Skip to Main Content

Libraries

Return to Library Home Page

Library Staff - Login to LibApps

Nursing Ed.D Library Guide

Guide to Library Resources for the Ed.D Nursing Program at WCSU

Overview

The Literature review is a vital part of the research process.  You will gain important insights, knowledge, and awareness; you are setting the stage for a better-designed study and can improve your chances of obtaining significant results.  Therefore, it is worth the time and effort to do it right!

Reviewing the literature involves:

  • locating
  • analyzing
  • synthesizing
  • interpreting

previous research and documents (periodicals, books, abstracts, etc.) related to your study area.

A thorough and intensive review of the literature enables you to do the following:

  1. Focus the purpose of your study more precisely;
  2. Develop a conceptual or theoretical framework that might be used to guide your research;
  3. Identify key variables for study and suggest relationships among them if you are completing a quantitative study.  If you are conducting a qualitative study, identify the concepts and topics you plan to study;
  4. Uncover previous research similar to your own that can be meaningfully extended;
  5. Determine the relationship of your topic relative to current and past studies;
  6. Form a basis for determining the significance of your study;
  7. Uncover questionnaires or tests previously validated (please see Measurement and Evaluation tab of this research guide for more on this);
  8. Link your findings to previous studies.  Do your findings support or contradict them?

The Literature review can be organized in a number of formats.  Three of the most common are:

  1. Historical Format -- Where the review is organized chronologically.  This is preferred when focus is on the progression of research methods or theories, or a change in practice over time. 
  2. Conceptual Format -- Review is organized according to relevant concepts and/or theories.
  3. Methodological Format -- Where literature review structure mimics that of an empirical paper (introduction, method, results, etc.).  Most often used in meta-analytic reports. 

Define and Refine Your Topic

  • Choose a research topic of interest; think critically (and creatively about it); can you contribute new knowledge/research about this topic?
  • Start a general review (browse key texts on the topic, reference works, journals, websites)
  • Identify the major ideas/issues/researchers
  • Define the time period (i.e., how far back do you need to search the literature)
  • Formulate keywords = main concepts and related terms (use thesauri, subject headings, etc.)
  • Craft search statements for databases and online catalogs such as CONSULS (utilize Boolean operators, truncation, parentheses, proximity operators, phrase searching using quotes); record your methods
  • Narrow or broaden your topic as appropriate based on literature search results

Search All Relevant Sources Comprehensively & Efficiently

  • Journal article and dissertation databases -- find citations of articles/dissertations and full text of articles/dissertations.
  • Bibliographies - from relevant journal articles, books, etc. (cycle backwards in time)
  • Citation indexes -- e.g. Web of Knowledge/Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI); Education Research Complete on Ebsco; Google Scholar (cycle forwards in time by identifying citing articles; find the most cited articles on your topic)
  • Current awareness sources:
    • Identify & browse current issues of the most relevant journals for your topic
    • Set up alerts (email, RSS), journal tables of contents; indexes; websites
    • Grants databases
    • Web discussion groups, listservs, blogs, etc.
  • Book catalogs (find books, government docs, internet resources, audio-visual media, theses/dissertations)
    • CONSULS; other libraries and library systems, i.e., Worldcat; Google Books, Yale's Orbis catalog
    • Individual specialized library catalogs via the Web
  • Web search engines (Google, Infomine, etc.) and digital repositories, general and specialized
  • Experts (scholars, expert practitioners, librarians, etc.)
  • Literature guides (founds in books and in databases, library/academic guides and pathfinders)

Find & Evaluate & Manage the Information

  • Analyze your database search results (citations) & revise/improve your search statement (find the best balance/tradeoff between comprehensiveness and precision)
  • Understand the scholarly/scientific research & peer review publication process
  • Evaluate the type of information found and its relevance to your topic (determine the source; credentials of the author; objectivity, accuracy, currency, etc.)
  • Retrieve the information source from the database or library or Interlibrary loan/document delivery
  • Critically read and analyze articles; review methods, data, statistics, etc.
  • Gather, store, and annotate relevant citations (e.g., Endnote Web, Zotero, Mendeley)

Synthesize the Literature and Integrate it into Your Writing

  • Choose the appropriate type and style of publication/presentation
  • Move back and forth between writing and further literature research

Note: this guide was adapted from Barry Brown's Outline for Comprehensive Science Literature Review, published on the Web and found at: http://www.lib.umt.edu/files/ComprSciLitSearch2012.pdf.  Mr. Brown is a librarian at the University of Montana's Mansfield Library.

  • Article title
  • Author(s) & Affiliation
  • Abstract
  • Introduction/History/Background
  • Previous Research/Literature Review (related to this topic)
  • Present Approach/Objectives/Hypothesis/Model
  • Methods/Study Design/Description of Statistical Analysis and Methodology
  • Results and Statistical Analysis
  • Theoretical Implications/Discussion
  • Conclusions (often includes areas which the authors believe merit further study)
  • References
  • Appendix
  • Figures (may be at end of paper or interspersed throughout)

In reviewing literature for scholarly research journal articles relevant to your topic or research, it is helpful to ask the following questions:

Purpose

  • What are the goals of this study?
  • What is the problem or issue at hand?
  • What assumptions, if any, are important to note?
  • What are its limitations?
  • What practices will it influence?
  • Why do the authors want to conduct it?
  • Why should we care about the results?
  • Why is the study worth doing?

Conceptual Context

  • What is going on?
  • What theories, conceptual frameworks, literature, and experience will guide the study?
  • What studies have been done in the past?
  • Have the important terms been defined?

Research Questions

  • What is trying to be understood?
  • What is not known about the phenomena being studied?
  • What questions will the research attempt to answer?

Methods

  • What will actually be done?
  • Has the methodology been described in detail and is it complete?
  • How will observations be made?
  • What approaches and techniques will be used?
  • Why was the research site selected?
  • How will interviews be convened?

Validity

  • How might the study be wrong?
  • What are the plausible explanations?
  • What is the researcher's relationship to the study group?
  • Why should the results be believed?

Findings

  • What was actually discovered or determined?
  • Where should future research focus?
  • Is the report clearly written?
  • Is the report logically organized?
  • Does the tone of the report display an unbiased, impartial scientific attitude?
  • Are the conclusions significant?
  • Are the conclusions relevant to the problem?
  • Are the conclusions described clearly?
Subjects: Nursing