Business & Finance Literature Review Fusion and Examining Assignment
PowerPoint 10 Synthesising and analysing
Chapter 10 from
How to do your literature review
This is PowerPoint 10 for Chapter 10 …
We will look at
Analysis
Synthesis
Thick description
Ways of synthesising
Constant comparison
Mapping themes
Developing an argument
All of this is discussed in much more detail in Chapter 10 of How to Do Your Literature Review
Analysis
Analysis is about breaking things apart to get a better understanding of them.
It’s about the ‘loosening up’ or ‘untangling’ of literature sources.
You have to inspect articles, trying to loosen them up, pulling them apart to see what’s inside.
It involves careful reading to find out what authors are saying and why they are saying it.
Synthesis
Synthesis is from the Greek meaning ‘putting together’ or ‘composition’.
It’s about seeing the relationship of one thing with another.
How are sources connected? How do they depend on each other? What makes them work together? Are there parts which are incompatible?
Analysis and synthesis together: thick description
Although analysis and synthesis can be seen as these separate processes, in fact it can be helpful to view them as integral parts of description.
So, when we are describing or outlining an article, we are at the same time thinking about analysis and synthesis.
We are thinking about both what is in the article and how it fits together with other bits and pieces from the jigsaw that is the literature.
A literature review, in other words, is not simply about describing pieces of work and ‘extracting’ data from them.
Rather, it is about seeing them in context, viewing them in the round, and trying to understand how they contribute to a composite picture.
Thick description is about analysing and synthesising at the same time as describing.
Thick description
Thick description involves providing commentary and interpretation at the same time as giving an account. It’s about integrating description, analysis and synthesis.
Ways of synthesising
If themes aren’t obvious in your analysis and synthesis of the literature, try one of the techniques of interpretative research based on ‘constant comparison’.
Constant comparison
The basic method of the interpretative researcher is constant comparison. It’s a way of discovering ‘themes’ or patterns in qualitative data.
The constant comparative method involves going through your data again and again (this is the constant bit), comparing each element – phrase, sentence or paragraph – with all of the other elements (this is the comparative bit).
If we’re thinking about the use of constant comparison for the synthesis of literature, the data exist for us in the articles, books, documents and other material that we have assembled. Your article collection is your data.
8 steps to constant comparison in lit review
DO A 1st READ. Examine all of the literature you have decided to include in your review. Get a general impression of what it is ‘saying’.
DO A 2nd READ, and CODE. Read through your data again. Using whatever method you are using for recording your sources – a notekeeping app or reference management software such as Zotero (see Chapter 2) – mark with colours or the tools available in your app the parts that seem to be important. This marking, highlighting or categorising is called coding.
DO A 3rd READ. Look through your included literature a third time, using the list of temporary themes from your first reading to check against. If you are doing it manually, draw up a grid, with the temporary themes on the left and the literature where the themes are evidenced on the right.
SORT AND SIFT. Get rid of any temporary themes that do not seem to have been reinforced in the rest of the data.
EMERGE WITH THEMES. List or pictorially arrange the themes you have emerged with, not forgetting to note outliers or counter-cases. Populate the themes with key references.
THINK ABOUT THE THEMES. How do they seem to be connecting together? What matches with what? Are there any unanimous areas of agreement? Are there any contradictions or paradoxes?
MAP. Find ways to map your themes.
ILLUSTRATE. If it seems appropriate, select good quotations from the literature to illustrate the themes.
Mapping your themes …
Network analysis
In network analysis you aim to show how one idea is related to another using a network, which is a bit like a tree, with a trunk that forms the basic idea. Branches come off the trunk to represent constituent ideas. This is useful where there is a core theme which you consider comprises a range of sub-themes. For example …
Insanity defence
Legal standards
Burden of proof
Role of experts
Mental illness
Lack of capacity
Assessing feigned insanity
Kinds and seriousness
Concept mapping
While network analysis provides a hierarchical arrangement of ideas and themes, concept mapping puts those themes in groups and may use lines and arrows to make clear the connections between the ideas and themes. For example:
LEGAL ISSUES
TRANSPARENCY
COMMUNITY RELATIONS
ACCOUNTABILITY
Rogers (1998) Justifying the use of firearms by policemen and soldiers
Osse & Cano (2017) Police deadly use of firearms: an international comparison
Belur (2014) Police use of firearms
Squires (2010) Shooting to kill?
Parent (1998) Victim-precipitated homicide
Rogers (2003) Police force!
