Library Psychology 354

Literature reviews are more than just article summaries.

They are a comprehensive, focused, critical and coherent synthesis of the key findings and understandings in the field.

This requires a dual perspective, both seeing the "key findings" within each study and seeing how findings relate to the "bigger picture" of the topic overall.

You'll need to look at actual research studies -- not books or chapters that describe research. For strategies on finding empirical literature, see the next tab.

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As you review studies, jot notes about:

• What are the key findings?
• How do these findings relate to each other? Do they build on each other? Are there contradictions?
• How could these findings fit into an overall "story" for the reader?
• What implications do the findings have for the "big picture"?

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Another purpose of a literature review is to contextualize future research -- identifying gaps and further directions that can inform future work.

To get started, you can focus on the discussion sections in articles. See where they identify further questions or gaps.

You can also ask yourself:

• why are findings important?
• what are the implications for treatment, prevention, better understanding?
• what are the major limitations of this research?
• what are the next steps in this line of research? What unanswered questions still remain?
• are there other variables that might influence these effects (e.g., moderators) that have not been explored?

You should conclude your literature review paper with specific ideas for extending research  on your topic, in a detailed manner (specific hypotheses, methods, rationale).

These articles report original research or studies, i.e. actual observations or experiments, rather than theoretical developments or methodological approaches. You can identify them in several ways:

• keywords: look for “study,” “empirical,” or mentions of participants, observations, methodology, or measurements
• structure: will usually include introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections
• publication: should be in an academic or professional journal, such as Journal of Psychology or JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, instead of popular magazines or newspapers

The following databases consist of scholarly and professional titles that publish empirical research articles:

PyscINFO: 1887 to present, covers academic literature in psychology and related disciplines, including psychiatry, sociology, education, and other areas.

Search tip: On the Advanced Search page, you can scroll down to Methodology and select EMPIRICAL STUDY to narrow your search.

Search tip: You can add keywords to your search that are included in empirical studies, and can limit to scholarly journals.

Search tip: You can also narrow your search by using Subject Terms. Articles are tagged with these terms to indicate their primary subjects. To search by Subject Terms, you can click on the links listed in article records.

Or you can use the Thesaurus to look up Subject Terms and add them to your search. PsycINFO will also suggest Subject Terms if you toggle that option before searching.

PubMed: 1966 to present, comprehensive biomedical index that includes psychology and related disciplines

 
In PubMed, subject terms are called Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), and you can search for them similarly in an index.

Web of Science: 1984 to present, includes thousands of journals across the sciences and social sciences, and provides a cited reference search function.

Lab reports follow a particular structure, including:

• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion

Through these sections, you can think of your report as starting broad, narrowing to specifics, and then broadening out again.

Introduction:
This section introduces the reader to theoretical background and related studies, describing previous relevant research and positioning your current study in relation to these. Here is where you describe the specific issue you will examine in your study. You should end this section with your hypothesis, transitioning to the specific concerns of your study and leading into the methods section.

Methods:
This section describes the design of your study, including dependent and independent variables, participants, equipment, and specific procedure.

Results:
This section will start with reminding the reader of your hypothesis, and then will provide the results of your study, usually descriptive statistics followed by inferential statistics. You should save interpretation of these results for the next section.

Discussion:
This section relates your results to your hypotheses, considers how these correspond to findings in other research, and describes any limitations with your results. Here, you broaden your scope again to consider implications and suggest further research.  

NOTE: For a comprehensive checklist of elements to include, consult your Moodle page

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Further reading:

“Writing the Experimental Report: Overview, Introductions, and Literature Reviews.” Purdue Online Writing Lab. <https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/670/03/.>. Accessed September 7, 2016.

Trochim, William M. The Research Methods Knowledge Base, 2nd Edition. Internet WWW page, at URL: <http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/> (version current as of October 20, 2006).

Research consultations can help you in multiple ways, including searching the literature, evaluating and organizing your sources, and more. If you don't know who to ask, you can start with us!

You can visit the Reference Desk in Frost, or make an appointment to talk to a librarian (or email me directly: kdagan@amherst.edu).