rrl

1. REVIEW OF
RELATED
LITERATURE
MARICRIS MALAMUG
DISSERTATION SEMINAR
MARCH 11 2023

2. RRL Defined
A literature review is a review of
something that has already been
written. A systematic review is
governed by a prescribed
methodology – it is a research
method and is used to address
the specific research question
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3. Questions a review can
help answer:
A literature search is a systematic
search of accredited sources and
resources. It involves identifying
paper and electronic sources relevant
to your topic and methods by
preparing a clear plan for the search
that includes a justifiable vocabulary
that defines what will and will not be
included in the search.
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• What have other researchers found
on my topic?
• What are the core concepts?
• Are there findings from different
countries?
• What are some of the variables?
RRL Defined

4. “
The responsibility to read widely
As a student researcher, you must read as much as
possible across various subject disciplines to acquire a
broad general knowledge.
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5. A literature review is a library or
desk-based method involving the
secondary analysis of explicit
knowledge so abstract concepts
of explicit and tacit knowledge
are explored.
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6.  As an academic task, the literature
review is where you show that you are
both aware of and can interpret what is
already known and where eventually,
you will be able to point out the
contradictions and gaps in existing
knowledge.
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Literature review
as an academic
task

7. “
A literature review is a written appraisal
of what is already known - existing
knowledge on a topic - with no prescribed
methodology.
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8. “
Literature review emphasizes individual contribution - it is an
academic document with a logical structure; the aim and
objectives, and purpose need to be clear to the reader - it is
an appropriate summary of previous work. But it needs an
added dimension - your interpretation. (Blumberg, 2005)

9. 2 Styles of
Reviews

10. Traditional literature review
Traditional literature review - traditional reviews
are usually critical.
A traditional review usually adopts a critical
approach, which might assess theories or
hypotheses by critically examining the methods
and results of single primary studies, emphasizing
background and contextual material.
in the article title.

11. Approaches to Traditional Review
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• A conceptual review aims to synthesize areas of conceptual knowledge that contribute to a better
understanding of the issues.
• A state-of-the-art review brings readers up to date on the most recent research on the subject. This
might be a seminal work, so it could be a useful beginning to your research project.
• An expert review is just that, written by an acknowledged expert. This may be heavily influenced by
the writer's personal selection of material.
• A scoping review sets the scene for a future research agenda. This is comparable to what you have
to do for your research project. The review documents what is already known, and then, using a
critical analysis of the gaps in knowledge, it helps to refine the research questions, concepts, and
theories to point the way to future research. It is also used as the firs step in refining the questions
for a subsequent systematic review. We believe you should undertake a scoping review before
attempting a systematic review.

12. Systematic literature review
Petticrew and Roberts (2006) A method of making sense
of large bodies of information, and a means to
contributing to the answers to questions about what
works and what does not.
A review with a clear stated purpose, a question, a
defined search approach, stating inclusion and exclusion
criteria, producing a qualitative appraisal of articles.

13. Six essential stages of methodology that you
should work through in doing a systematic
review
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1) Define the research question
2) Design the plan
3) Search for literature
4) Apply exclusion and inclusion criteria
5) Apply quality assessment
6) Synthesis

14. Literature review
as a critical
approach
Literature reviews should take a critical
approach.
It requires us to think, think for ourselves,
and do both critically. Proper thinking (Swain
2009) is about forming an argument or a
critical analysis that you can back up with
evidence and reinforce with appropriate
examples.
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15. Literary review as
an analysis
technique
A literary review is a secondary
analysis technique of knowledge.
While modern technology has
enabled us to access more
information, it also meant a wider
involvement and sharing of
knowledge between academics and
non-academics, between readers and
authors.
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16. The purpose of the review:
• To distinguish what has been done from what needs to be
done
• Discover important variables relevant to the topic
• Synthesize and gain new perspectives
• Identify relationships between ideas and practice
• Establish the context of the topic or problem
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17. The purpose of the review:
• Rationalize the theoretical or practical significance of the problem
• Enhance the origins and structure of the subject
• Relate ideas and theory to problems and questions
• Identify the main methodologies and data collection tools that have been
used
• Place the research into a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-
the-art developments
• Have a body of knowledge to which you can relate your own research
findings.
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18. “
A good literature review does not include
everything that has been found; it is
selective, only presenting in discussion
work that is relevant to the research
itself. It is, therefore, important to justify
the inclusion and exclusion criteria.
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20. .

21. What is
appropriate
literature?
It is impossible to review every
article, so you will need to select the
most significant and relevant to your
question.
Government or company reports
may also be reviewed if appropriate
to your topic.
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22. Peer review
While it is highly advisable to
access material only from peer-
reviewed and highly rated top
journals, there are some
circumstances when non-
academic peer-reviewed
information, known as grey
literature, may be needed.
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23. How to Search for
Information?
Identify a range of
information sources to
discover where key
information is available
1
Develop online searches
by identifying keywords
and creating complex
searches
2
Search online and keep a
record of your results
3
Review your search
4
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24. Aside from using keywords when searching databases,
you can also use the Boolean operators AND/OR/NOT to
improve your search results.
When AND is used, it will look for articles containing two or more words
within each article. For example, employee and motivation would retrieve
articles with both words in the article.
Use AND when searching for concepts, and to be more specific in your
searches.
Using OR - Using or will look for articles containing either one of the words
or the other words.
Using NOT - Not will allow you to look for one term but not another. For
example, broadband, not wireless, will NOT exclude irrelevant results to
narrow down searches.
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25. The hierarchy of
questions when
reviewing ( Wright-
mills, 1978)
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26. Basic Questions
• What are the databases I can use to search for relevant
information?
• What is my topic’s language (vocabulary), and how is it used?
• What are the key sources (books, articles, reports) on my topic?
• What research, methods, and theory are on my topic?
• Who are the main researchers in this area?
• What is the history the chronological development of the topic
or problem?
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27. Intermediate Questions
• How has the topic or problem been defined?
• What are the different frames of reference for researching and discussing
the topic?
• How has the theory been related to practice or empirical research?
• What methodological assumptions and approaches have been used?
• What key concepts, variables, or factors have been identified?
• What are the main debates on my topic?
• What gaps in knowledge, theory, or application of a methodology are there
in my topic area?
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28. More Advanced Questions
• What inconsistencies, shortcomings, or
contradictions exist in our knowledge of the topic?
• What evidence is lacking, inconclusive, or too
limited?
• What alternate approaches are there for
understanding the topic which have not been
used?
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29. Important questions to consider in each
step of the review.
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Phase 1: DESIGN
• Is this review needed and what is the contribution of conducting this
review?
• What is the potential audience of this review?
• What is the specific purpose and research question(s) will this review
address?
• What is an appropriate method to use of this review's specific purpose?
• What is the search strategy for this specific review? (including search
terms, databases, inclusion and exclusion criteria etc.)

