Lecture - 3

» Why literature review? Purpose?» Contents of literature review? What to be included?» Structure of literature review? Structure to be

followed?» Sources of literature?» Process of reviewing literature?

(a) Planning literature search?(b) Conducting literature search?(c) Obtaining and evaluating the literature?(d) Recording the literature?(e) Referencing the references?(f) Writing the review?(g) Organizing the literature review(h) Plagiarism?

» Without reviewing the existing literature, a researcher starts from a dark room, heading towards badly designed studies that are poorly carried out and produce findings of little importance.

» Similarly to policy makers and practitioners, reviews of the relevant literature will allow informed choices to be made regarding the costing, planning and implementation of proposed interventions.

» The review is therefore a part of your academic development – of becoming an expert in the field (Hart, 1998:1).

Two major reasonsa. The preliminary search

This helps researcher to generate and refine research ideas.

b. The critical reviewThis is an essential part of research that requires researchers (1) to demonstrate his/her awareness of the current state of knowledge and (2) to show how his/her research fits in the wider context of research area.

Major purposes» To provide foundation to build research on» To develop a good understanding and insight into relevant

previous research and emerging trends» To help researcher to identify theories and ideas that

researcher test using data (deductive approach)» To help researcher to relate his/her ideas and theories

developed through inductive approach» To help researcher to refer whether his/her research findings

are in line with the available literature or are in contrast to those

» To identify other research that may be in progress» To help avoid charges of plagiarism

Continues next page---

Major purposesContinued from previous page

Gall et al. (1996) highlight the purposes of literature review as:» To help researcher to refine research question(s) and

objectives;» To highlight research possibilities that have been overlooked;» To discover explicit recommendations for further research;» To provide researcher superb justification for pursuing

specific research questions and objectives;» To help researcher to avoid simply repeating work that has

already been done;» To sample current opinion; » To gain an insight into research approaches, strategies and

techniques.» To organise valuable ideas and findings

Contents of literature review)(Contents to be covered)

1. To include the key academic theories within the area of research chosen;

2. To demonstrate that the researchers’ knowledge of the chosen research area is up to-date;

3. To show how this research relates to previous published research;

4. To assess the strength and weaknesses of previous work , including omissions and bias; and

5. To justify arguments by referencing previous research.

Structure of literature review(Structure to be followed)

» Start at a more general level;» Provide a brief overview of key ideas;» Summarize, compare and contrast the work of the key

writers;» Narrow down to highlight the work most relevant to

this research;» Provide a detailed account of findings of similar work; » Highlight those issues where this research will

provide fresh insights; and» Lead the readers into subsequent sections of this

research which will address such issues.

Literature sources

The literature review process

Planning the literature searchA careful planning of literature search is needed so that

it is ensured to have relevant and up-to-date literature; this requires to take the following steps.

a. Define the parameters of the research, which are:a. Language of publication (for example English)b. Subject area (for example accountancy)c. Business sector (for example manufacturing)d. Geographical area (for example Asia)e. Publication period (for example the last 10 years)f. Literature type (for example refereed journals)

Continues next slide

Planning the literature searchContinued from previous slide

b. Generate key words and search termsi. Key words or search terms help describe research

question(s) and objectives

ii. Using ‘Relevance Tree’ can prove a good tool in generating key words; a worked example for generating key words through ‘Relevance Tree’ is provided in ‘Reading Materials’ folder)

iii. Key words are used to search the tertiary literature

c. Discuss ideas as widely as possible

Conducting the literature search

Conducting literature search may involve a variety of approaches, namely:

• Searching using tertiary literature sources;• Table 3.2 entitled “Tertiary literature

sources and their coverage” is available in ‘Reading Materials’ folder.

• Continues next slide

Conducting the literature search• Obtaining relevant literature referenced in

books and journals already studies;• Scanning and browsing secondary literature

available in the libraries;• Table 3.4 entitled “Selected publishers’ and

bookshops’ Internet addresses” is available in ‘Reading Materials’ folder.

• Searching using Internet.• See next slide.

Planning and conducting literature search–3: searching the Internet

Obtaining and evaluating the literature

» Define the scope of your review

» Assess relevance and value

» Assess sufficiency

Recording the literature

Make notes for each item you read

Record the following» Bibliographic details

See details in Table 3.6 available in ‘Reading Materials’ folder.

