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IndividualLiteratureReviewGuidelines.docxIndividual Literature Review Guidelines
Hi bro, I am not sure whether you have written the literature review before or not, so here is the detailed guidelines. Please read carefully before writing. This assignment is very important for me. It takes 30% of my total grade. There is a $50 bonus if I can get A- which is 80%+ for this paper. And also it cannot be lower than C which is 60%, otherwise I will not be able to pass the course. So I need your help and hope you can pay more attention on this. If you have not written this kind of paper before, there are a lot of information online to show how to write this successful.
15 pages. Due at the end of March. Minimum 15 APA references or more.
I will upload the Dovercourt case.
So first of all, you will need to read the case again. I think you have written this case before. And then come up with a big picture and main topic and some sub-topics which r related to the main topic.
Also I will upload the textbook PDF, you can have a look if needed. Some appendix may be useful in textbook.
You are permitted to consult and discuss issues with other students, but the review you submit must be an individually written effort.
You are required to write a review of the background literature dealing with issues arising from the Dovercourt situation (Dovercourt Recreation Centre – Healing a Rift) and related to the research proposal you submitted. You will need to exercise some judgment in deciding what literature to review.
The style you should follow is the APA style. You will not be marked on the details of the style, but you should attempt to follow it in order to produce a clear, legible, and consistent review paper. The overall style guidelines are more important than the placement of commas or periods in the references.
The review will be marked in terms of several criteria which are listed here in increasing order of importance:
· Form and format (style)
· Coverage of the literature (breadth and depth)
· Coherence and clarity
· Identification of key findings (summarizing what others have said)
· Identification of key issues (noticing/reporting on what remains unanswered)
Consult the Ten practical steps in the preparation of a literature review to guide your writing of the literature review. The steps are very practically oriented. As you read research articles, please take a note of how literature reviews are organized and presented.
Useful links:
https://www.tru.ca/__shared/assets/Literature_Review_Template30564.pdf
https://libguides.uwf.edu/c.php?g=215199&p=1420828
And you can find more literature review papers online to take a look as examples.
Frequently asked questions
FAQ1 : How many articles do I have to review?
There is no magic number. It is difficult to imagine that a topic could be covered in a long review of literature with fewer than 25-30 relevant articles. There is a question of covering various points of view and/or findings, making sure you show some objectivity by not documenting too often with the same author(s), avoiding long summaries by the same author(s), and examining the main variables associated with the selected topic.
FAQ2: Can I summarize my selected articles in a sequential manner to constitute my review of literature?
Absolutely not. Look at the reviews of literature of research articles as examples. They are integrations of ideas around a particular sub-topics. The operative word here is integration. An integrated literature review is not an annotated literature review where each article is individually summarized.
FAQ3 : How do I structure my review of literature?
This is a decision that YOU have to make. After considerable reading, you develop a sense of the big picture for the topic. Then, you decide to structure it around sub-topics/ideas/variables according to your readings and logical organization. Don't be afraid of using sub-headings to focus your ideas and facilitate readers' concentration.
FAQ4 : What do I do if I don't find enough articles on a particular topic?
There may be many reasons for this, but the most common are: the topic is too narrow; the search is too limited or not focused on the right key words; the search may have to be expanded into peripheral sub-topics.
FAQ5 : Who or what tells me which topic I can take for my literature review?
No one tells you which topic you should take. The case study is the guiding "authority" in the sense that it has to be a topic that relates to Dovercourt. There are many. Here are a few samples which should be understood as only a few examples among an abundance of possibilities: Value of employee retention, difference between management (operational decisions) and leadership/governance (strategic decisions), negotiation/conflict management skills, governance of non-profits, roles of boards, financial performance, and many more. You may want to check your topic with your instructor before starting your review.
Ten practical steps in the preparation of a literature review
The following ten steps, which are offered to help guide novice writers of literature reviews, need not be slavishly adhered to. Your own insights may be preferable to the step-wise approach in some circumstances. However, if you more or less follow the steps, you can be sure that your pacing will be appropriate. You will be able to approach the writing of the review systematically, and you will produce a meaningful document at the end of the process.