30. Important questions to consider in each
step of the review.
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Phase 2: Conduct
• Does the search plan developed in phase one work
to produce an appropriate sample or does it need
adjustment?
• What is the practical plan for selecting articles?
• How will the search process and selection be
documented?
• How will the quality of the search process and
selection be assessed?

31. Important questions to consider in each
step of the review.
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Phase 3: Analysis
• What type of information needs to be abstracted to
fulfill the purpose of the specific review?
• What type of information is needed to conduct the
specific analysis?
• How will reviewers be trained to ensure the quality of
this process?
• How will this process be documented and reported?

32. Important questions to consider in each
step of the review.
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Phase 4: Structuring and Writing the Review
• Are the motivation and the need for this review clearly
communicated?
• What standards of reporting are appropriate for this specific
review?
• What information needs to be included in the review?
• Is the level of information provided enough and appropriate to
allow for transparency so readers can judge the quality of the
review?
• The results clearly presented and explained?
• Is the contribution of the review clearly communicated?

33. Online Bibliographic Databases
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Reviews of the literature depend on data from
online bibliographic or article databases such
as PubMed or specialized databases such as
the Cochrane database of systematic
reviews, government reports, and collections
maintained by professionals in law, business,
and the environment. Literature reviews

34. Examples are:
• African journals online - contains scholarly articles published in Africa
• AGRIS - An agricultural database produced by the Food and Agricultural
Organization of the World Health Organization US Department of
Agriculture. It is free and has information from over 100 countries about
agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, aquatic sciences and fisheries,
and human nutrition.
• Arts and Humanities Citation Index. A multi-disciplinary database
covering the journal literature of the arts and humanities. It is only
available by subscription.
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35. Examples are:
• BioOne. A full-text aggregation of more than 180 scientific journals publishing current research in
biodiversity conservation, biology, ecology, environmental science, entomology,. ornithology,
plant science, and zoology. Abstracts and references are free.
• EconLit. The American Economic Association's electronic database, the world's foremost source
of references to economic literature.
• ERIC - Educational Resource Information Center. Created and mainted by the US Department
of Education. The database is free and provides access to over 1.3 million records dating back
to 1966.
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36. Examples are:
• Google Scholar. Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full
text or metadata of scholarly literature across various publishing formats and disciplines. This
database is estimated to include over 150 million peer-reviewed online academic journals and
books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, court
opinions, and patents.
• Mendeley. The Mendeley research catalog is a crowdsourced database of research documents.
Researchers have uploaded nearly 100 million documents into the catalog, with additional
contributions coming directly from subject repositories like Pubmed Central and web crawls.
• National Criminal Justice Reference Service. The database is free and provided by US
Department of Justice. It contains abstracts of scholarly journal articles, agency, and NGO
reports, and conference proceedings.
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37. Summary
• A review of the literature for research requires many skills and
capabilities - a combination of technical skills in literature searching and
knowledge of sources is the starting point for searching for relevant
materials.
• Being able to organize and find the methodological and conceptual
connections between different pieces of research requires higher
capabilities, and in particular, an ever-increasing capacity to
amalgamate information and arguments - hence a review of the
literature can make demands on the technical and intellectual abilities of
the researcher.
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38. Summary
• The review is not something numbers can do over a few
weeks. All research problems have different ways of being
framed, and as a result, every review is unique.
• When doing a review, a set of questions can be asked, which
is common to most reviews. Using these questions with an
enquiring, questioning, and critical approach, you will teach
yourself through experience how to become a competent
user of the research literature.
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39. Take away
• Consideration of prior, relevant literature is essential for all research disciplines and all
research projects. When reading an article, independent of discipline, the author
begins by describing previous research to map and assess the research area to
motivate the aim of the study and justify the research question and hypotheses. This is
generally referred to as the “literature review,” “theoretical framework,” or “research
background.” However, for a literature review to become a proper research
methodology, as with any other research, follow proper steps need to be followed and
action taken to ensure the review is accurate, precise, and trustworthy. As with all
research, the value of an academic review depends on what was done, what was
found, and the clarity of reporting (Moher et al., 2009).
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40. References
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Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques
By Jill Jesson, Lydia Matheson, Fiona M Lacey
Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Research Imagination
By Chris Hart 2018
Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to
Paper By Arlene Fink (2020)
Snyder Hannah, 2019, Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines,
Journal of Business Research, Volume 104, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.07.039.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296319304564)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296319
304564
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ981457

41. Thank you