Check also Appendix 2 entitled “Systems of referencing” available in ‘Reading Materials’ folder.

» Brief summary of content(covered in slide 7 & 8)

» Supplementary informationSee details in Table 3.7 available in ‘Reading Materials’ folder.

Referencing the referencesExamples

In text:Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2009)

In references (or bibliography)Saunders, M.N.K, Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2009) Research Methods for Business Students (5th ed), Prentice Hall

Study ‘Systems of referencing’, including the Harvard system, the American Psychological Association (APA) system and Footnotes (or Vancouver system) in ‘Reading Materials

Basically, any approach that works forYOU is appropriate; one possible

procedure follows

1.Arrange your notes in a logical order. If you are having difficulty seeing an order, look for clues in the sequence of your ideas or try concept mapping the topic.

2. Identify the main ideas - sorting your notes to fit under the headings.

» Develop a table of contents, that can then be fleshed out with descriptive bullet-points (annotated table of contents). By subjecting an annotated table of contents (or outline) to review, a novice researcher can receive a self leading advice on contents and structure of the planned literature review.

» Example follows………(next slde)

» Example: a step-by-step, hierarchical list of the points you plan to cover, e.g., 1st main idea

•1st supporting pointevidence, argument, or exampleevidence, argument, or exampleevidence, argument, or example

•2nd supporting pointevidence, argument, or exampleevidence, argument, or exampleevidence, argument, or example

2nd main idea, etc……

» Try to avoid long lists of supporting points; combine into related ideas.

» If you can't decide where to put something, put it in two or more places in the outline.

» As you write, you can decide which place is the most appropriate.

» Now you are ready to write your review.» Introduce the topic and give a brief

statement of the ‘main ideas’.

» Write some plausible synthesis or analysis for these ideas using headings according to the step-by-step hierarchical list and guide the reader through the material.

» If the literature review is part of a research project, stop at the end of each topic, to mention the main relevant ideas and how they fit together relating to your research.

» Leave it, then reread, edit and revise what you have written, to make sure that it makes sense and 'flows' in a way that the reader will understand what you are tying to convey.

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Chronological orderBy publication dateBy trend

Thematic orderA structure which considers different themes

Methodological orderFocuses on the methods/methodology adopted, e.g., qualitative versus quantitative approaches

Four common forms» Stealing material from another source

» Submitting material written by another

» Copying material without quotation marks

» Paraphrasing material without documentation

Adapted from Park (2003), cited in Easterby-Smith et al. (2008)

Data Entry with Codes• In addition to the data entry in direct way as we did last

time, SPSS provides the facility to data entry with codes for gender, educational status, marital status and so on. Let’s enter data on gender and educational status of 10 respondents (for example).

• Steps for data entry (with Codes)+ Open SPSS’s ‘Data Editor’+ Go to the ‘Variable View’ first, and type Gender

under column Name and Gender of employee under column Labels, in Row 1.

…….continued next slide

Data Entry with CodesContinued from previous slide

+ Click column Values; you will get a small box, clicking that box, you will reach ‘Value Label’ entry box. Type 1 for Value and Male for Value label, and click Add. Repeat the process for code 2 for Female and add. Click OK.

+ Go to row 2 , type Education and Educational status under columns Name and labels. Repeat the process for coding: 0 for Uneducated, 1 for Primary, 2 for Matriculate, 3 for Bachelor, 4 for Master and 5 for PhD.

+ Go to ‘Data View’ and check whether the two columns created above (Gender and Education) are there. Enter codes as per data of next slide.

RespondentNumber

Gender Education

1 Female = 2 Primary = 12 Male = 1 Batchelor = 33 Male = 1 PhD = 54 Male = 1 Batchelor = 35 Female = 2 Matric = 26 Female = 2 Unedu.= 07 Male = 1 Primary = 18 Male = 1 Batchelor = 39 Male = 1 Matric = 2

10 Female = 2 Batchelor = 3

Analysis of the data1.(a) Click ‘Analyze’ ….’Descriptive Statistics’….

‘Frequencies’.(b) Check the output.

2. (a) Click ‘Analyze’ ….’Descriptive Statistics’…. ‘Crosstabs’.(b) Transfer ‘Gender’ to Rows box and ‘Educational Status’ to columns box, and click OK (b) Check the output.