Each step should take you roughly one week (in some cases less, as in step 1, and in others more, as in step 8).
1. Identifying and refining the topic
2. Using bibliographic search engines to find articles
3. Making decisions as to which articles to use
5. Preparing a summary of each article on cards or sheets of paper
6. Shuffling and dealing (or categorizing)
9. Identifying “issues arising”
10. Editing your article for language, grammar, and comprehensibility
1. Identifying and refining the topic [ back to steps ]
In preparation for completing this and the next step, read appendices 5a and 5b of your textbook which deal with bibliographic searches.
What defines your topic?
The topic of your literature review will depend on its purpose. If the review is being written for a course, the topic may be assigned or negotiated within the demands of the course. If the review is being prepared for a research proposal or for a management team planning research, the nature of the research dictates the topic of the review.
How do you find your search terms?
You will probably begin with a general topic, for example “the benefits of shift work” or “problems in organizations with complex management structures”. Your topic needs to be refined to the point that you can perform useful bibliographic searches.
For example, if you entered “shift work” into a bibliographic engine, you would obtain many more references than would ever be useful to you. If, on the other hand, you specifically searched for “benefits of graveyard shift work” you might find too few articles.
You should try several variations of search terms (for example, “shift work” and “problems, shift work”) and look at what these produce. Most bibliographic search engines do not require sentences and can just search for words, for example, “shift, benefit, problems”.
How do you narrow down to the most useful search terms?
To narrow down to the most useful search terms, look at the articles that turn up in your various searches. Also look at the articles you deal with in Research assignment 1 (Reading the literature). These articles will likely have descriptors attached to them. Descriptors are used by bibliographic search engines to classify articles. Find the most useful descriptors from the most appropriate articles and continue to the next step of your search with these descriptors or key terms.
In other words, begin by casting a wide net (performing a variety of searches) and end by narrowing down your net on the basis of what you found in the preparatory step.
At the end of this step, you should have a list of useful search terms or descriptors.
2. Using bibliographic search engines to find articles [ back to steps ]
Which search engine should you use?
Most people prefer to use search engines tailored specifically to their area of study. For example, students of psychology use psychology-related search engines, and students of English use search engines geared to the humanities.
Don’t give up too easily or you might miss something!
If you limit yourself to one search engine, you might miss something important that is not covered by that engine.
It would be wisest to try all the business-related search engines with your key words, descriptors, or search terms in order to compare results.
Occasionally, you might want to try using search engines for other disciplines. For example, if you were researching stress, you might want to consult a psychology-related search engine.
What are you looking for from the search engine?
Most bibliographic search engines will produce a list of references to articles. These lists are printable. Some of them may occasionally seem long (we will discuss culling lists in the next topic), but if you print the lists you can consider the articles on them at your leisure.
It is possible to peruse lists online, but this is time consuming for you.
Record your search engine and your search terms!
When you print a list of potential articles, note the search engine that produced the list and your search terms clearly at the top of it. Otherwise you might forget these, and you will need to reproduce your lists for the next step!
At the end of this step, you should have at least one — but hopefully several — lists of possibly relevant articles, each with its search engine and search terms clearly indicated.
3. Making decisions as to which articles to use [ back to steps ]
Why cull?
You will almost certainly not want to read and use all the articles in the lists you produced in step 2. Step 3 is a “culling” step. It is designed to reduce the lists produced by the bibliographic search engine to a small list of useful articles.
There are three major criteria for culling, and you should probably apply them in the order indicated here. The first criterion is relevance, the second availability, and the third year of publication.
Relevance
Read the title of the article and decide if it is really relevant to your topic. If you are not sure, go online, obtain the list by using the same engine and the same descriptors you used previously, and click for an abstract. (Most, but not all, engines provide abstracts.) After reading the abstract you should know if the article is useful to you.
