The Most Important Type of Information in a Research Review
Chapter 2: Getting Started in Research
Reviewing the Research Literature
- Define the research literature in psychology and give examples of sources that are part of the enquiry literature and sources that are not.
- Describe and use several methods for finding previous research on a particular research thought or question.
Reviewing the enquiry literature ways finding, reading, and summarizing the published enquiry relevant to your question. An empirical research report written in American Psychological Association (APA) style e'er includes a written literature review, just it is important to review the literature early in the research process for several reasons.
- It can assist you plough a research idea into an interesting research question.
- It tin can tell you if a inquiry question has already been answered.
- It tin help you evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
- It tin give you ideas for how to comport your ain study.
- It tin can tell yous how your written report fits into the research literature.
What Is the Research Literature?
The in whatever field is all the published research in that field. The research literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the beginning of the field—and it continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does non include cocky-assist and other pop psychology books, lexicon and encyclopedia entries, websites, and like sources that are intended mainly for the general public. These are considered unreliable because they are not reviewed by other researchers and are frequently based on lilliputian more common sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable data, only the fact that its authors are anonymous and may non accept any formal training or expertise in that subject area, and its content continually changes makes it unsuitable as a basis of sound scientific research. For our purposes, information technology helps to define the research literature every bit consisting almost entirely of two types of sources: articles in professional person 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 research in psychology and related fields. They are usually published monthly or quarterly in individual issues, each of which contains several articles. The bug are organized into volumes, which unremarkably consist of all the issues for a calendar year. Some journals are published in difficult re-create only, others in both hard re-create and electronic form, and still others in electronic grade only.
Most articles in professional journals are one of two basic types: empirical research reports and review articles. depict one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors. They introduce a research question, explain why it is interesting, review previous inquiry, depict their method and results, and draw their conclusions. summarize previously published research on a topic and usually nowadays new ways to organize or explain the results. When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory, it is ofttimes referred to as a .
Most professional journals in psychology undergo a process ofdouble-blind peer review. Researchers who want to publish their work in the journal submit a manuscript to the editor—who is more often than not an established researcher too—who in plough sends it to two or three experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a critical only constructive review, and sends the review back to the editor along with his or her recommendations. The editor and so decides whether to have the article for publication, ask the authors to make changes and resubmit information technology for further consideration, or reject it outright. In whatever case, the editor frontward the reviewers' written comments to the researchers and then that they can revise their manuscript appropriately. This entire process is double-blind, every bit the reviewers do not know the identity of the researcher(south), and vice versa. Double-blind peer review is helpful considering it ensures that the work meets basic standards of the field before it can enter the research literature. However, in social club to increase transparency and accountability some newer open up access journals (e.yard., Frontiers in Psychology) use an open peer review process wherein the identities of the reviewers (which remain concealed during the peer review procedure) are published aslope the journal article.
Scholarly Books
are books written past researchers and practitioners mainly for use by other researchers and practitioners. A is written by a single author or a small group of authors and usually gives a coherent presentation of a topic much like an extended review article. have an editor or a pocket-size group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic. Although edited volumes can also requite a coherent presentation of the topic, it is not unusual for each chapter to accept a dissimilar 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 primary method used to search the inquiry literature involves using one or more electronic databases. These include Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and ProQuest for all academic disciplines, ERIC for pedagogy, and PubMed for medicine and related fields. The most important for our purposes, however, is PsycINFO, which is produced by the APA. is so comprehensive—covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books going back more than 100 years—that for near purposes its content is synonymous with the research literature in psychology. Like well-nigh such databases, PsycINFO is usually bachelor through your academy library.
PsycINFO consists of individual records for each article, volume affiliate, or book in the database. Each tape includes basic publication information, an abstract or summary of the work (similar the 1 presented at the starting time of this chapter), and a listing of other works cited past that work. A computer interface allows entering one or more search terms and returns whatsoever records that contain those search terms. (These interfaces are provided past different vendors and therefore can look somewhat different depending on the library you use.) Each record also contains lists of keywords that describe the content of the work and likewise a list of index terms. The index terms are especially helpful considering they are standardized. Enquiry on differences between women and men, for example, is ever indexed under "Human Sex Differences." Research on notetaking is e'er indexed under the term "Learning Strategies." If you lot do non know the appropriate index terms, PsycINFO includes a thesaurus that tin help you find them.
