doing a literature review - part 4

Literature Survey, Literature Comprehension, & Literature Review

Literature Review

Literature Review

The literature review is the process of consolidating the various strands of past research into a single narrative describing the evolution of the research domain.

Literature Review

There are checklists provided to assist you in this task, one that deals with the evaluation of a research paper we ave already seen, and the other which deals with questions to reflect upon regarding the overall structure of the literature review chapter in a dissertation.

Literature Review

Literature Review Chapter

http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/CheckSheets/LitReviewCheckSheet.doc

Literature Review The questions of this checksheet are: Has the student laid the foundations for his/her work– why it is important that they pursue their

topic? Have they been able to show a gap in the literature (more important for PhDs but still a good

idea)? Is the nature/type of the research clear? Is the work well written, interesting and easy to read? Does the literature review read like a list of studies or does it build their point/arguments. Is the work simply a repeat or cut and paste of other’s work? Are key researchers and important works included? Examples of other good literature surveys? Have they set out orthogonal issues? Has research been examined for both content and methods? Have studies been compared and contrasted? Has the literature been extended? Has the student been critical in all areas of the research (design) and not just examined the

results? Is it ‘a students’ literature review – aimed at supporting their research, rather than just being

‘a’ review of ‘the’ literature? Is each section important? Do they explain how that topic contributes to building a cohesive

argument/point Has the work explored what methods are used to carry out research in other studies? Are the limitations of the design/research methods discussed? Are there recommendations for further research?

Literature Review

The underlying (or hidden) theme of the narrative is to show that there is a ‘gap’ in the existing research and how your work will address this problem.

Literature Review

The review itself is the final piece of the puzzle, it is a matter of tying together all the previous research that you have found and reviewed, and producing an artifact that is not just all those reviews put together, but a coherent and cohesive narrative of the research to date, and a narrative that points to a ‘gap’ in the research that your work intends to fill. It also contextualises the work in the broader research scope.

Literature Review

The first step in this process is to consider each article that you have reviewed, is it significant enough to go into the review ?

How do you evaluate that ? The answer is simple ; does it help build

towards the ‘gap’ in the research you are identifying ? or to put it another way, could you take this article out and it wouldn’t make any difference ?

Literature Review

The articles should group together into research trends so you should list the articles by this grouping and see which ones are important.

Your literature map will help with identifying the key themes.

The review does not have to be in chronological order, but rather in the order the most clearly shows the trends in this field.

Literature Review

Remember that writing is not necessarily a linear process, write what sections you know about, when you know about them.

As with all of the writing that you will be doing for you dissertation, there will be many drafts of the literature review chapter, so it is best to write far too much first and then you can cut down, therefore you should include many of the questions for each article in the first draft of your work and chip away at it a piece at a time.

Literature Review

I recommend a “5 by 5” approach.

Read five papers, and the accompanying checksheets, now write five lines about each paper (note: not five sentences, five lines of font size 12 text).

Do this ten times.

Fiveby

five

Literature Review

The research should be seen as the zenith of the cumulative process of the scientific research that has already been done.

Then the process becomes a matter of making these disparate stories into one single narrative, with one theme : there is something missing in the research to date that you are going to address.

Literature Review

The structure of the literature review will be the same as that of any document, it has a beginning, middle and end.

Literature Review

The beginning or introduction will introduce the main research topics and provide definitions for key concepts that are important to your research – definitions that support your approach taken in the research.

Literature Review

The end or conclusion will be that there has been a great deal of work done in this area, but there is a gap in the work that your research will address.

Literature Review

The middle part of the literature review, can be presented in a number of ways, depending on your personal preferences, the main research trends must be discussed, key researchers must be identified, and the work must spiral from its research beginnings towards the research gap that you are going to fill.

Literature Review

The general research topics you discuss must lead logically to the specific research that you are undertaking.

So if we go back to the T-Shaped structure:

2D Analysis

Breadth of Research

Depth of R

esearch

2D Analysis

Breadth of Research

Depth of R

esearch

Finding your

“eye of the storm”

Literature Review

It may be the case that the trends in the research in your domain fall into two opposing camps, the for-and-against type paradigm, This being the case, whichever side your work is on, make sure that you present the merits of each side, this gives your readers a balanced view of the domain, and gives them the impression of a researcher who can take a sophisticated perspective on matters.

Literature Review

Let’s look at a simple example:

Literature Review

TEXT: “Although little research has been done the influence of movies on the public perception of hacking, researchers have investigated other topics in computer science, for example, Bartneck (2004) looks at how movies represent robots and robotics and in particular how these movies help contribute to the general public’s behaviours to real-life robots. Similarly Schmitz et al. (2008) look at models of computer interfaces presented in movies, and considers the viability of such interfaces in real-life. Also, Fisher (2001) looks at how artificial intelligence has been represented in the movies and how this may impact on the public perception of artificial intelligences. In general the public perception of computer science is strongly influenced by movie representations.”

REFERENCES: Bartneck, C. (2004). From Fiction to Science - A Cultural Reflection on Social Robots" in

proceedings of the CHI2004 Workshop on Shaping Human-Robot Interaction, Vienna. Fisher, R. (2001) “AI and Cinema - Does Artificial Insanity Rule?”, Twelfth Irish

Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, National University of Ireland (NUI), Maynooth, Ireland.

Schmitz, M., Endres, C., Butz, A. (2008) "A Survey of Human-Computer Interaction Design in Science Fiction Movies", Second International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (ICST INTETAIN ’08). January 8-10, 2008, Cancun, Mexico.

Literature Review






Citations

Literature Review






Citations

References

How to cite The correct way to cite

one author is (Smith, 2005) two authors is (Smith and Jones, 2005) multiple authors is (Smith et al., 2005)

Please note: Since “et al.” is an abbreviation of the

phrase “et alia” the full stop is necessary. Additionally as it is a foreign phrase it must always be in italics.

How to cite Allow me to repeat that last bit, since no one

seems to do it correctly:

Please note: Since “et al.” is an abbreviation of the

phrase “et alia” the full stop is necessary. Additionally as it is a foreign phrase it must always be in italics.

Literature Review

doing a literature review - part 4

Education