Relevance, for you, might depend on whether the data is a research report, a review of the literature, or simply an opinion piece.
After considering each article on your list, narrow the list down. Strike out irrelevant articles (just cross them off). Mark or highlight relevant ones.
Availability
Professors are famous for expecting graduate students to find every article under the sun, especially on a thesis topic. However, availability should dictate your choice of articles. An article published in Latvian in an obscure European journal may look useful, but it might also be very difficult to obtain, read, and understand.
Each literature review you prepare will have an availability cutoff. For our course project, the cutoff is availability on the Internet. If you cannot get an article on the Internet, consider it unavailable. In other situations, decide what availability cutoff you will use. Inter-library loans are much easier than they used to be, so they could be a source of additional articles.
Laurentian University’s Online Library has a variety of tools for indicating if an article is available to students. The most useful is the “Get it at Laurentian” button accompanying listed articles in various searches. If you click this button, you will be able to determine if the article is available on the Internet.
Year of publication
It doesn’t make much sense to search back to the dawn of time when looking for research articles related to a topic. As in the case of availability, you have to set a sensible cutoff. For example, for our classroom project, the cutoff will be 1980. You can automatically cross out articles published before 1980 unless you see one that is especially useful to you.
A year cutoff can be ignored when especially apt articles are discovered in the older literature. The oldest research article this author has ever cited was published in 1917!
At the end of this step you will have culled your list down to a few articles, omitting those that are irrelevant, those that are unavailable, and those that were published too long ago.
(Here is a moment of realism: In order to give you something realistic to aim for, it is suggested that your final culled list of articles for your assigned literature review includes between 15 and 30 relevant, available, and recent articles.)
4. Obtaining the articles [ back to steps ]
Having used a bibliographic search engine sensibly, having identified your topic, and having produced and then culled lists of potential articles, you are now ready to print all the articles concerned.
This takes time and money, but not too much of one or the other.
(Another moment of realism: It is possible that some articles you thought useful will turn out to be junk, and you will have to discard them. Contrariwise, some articles that you never encountered might turn up useful to you. You would see these discussed in the articles you have already chosen. So your list of articles to be used in the literature review may contract and/or expand according to circumstances.)
At the end of this step you will have hard copies of all the articles to be used in your literature review.
Note that you should employ predominantly research articles for this assignment. One to five opinion pieces or review articles may be included, but most of your chosen articles should be research articles which contain actual data.
5. Preparing a summary of each article on cards or sheets of paper [ back to steps ]
(Yes, this means you have to read them first!)
On what should I write my summaries?
You should probably prepare summaries on cards or on separate pages. One reason for this is that you will be able to move and shuffle cards and pages in order to organize what you want to say.
What should the summary include?
In this assignment you will find a suggested summary sheet for research articles and for non-research articles (reviews and opinion pieces). Each of these has several entries.
Summary Sheet – Information for research articles
Summary Sheet – Information for review or opinion articles
Research articles
You will of course need the Citation information (authors, title, journal information).
You will also need to jot down the author’s stated Purpose in writing the article or performing the research. (This can usually be found at the beginning or end of the Introduction to the paper.) (One sentence)
In the area on Background, jot down past research results that the author considered important. (Two or three key points)
In the area on Method – participants, you will want to note who was studied, where they were studied, and how many of them there were. For example, 12 factories, on site, in the Western United States or 34 workers, in coffee rooms, in a downtown office. This information will be found in the Methods section of most articles.
In the area on Method – procedure and measurements, you will want to summarize what measures were used (Surveys? Personality tests? Productivity measures?), and also what treatments or observations were employed (for example, accidents measured pre- and post- the addition of a committee for safety). This information is available in the Methods section of most articles.
You want, of course, to know the most important Results of the research. You can jot down the information about useful tables and figures in the article, and list the major results in the section, which is based on the Results sections of most research articles.