Given that there are near iv million records in PsycINFO, you may have to try a variety of search terms in different combinations and at different levels of specificity before you detect what yous are looking for. Imagine, for example, that y'all are interested in the question of whether women and men differ in terms of their ability to recall experiences from when they were very young. If you were to enter "retentiveness for early on experiences" every bit your search term, PsycINFO would render only half-dozen records, most of which are not particularly relevant to your question. However, if yous were to enter the search term "memory," it would render 149,777 records—far as well many to await through individually. This is where the thesaurus helps. Entering "memory" into the thesaurus provides several more than specific index terms—one of which is "early memories." While searching for "early memories" amongst the index terms returns 1,446 records—still also many likewise look through individually—combining it with "human sex differences" equally a 2d search term returns 37 articles, many of which are highly relevant to the topic.
Depending on the vendor that provides the interface to PsycINFO, you may be able to save, impress, or e-mail the relevant PsycINFO records. The records might even contain links to total-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 non, and you want a copy of the work, you will have to notice out if your library carries the journal or has the volume and the hard copy on the library shelves. Be certain to enquire a librarian if y'all need help.
Using Other Search Techniques
In improver to entering search terms into PsycINFO and other databases, there are several other techniques you tin apply to search the research literature. Start, if you accept 1 good article or volume chapter on your topic—a recent review article is best—you can look through the reference list of that article for other relevant manufactures, books, and book chapters. In fact, you should do this with whatever relevant article or volume chapter yous discover. Yous tin likewise start with a archetype article or volume chapter on your topic, find its record in PsycINFO (by entering the author'south proper noun or article's 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 enlightened of the classic article and cite it in their ain piece of work. Y'all tin also practice a general Net search using search terms related to your topic or the proper noun of a researcher who conducts research on your topic. This might atomic number 82 you lot direct to works that are office of the research literature (east.g., articles in open-access journals or posted on researchers' own websites). The search engine Google Scholar is especially useful for this purpose. A general Net search might also lead you to websites that are not role of the inquiry literature only might provide references to works that are. Finally, you can talk to people (e.g., your teacher or other faculty members in psychology) who know something near your topic and tin suggest relevant manufactures and book chapters.
What to Search For
When you lot do a literature review, yous demand to exist selective. Not every article, book chapter, and volume that relates to your research idea or question volition be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, you want to focus on sources that help you practice 4 bones things: (a) refine your inquiry question, (b) place appropriate research methods, (c) identify your research in the context of previous research, and (d) write an constructive research report. Several basic principles can help y'all find the most useful sources.
First, it is best to focus on contempo research, keeping in heed that what counts as recent depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively being studied, "contempo" might mean published in the past year or two. For older topics that are receiving less attention correct now, "contempo" might mean inside the past 10 years. You will go a experience for what counts as contempo for your topic when you start your literature search. A good general rule, all the same, is to commencement with sources published in the past five years. The main exception to this rule would be classic manufactures that turn up in the reference listing of nearly every other source. If other researchers think that this work is important, even though it is old, and so by all means you should include information technology in your review.
2d, you should look for review manufactures on your topic because they volition provide a useful overview of it—ofttimes discussing important definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving y'all a good sense of where your own research fits into the literature. You lot should also look for empirical enquiry reports addressing your question or like questions, which can requite you ideas most how to operationally define your variables and collect your data. As a general dominion, it is practiced to use methods that others take already used successfully unless you take expert reasons not to. Finally, you should await for sources that provide information that can help you fence for the interestingness of your enquiry question. For a study on the furnishings of cell telephone utilise on driving ability, for example, you might look for information about how widespread prison cell phone utilise 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 because it depends on how extensively your topic has been studied and also on your own goals. 1 written report found that across a variety of professional journals in psychology, the average number of sources cited per article was almost 50 (Adair & Vohra, 2003)[1]. This gives a rough idea of what professional person researchers consider to be acceptable. As a student, you lot might exist assigned a much lower minimum number of references to utilize, just the principles for selecting the most useful ones remain the same.
- The enquiry literature in psychology is all the published research in psychology, consisting primarily of articles in professional person journals and scholarly books.
- Early on in the research process, it is important to conduct a review of the research literature on your topic to refine your research question, identify appropriate research methods, identify your question in the context of other enquiry, and set up to write an constructive inquiry report.
- There are several strategies for finding previous enquiry on your topic. Among the best is using PsycINFO, a reckoner database that catalogs millions of articles, books, and book capacity in psychology and related fields.
- Practise: Use the techniques discussed in this department to find 10 periodical articles and book chapters on one of the post-obit research ideas: retention 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 past UBCiSchool about how to read an academic paper (without losing your mind):
Video Attributions
- "Sample PsycINFO Search on EBSCOhost" by APA Publishing Training. Standard YouTube Licence.
- "Using Google Scholar (CLIP)" by clipinfolit. CC BY (Attribution)
- "How to Read an Academic Paper" by UBCiSchool. CC Past (Attribution)
Source: https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/reviewing-the-research-literature/
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