Barton (1998) New paradigms in researching police use of firearms
Mustard (2001) The impact of gun laws on police deaths
Kivisto (2017) Firearm legislation and fatal shootings in the US
Klinger (2016) Race, crime and the micro-ecology of deadly force
Chaney (2015) Armed and dangerous? Fatal shootings of unarmed black people by police
Best (2004) Police shooting as a method of self harming
ACCOUNTABILITY
COMMUNITY RELATIONS
A concept map drawn from a literature review about the use of deadly firearms by the police
Summary mapping
You may simply want to organize your work in such a way that it is presentable in a succinct form. If this is the case, a simple matrix will show not only the clustering of articles around a particular theme, but also the numbers of pieces and strength of attitude, thinking or policy on a particular theme. For example …
Summary map example
| Support teachers | Team teachers | Parents | Teaching assistants | Supply teachers | |
| Training | Rao & Chen (2020) – in context of EFL | Burgess (2007) mentoring and coaching | |||
| Teaching styles – conflicting or concurring | Thomas (1992) teamwork problematic | Hanusch (2009) in context of HE | Mills (2010) conflicting ideologies Bubala (2022) parents as teachers | Baeten (2018) | |
| Role definition | Harris (2015) multi-tasked role for SEN Ferguson (2014) inconsistencies in role | ||||
| Continuity | West (2013) Liaison with classteacher | ||||
| Relationships | Kirkpatrick (2020) mutual support | Heo (2013) personal support valuable Merenbloom (1996) Yananandram (2017) and Gray (1998) students like it. | |||
| Managerial | Barlin (2002) conflicting demands Grimshaw (2003) |
Grounded theory
With grounded theory, the aim is to organise material thematically using Strauss and Corbin’s (1990) coding technique to establish themes. Their technique is about the categorisation of any qualitative data, but transposed to the analysis, coding and categorisation of literature sources, this would involve:
Stage 1. Open coding, where you go through your sources, examining them, comparing one with another and begin to make notes and provisional categorisations.
Stage 2. Axial coding, where you refine your open coding of Stage 1. It’s where you ask yourself how one idea is connected to another. At this stage you can come up with labels for your codes.
Stage 3. Selective coding. This is the final stage where the definitive themes are drawn.
Strauss and Corbin are talking about the use of grounded theory in qualitative research generally; using it in the review of literature we can think of their themes as being chapters (in a freestanding review) or section headings (in a literature review informing a piece of empirical work).
Strauss, A.L. and Corbin, J. (1990) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
“If you can see the village, you don’t need a guide.”
You don’t need to use grounded theory or qualitative analysis techniques or software to find themes.
Those themes may jump out at you, and, indeed, the themes may have been clear to you on your initial mindmapping.
There’s always a danger of overthinking things in any research, and of assuming that sophisticated methods of analysis are necessary, when the obvious is staring us in the face. Don’t feel that you must use a qualitative analysis method to identify themes.
Developing an argument
More evidence = more security about the truth of an assertion
Different forms of evidence (i.e. different sources) may corroborate or contradict each other
The assumption behind a literature review is that the more evidence (more sources) that can be collected, the better, albeit that we have to do our best to understand the variations in findings and the nuances within the narrative. Where are the outliers? What are they saying? What about subtle differences in findings? What can they tell us?
A literature review is not an essay
In an essay, you focus on some proposition or theme and use the literature to support or challenge the discussion or argument you offer about that proposition or theme. The argument comes first; the literature is the support act. The important thing is the integrity and cohesion of the discussion or argument, and the literature supports that discussion or argument.
By contrast, in a literature review the primary focus is on the literature itself. The literature comes first and the commentary and argument develop out of this. The commentary and argument condense out of the literature and the onus is on the reviewer to review that literature comprehensively and fairly.
Summary
Analysis and synthesis elevate the literature review from being just a list to a narrative that has integrity, cohesion and meaning.
Analysis and synthesis are where you think about your work and draw it together.
When you are writing, try to employ ‘thick description’. In other words, allow your analysis and synthesis to be revealed in the literature you are reviewing.
Themes may be manifest in the material you accumulate. But if they aren’t, try using constant comparative method of one variety or another (eg concept mapping and grounded theory).
Don’t feel that you have to go into a great deal of detail on each source you identify. Foreground the story, the general picture, rather than specific pieces of work.
The argument you develop depends on your ability to manage and understand the information you are collating from the work of others. But remember, a literature review is not a polemic in which the literature is supporting a position: the literature comes first, and the argument emerges from it.
Activity
Try coding the excerpt from an interview with a team leader below using the colour scheme and constructs suggested:
Yellow = noticing difference
Blue = hostility, retaliation or aggression from others
Red = provocation/‘incitement’ of others
“Oh, we’ve got one colleague in here; she looks different and she acts different from the others, and it’s subtle, but they’ve made up a name that they call her … not to her face … [whispers] … Lady Gaga. Um, it seems like always there’s one colleague that gets picked on more than somebody else, because they’re different, because they might look different, wear different clothes, they might act different. Say, for instance, she’ll say something or she gets very excited about something, one or two of the more outspoken ones will tell her outright to ‘Sit down,’ ‘Be quiet,’ or ‘Stop doing that,’ or ‘Oh Jesus, not again’ – they’re like on her case all the time. Last year, we had a guy in here who, well he would lose control of himself, and so he blurts stuff out, and the others look at each other and roll their eyes or even call back at him. And there’s a kind of gang mentality that develops and it, it’s rare, but it can tend to sometimes get a bit physical. Like with the colleague I mentioned just now, I’ve watched them actually walk by her and purposely bump into her or something like that, but then even though they must know I can see them and I’ll take them up on it, they’ll say, ‘What? I didn’t do that’ or ‘It was an accident’ when you confront them. And it’s not everybody, it’s just a few, and it’ll be led by one or two key figures. And it’s sad but if they’re bullied they’ll always leave in the end.”