You want to note what the authors Conclude. This is usually made explicit at the beginning or end of the Discussion section. In their conclusions, authors emphasize their more important findings and also mention the implications of these findings.
A last space is provided for extra Notes.
Remember, you are summarizing information, not copying the whole article into a tiny space. A few sentences should be enough to get the flavour of the article across and allow you to work with it.
Reviews and opinions
For reviews and opinions, you begin again with the Citation information and the author’s stated Purpose (which will appear near the beginning of the article).
You will then want to take note of the various Subsections of the paper, listing the title of each one and summarizing its contents. If you need more space for more subsections, continue on the back of your page.
Finally, most papers have some point to make, which they make in their Conclusions. Jot down your summary of this point in the last available space.
6. Shuffling and dealing (or categorizing) [ back to steps ]
Shuffling as an organizational procedure
This is the step in which you will organize both your summaries and your thoughts. You will need to go through your summaries several times, and regroup them in several ways. Each time, jot down your grouping or sorting principle on a piece of paper, and also note which articles fall into which category. You might want to code your articles with numbers to make this easier to record. By the end of this process, you should know by heart which article belongs with which number.
Note that not all articles will fall nicely into groups once you have decided to sort them, so some shuffles may only contain 70% of your articles, and others 100%.
What shuffling principles should I use?
You have to create these as you go along, but here are some possible examples.
PRO VERSUS CON
If your literature review is considering an issue, such as the change to shifts with 8 and 12-hour days, you should sort your articles in terms of those that find evidence in favour of, and those that report evidence against, such changes.
TYPE OF PARTICIPANT
If you have articles based on workers in small versus large companies, or some from Europe and others from the United Sates, or some with experienced and others with novice workers, you can sort according to type of participant.
TYPE OF TREATMENT OR EFFECT OBSERVED
Not all studies mean the same thing, even when they use the same word. “12-hour shifts” may be obligatory or voluntary, they may have long breaks in them or short ones, they may lead to long weekends or simply to several days off. Sort your articles according to the treatment or the effect observed.
TYPE OF TEST USED
In several studies dealing with, for example, employee satisfaction, you may find several different ways of testing such satisfaction, from single question rating scales to extensive questionnaires. You could sort your articles on this dimension.
As you look at your articles, you will find several other possible sorting principles. In each case, establish the categories, shuffle, and sort. Then record your articles.
At the end of this step, you should have articles which have been sorted according to at least five different categories.
7. Planning your outline [ back to steps ]
What is the purpose of a literature review?
Literature reviews are written in order to give the reader an overview of the current state of knowledge with respect to a topic. In this case, the reader is the course professor. You should present the information that you consider crucial, and you should not feel a slave to details.
In different situations, literature reviews might accompany a proposal for research funding, an article published in a refereed journal, or an MA thesis or PhD dissertation.
How long should this literature review be?
You review should be at least ten typewritten double-spaced pages long, exclusive of references, and not significantly more than 20. (This implies 3000 to 6000 words.)
What subsections should my review include?
1. Your literature review should include an Introduction where you explain what literature is being reviewed, and why. (Is there a case or problem behind the review? Is a research proposal involved?)
2. Your literature review should include a Conclusion where you summarize your discoveries and point to potential research issues arising from them.
In between these two subsections, you should have about five to seven or more additional subsections dealing with special issues. These issues will be the ones involved in yoursorts (see step 6), or they may include other ideas you have as to what is important.
Here is an example outline of subsections from a literature review dealing with the literature on the effectiveness of negative advertising:
1. Introduction (explaining what negative advertising is, what the concerns about it are, and what your review will cover)
· Negative advertising in politics
· Negative advertising on television
· Comparisons of negative and positive advertising
· Long-term effects of negative advertising
· Credibility of negative advertising
2. Conclusions (explaining in overview what you found and what your conclusions about negative advertising are)
Art in science
As was the case with the sorting categories, sometimes you will be inspired to include subsections which you consider of special interest. This is perfectly acceptable and even desirable.
