Develop a clear thesis that is grounded in the literature and specifies the titles of the literary works. Remember that while it is acceptable to include some biographical and historical information for context, your focus should be on analyzing the literature 2 secondary sources should be academic, peer-reviewed sources, such as articles from scholarly journals and books. Websites, such as Lit Charts, Spark Notes, Shmoop, and so on are not academic sources. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other professors’ notes are likely accurate, but they are not academic research.
CHAPTER 2: WHAT IS A LITERATURE REVIEW?
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Recognize how information is created and how it evolves over time.
- Identify how the information cycle impacts the reliability of the information.
- Select information sources appropriate to information need.
2.1 OVERVIEW OF INFORMATION
Because a literature review is a summary and analysis of the relevant publications on a topic, we first have to understand what is meant by ‘the literature’. In this case, ‘the literature’ is a collection of all of the relevant written sources on a topic. It will include both theoretical and empirical works. Both types provide scope and depth to a literature review.
Figure 2.1
2.1.1 DISCIPLINES OF KNOWLEDGE
When drawing boundaries around an idea, topic, or subject area, it helps to think about how and where the information for the field is produced. For this, you need to identify the disciplines of knowledge production in a subject area.
Information does not exist in the environment like some kind of raw material. It is produced by individuals working within a particular field of knowledge who use specific methods for generating new information. Disciplines are knowledge-producing and -disseminating systems which consume, produce and disseminate knowledge. Looking through a course catalog of a post-secondary educational institution gives clues to the structure of a discipline structure. Fields such as political science, biology, history and mathematics are unique disciplines, as are education and nursing, with their own logic for how and where new knowledge is introduced and made accessible.
You will need to become comfortable with identifying the disciplines that might contribute information to any search strategy. When you do this, you will also learn how to decode the way how people talk about a topic within a discipline. This will be useful to you when you begin a review of the literature in your area of study.
For example, think about the disciplines that might contribute information to a the topic such as the role of sports in society. Try to anticipate the type of perspective each discipline might have on the topic. Consider the following types of questions as you examine what different disciplines might contribute:
- What is important about the topic to the people in that discipline?
- What is most likely to be the focus of their study about the topic?
- What perspective would they be likely to have on the topic?
In this example, we identify two disciplines that have something to say about the role of sports in society: allied health and education. What would each of these disciplines raise as key questions or issues related to that topic?
2.1.1.1 Nursing
- how sports affect individuals’ health and well-being
- assessing and treating sports injuries
- physical conditioning for athletes
2.1.1.2 Education
- how schools privilege or punish student athletes
- how young people are socialized into the ideal of team cooperation
- differences between boys’ and girls’ participation in organized sports
We see that a single topic can be approached from many different perspectives depending on how the disciplinary boundaries are drawn and how the topic is framed. This step of the research process requires you to make some decisions early on to focus the topic on a manageable and appropriate scope for the rest of the strategy. (Hansen & Paul, 2015).
‘The literature’ consists of the published works that document a scholarly conversation in a field of study. You will find, in ‘the literature,’ documents that explain the background of your topic so the reader knows where you found loose ends in the established research of the field and what led you to your own project. Although your own literature review will focus on primary, peer-reviewed resources, it will begin by first grounding yourself in background subject information generally found in secondary and tertiary sources such as books and encyclopedias. Once you have that essential overview, you delve into the seminal literature of the field. As a result, while your literature review may consist of research articles tightly focused on your topic with secondary and tertiary sources used more sparingly, all three types of information (primary, secondary, tertiary) are critical to your research.
2.1.2 DEFINITIONS
- Theoretical – discusses a theory, conceptual model or framework for understanding a problem.
- Empirical – applies theory to a behavior or event and reports derived data to findings.
- Seminal – “A classic work of research literature that is more than 5 years old and is marked by its uniqueness and contribution to professional knowledge.” (Houser, 4th ed., 2018, p. 112).
- Practical – “…accounts of how things are done” (Wallace & Wray, 3rd ed., 2016, p. 20). Action research, in Education, refers to a wide variety of methods used to develop practical solutions. (Great Schools Partnership, 2017).
- Policy – generally produced by policy-makers, such as government agencies.
- Primary – published results of original research studies .
- Secondary – interpret, discuss, summarize original sources
- Tertiary – synthesize or distill primary and secondary sources. Examples include: encyclopedias, directories, dictionaries, handbooks, guides, classification, chronology, and other fact books.
- Grey literature – research and information released by non-commercial publishers, such as government agencies, policy organizations, and think-tanks.
‘The literature’ is published in books, journal articles, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations. It can also be found in newspapers, encyclopedias, textbooks, as well as websites and reports written by government agencies and professional organizations. While these formats may contain what we define as ‘the literature’, not all of it will be appropriate for inclusion in your own literature review.
These sources are found through different tools that we will discuss later in this section. Although a discovery tool, such as a database or catalog, may link you to the ‘the literature’ not every tool is appropriate to every literature review. No single source will have all of the information resources you should consult. A comprehensive literature review should include searches in the following:
- Multiple subject and article databases
- Library and other book catalogs
- Grey literature sources
2.2 INFORMATION CYCLE
To get a better idea of how the literature in a discipline develops, it’s useful to see how the information publication lifecycle works. These distinct stages show how information is created, reviewed, and distributed over time.
