Review of Literature:

1
Review of Literature

• Systematic identification, location, and analysis
  of documents containing information related to
  the research problem.

2
Review of Literature..

• In user friendly terms
• A review is the story behind the problem.
• Who did what to whom, when, why and how much?
• Why is this such an important topic through the
  lenses of others who have worked in the area?

3
Major Purpose

• Determine what has already been done that relates
  to your problem area.
• Avoids unintentional duplication
• Provides understandings and insights necessary
  for the development of a logical framework into
  which your problem fits.
• Provides the rational for your research hypotheses

4
Interpretation..

• Give the pertinent information to support your
  story
• Begin with the problemand work from the
  beginning to the end of why this is important to
  do.

5
Source Ideas

• Education Index
• Readers Guide to Periodical Literature
• Dissertation Abstracts International
• Psychological Abstracts
• Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)
• Resources in Education (RIE)
• Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE)

6
Abstracting

• Abstract your references
• locate
• review
• summarize
• classify references

7

• Start with the most recent articles
• Check the references section - will lead to
  further studies you may not have identified
• Use the FAN technique

8
Steps to abstract

• Skim the abstract - is it appropriate to your
  problem?
• Skim article - make mental notes of main points
• Write or type the complete bibliographic
  reference in the style ie APA
• Classify or code the article to easily identify

9

• Summarize the article and the main points
• problem, procedures, treatments, etc...
• List any points to which you or others disagree
• Jot down any important quotation - in quotation
  marks and list exact page cited.

10
Analyzing, Organizing, Reporting

• Make an Outline!!!!! For example
• Intro, Purpose of what you are going to do in the
  reviewNot the purpose of your study.
• Variable 1
• theoretical background has anyone written
  anything in your critiques that has offer a
  theory behind what you are trying to do?
• practical studies Has anyone actually done
  anything (like in the real world) like what you
  want to door maybe something like what you want
  to do or in the same ball park.

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Organizing and ..

• experimental studies Has anyone actually done
  something using a research design with
  experimental parameters in your field.
• Problems What problems do you foresee in what
  they did, and what you want to do?
• conclusion

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• Analyze each reference in terms of your outline
• Take all references identified for a given
  subheading and analyze the relationship or
  differences between them.

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For example

• Several researchers have found white chalk to be
  more effective than yellow chalk in the teaching
  of advanced mathematics (Snurd, 1992 Trivia,
  1945 Ziggy, 1984).

14

• Review should flow such that the references least
  related to the problem are discussed first and
  the most related references are discussed last,
  just prior to the statement of the hypothesis.
• Think in terms of the BIG V