Organizing a literature review is something of an art!
References
Your review will include a list of references, cited according to APA style. As you are going to be including 15 to 30 relevant articles, you will have to document each of these in the References. References are not included in the word count for the review. You can prepare your references in this step since you already know most of the articles you are going to use. This is a technical part of your submission that requires little art and a lot of patience!
At the end of this step you will have a plan for your paper which includes an introduction, a conclusion, at least five other subsections, and a set of references.
8. Writing your sections [ back to steps ]
This step will probably take you the longest to complete.
In this step you will make continual use of the shuffle-and-sorts which you conducted in step 6, and the outline which you prepared in step 7.
Which style should you use?
Style is dictated by the discipline and the purpose of a report. For your literature review, please use the APA style, which is commonly used in the social sciences and in business and commerce.
Length of subsections
If your report has about seven to ten subsections, each will be roughly one to two pages long. This is a general guideline.
Contents of subsections
In each subsection (other than the first and last), you will organize, present, and critique the studies you have read that belong to particular categories.
Avoid littering your paper with direct quotations
Do not use too many quotes. Your explanation of what the authors concluded in an article makes much more sense in your review than their conclusion. As well, quotes tend to lengthen a paper to no purpose, and to create discontinuities in style. One or two quotes are acceptable, but avoid using more than that.
Suggested language
A literature review that simply summarizes articles one after another can become quite tedious (to both the author and the reader). Here is some suggested language for you to use.
First, be sure that your subsections have clear and descriptive subtitles. Then begin each section with an introductory sentence such as “Several researchers have addressed the issue of … in reports dealing with ….” Then make your main point “Most of the studies agree that …” or “… was seen as an effective technique to achieve … in most cases.”
Following the main point, refer to examples in sentences such as “Smith & Jones, in 2002, found that …” or “In contrast to the general opinion, Brown notes that….”
At the end of this step you may have a headache, but you will also have the body of your paper!
9. Identifying “issues arising” [ back to steps ]
The closing section of your review (the conclusion) must make something of all the literature reviewed. A review is more than a listing of available literature. A strong conclusion (which can only be written after the first eight steps have been completed) provides an overview of the issues raised in the literature, critically evaluates the research, and points to questions not currently answered by it.
The conclusion should be forward looking and could include statements such as “More research is required in the area of … because researchers have generally omitted to …” or “The issue of … has not been sufficiently addressed by the current literature.” Another favourite is “Although it seems reasonably clear that …, the question of … has not been answered.”
Your literature review has a particular purpose — it is related to the ARGOBY example and you will have planned research related to this example, so you can refer to ARGOBY in your introduction and conclusion sections.
A conclusion is somewhat like an executive summary of the literature review. In your opening section you introduce a problem, you then show that you have considered the problem from various angles in your subsections, and then you close with a bang in your conclusion.
At the end of this step you will have what your paper was all about — a meaningful conclusion in reference to a research issue or question.
10. Editing your article for language, grammar, and comprehensibility [ back to steps ]
Final touches
Once you have put all parts of your literature review together, you need to brush up your final product by
· editing it for typos and grammatical errors (word processors can help you with this, but you should read the paper over yourself),
· reading it through for overall meaning and structure, and, if possible,
· asking someone to read it for general meaning.
The reader should be someone who can read the paper for a holistic impression rather than detail. The reader need not be an expert in the area, or even in business, commerce, or accounting at all. Sometimes a holistic reader can point to discontinuities or unexplained assumptions in the paper. When you fix these, you have a stronger final product.
The reading by another person is vital if you have some trouble in writing in English.
Rethinking your title
The title of a work is the first thing that grabs the potential reader’s attention, and a poor title may discourage readers. A cutesy title, on the other hand, may annoy them. You want your paper to have a meaningful but impactful title. Thus you will not simply call it “Literature Review” or “Issues of the ARGOBY Problem”. Instead, you should prefer a title that pinpoints the issues you have focused on in your paper.
