LITERATURE REVIEWS

Felipe Abarca

Camila Barrera

Carolina Hinojosa

WHAT ARE THEY USEFUL FOR?

-Showing the history of a field (background)

-Reviewing the work done in a specific time period.

-Plotting the development of a line reasoning

-Integrating and synthesizing work from different research areas

-Evaluating the current state of evidence for a particular viewpoint

-Revealing inadequacies in the literature and point to where

further research need to be done.

STRATEGIES FOR PRESENTING RESULTS IN REVIEWS

1.-The narrative review: writers research around a particular topic and

then write a review of the field, selecting evidence. this kind of review is

most common in textbooks and popular journals.

2- The narrative review with scoreboard: writers strengthen the

arguments of their reviews by supporting the claims made with tabular

scoreboards.

3- Scoreboard plus details: in a scoreboard more details can be provided

and it enables the reader to trace the studies should they wish and to see

if any have been omitted.

4.- Scoreboard showing critical features: it is a method of

summarizing results to provide a table listing the key features of the

studies being discussed. The information provided is not omitted.

5.-Meta- analytic “scoreboards”: it involves pooling the results

that can be found from all the known studies on a given topic. The

aim of this is to arrive at an overall summary of the result for the

topic in question.

6.-Evidence-based “scoreboards”: With the “evidence-based”

approach, more studies are excluded on particular methodological

grounds when making the overall summary of the results. It is used,

for example, in medical researches. The importance of the evidence-

based approach becomes more obvious when the overall picture

obtained from RCT’s (randomized controlled trials) is different from

that obtained from studies using others, less stringent methods.

SOME PROBLEMS - File-drawer problem: it is easier to publish studies that

have statistically significant findings than it is to publish ones

that do not.

-Problems of interpreting; there might be problems of

interpreting the findings of the published studies and seeing if

these findings are relevant to your review.

-Qualitative studies; related to these it is important to

mention that is very difficult to summarize the results

adequately.

OTHER ASSUMPTIONS THAT DO NOT WITHSTAND CLOSE SCRUTINY

1- Different dependent variables are of equal validity.

2- The results obtained in one culture are directly relevant to another

one.

3- The results obtained in one period are the same as those that

would be obtained today.

4- The results obtained for limited samples apply to wider population.

5- The results obtained in simplifying experiments apply to the much

more complex.

One solution to some of the problems presented, is

to examine in more detail the original papers and

particularly the original materials used in the papers

being reviewed.

LITERATURE REVIEWS

Felipe Abarca

Camila Barrera

Carolina Hinojosa