept of your thesis
or research question.
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Some traps to avoid Trying to read everything!
As you might already have discovered, if you try
to be comprehensive you will never be able to
finish the reading! The idea of the literature
review is not to provide a summary of all the
published work that relates to your research, but
a survey of the most relevant and significant
work. Reading but not writing! It's easier to
read than to write given the choice, most of us
would rather sit down with a cup of coffee and
read yet another article instead of putting
ourselves in front of the computer to write about
what we have already read! Writing takes much
more effort, doesn't it? However, writing can
help you to understand and find relationships
between the work you've read, so don't put
writing off until you've "finished" reading -
after all, you will probably still be doing some
reading all the way through to the end of your
research project. Also, don't think of what you
first write as being the final or near-final
version. Writing is a way of thinking, so allow
yourself to write as many drafts as you need,
changing your ideas and information as you learn
more about the context of your research problem.
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Some traps to avoid Not keeping bibliographic
information! The moment will come when you have
to write your references page . . . and then you
realize you have forgotten to keep the
information you need, and that you never got
around to putting references into your work. The
only solution is to spend a lot of time in the
library tracking down all those sources that you
read, and going through your writing to find
which information came from which source. To
avoid this nightmare, always keep this
information in your notes. Always put references
into your writing.
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Ask yourself questions like these about each book
or article you include Has the author formulated
a problem/issue? Is it clearly defined? Is its
significance (scope, severity, relevance) clearly
established? Could the problem have been
approached more effectively from another
perspective? What is the author's research
orientation (e.g., interpretive, critical
science, combination)? What is the author's
theoretical framework? What is the relationship
between the theoretical and research
perspectives? Has the author evaluated the
literature relevant to the problem/issue? Does
the author include literature taking positions
she or he does not agree with?
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Ask yourself questions like these about each book
or article you include In a research study, how
good are the basic components of the study design
(e.g., population, intervention, outcome)? How
accurate and valid are the measurements? Is the
analysis of the data accurate and relevant to the
research question? Are the conclusions validly
based upon the data and analysis? In material
written for a popular readership, does the author
use appeals to emotion, one-sided examples, or
rhetorically-charged language and tone? Is there
an objective basis to the reasoning, or is the
author merely "proving" what he or she already
believes? How does the author structure the
argument? Can you "deconstruct" the flow of the
argument to see whether or where it breaks down
logically (e.g., in establishing cause-effect
relationships)? In what ways does this book or
article contribute to our understanding of the
problem under study, and in what ways is it
useful for practice? What are the strengths and
limitations? How does this book or article
relate to the specific thesis or question I am
developing?
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II LITERATURE REVIEW Until recently many
researchers have shown interest in the field of
coastal erosion and the resulting beach profiles.
They have carried out numerous laboratory
experiments and field observations to illuminate
the darkness of this field. Their findings and
suggestions are reviewed here. JACHOWSKI (1964)
developed a model investigation conducted on the
interlocking precast concrete block seawall.
After a result of a survey of damages caused by
the severe storm at the coast of USA, a new and
especially shaped concrete block was developed
for use in shore protection. This block was
designed to be used in a revetment type seawall
that would be both durable and economical as well
as reduce wave run-up and overtopping, and scour
at its base or toe. It was proved that effective
shore protection could be designed utilizing
these units. HOM-MA and HORIKAWA (1964) studied
waves forces acting on the seawall which was
located inside the surf zone. On the basis of the
experimental results conducted to measure waves
forces against a vertical wall, the authors
proposed an empirical formula of wave pressure
distribution on a seawall. The computed results
obtained by using the above formula were compared
well with the field data of wave pressure on a
vertical wall. SELEZOV and ZHELEZNYAK (1965)
conducted experiments on scour of sea bottom in
front of harbor seawalls, basing on the
theoretical investigation of solitary wave
interaction with a vertical wall using
Boussinesque type equation. It showed that the
numerical results were in reasonable agreement
with laboratory experimental data. and so on.
http//www.languages.ait.ac.th/EL21LIT.HTM
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On the optimal container size in automated
warehouses Automated storage and retrieval
systems (AS/RS) are being introduced into the
industry and warehousing at an increasing rate.
Forecasts indicate that this trend will continue
for the foreseeable future (see 1). Research in
the area of AS/RS has followed several avenues.
Early work by Hausman, Schwarz and Graves 6, 7
was concerned with storage assignment and
interleaving policies, based on turnover rates of
the various items. Elsayed 3 and Elsayed and
Stern 4 compared algorithms for handling orders
in AR/RS. Additional work by Karasawa et al. 9,
Azadivar 2 and Parry et al. 11 deals with the
design of an AS/RS and the determination of its
throughput by simulation and optimization
techniques. Several researchers addressed the
problem of the optimal handling unit (pallet or
container) size, to be used in material handling
and warehousing systems. Steudell 13, Tanchoco
and Agee14, Tanchoco et al. 15 and Grasso and
Tanchoco 5 studied various aspects of this
subject. The last two references incorporate the
size of the pallet, or unit load, in evaluation
of the optimal lot sizes for multi-inventory
systems with limited storage space. In a report
on a specific case, Normandin 10 has
demonstrated that using the 'best-size' container
can result in considerable savings. A simulation
model combining container size and warehouse
capacity considerations, in an AS/RS environment,
was developed by Kadosh 8. The general results,
reflecting the stochastic nature of the flow of
goods, are similar to those reported by
Rosenblatt and Roll 12. Nevertheless, container
size was found to affect strongly overall
warehousing costs.
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Notice how the writers have grouped similar
information "Steudell 13, Tanchoco and
Agee14, Tanchoco et al. 15 and Grasso and
Tanchoco 5 studied various aspects of this
subject." shown the relationship between the work
of different researchers, showing
similarities/differences "The general results,
reflecting the stochastic nature of the flow of
goods, are similar to those reported by
Rosenblatt and Roll 12." indicated the position
of the work in the research area history "Early
work by Hausman, Schwarz and Graves 6, 7 . . .
" moved from a general discussion of the research
in AS/RS to the more specific area (optimal
container size) that they themselves are
researching i.e. they relate previous work to
their own to define it, justify it and explain it.