Chapter 2: Review of the Literature

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There is this massive myth in academia that great research starts with a blank page.

But terrifying reality that page isn't blank at all.

Oh, not even close.

Right.

It is a crowded noisy room of thousands of scholars who have been arguing about your specific topic for you know, decades, decades.

And today, we're going to figure out how to walk into that room without making a total fool of yourself.

Exactly.

It really is the ultimate test of intellectual endurance.

You're trying to join this massive ongoing conversation.

Yeah.

And you need to figure out who is saying what, what they've missed and where you fit in before you even open your mouth.

And that is exactly why we're doing this today.

Whether you are a student tackling research methods for the very first time, or maybe you're prepping for a massive dissertation, consider this your private one on one tutoring session.

Welcome in.

Our mission on this deep dive is to conquer chapter two of the classic textbook research design.

Specifically, we are mastering the review of the literature, which is so crucial.

It really is.

We aren't just going to like list definitions today.

We're going to explore why the literature shapes every single research design choice you will ever make.

Because knowledge is most valuable when it is understood and applied.

I mean, a literature review shouldn't just be some mandatory hoop to jump through.

Right.

It's not just a reading list.

Exactly.

It is the architectural scaffolding that lets you build something entirely new.

Okay, let's unpack this before we can even look at the literature.

We have to know what we're actually looking for.

Yeah, you have to go from that terrifying crowded room to a concrete focal point.

And the foundational step here is surprisingly simple, which is drafting a working title.

Right.

A working title is essentially your primary orienting device.

When you're lost in the weeds of database searches and, you know, hundreds of PDF, which you will be.

Oh, definitely.

That title reminds you of your ultimate destination.

The most practical exercise for a researcher is to simply complete the sentence.

My study is about wait, my study is about that sounds almost too simple for academic research, doesn't it?

It does.

But that's actually the point.

A common trap for beginning researchers is trying to sound really erudite right out of the gate.

Oh, yeah.

Using all the big words.

Right.

You read these polished published articles and try to mimic their complex, dense language.

But those published papers went through endless revisions.

Your working title needs to be straightforward.

So what's the actual recommendation there?

Strong research design suggests keeping it to about 10 to 12 words.

Eliminate unnecessary fluff like an approach to or a study of.

Just state the focus.

So instead of saying something like a comprehensive methodological approach to understanding the pedagogical implications of helping college faculty.

Please don't say that.

Right.

You just say my studies about helping college faculty become better researchers.

Exactly.

If another scholar can't easily grasp the meaning of your project from the title, you need to simplify it.

It's a functional tool, not your final manuscript heading.

All right.

So I have my simple 12 word title.

I know what my topic is,

but the methodology makes a really sharp distinction between whether a topic can be researched and whether it should be researched.

Yeah.

And that distinction separates amateur projects from meaningful scholarship.

Whether it can be researched is purely a question of logistics.

Like, do I have the time and money?

Right.

Do you have access to participants who are willing to be studied?

Do you have the resources, the software to analyze the data?

If the answer is yes, then logically you can do it.

But this should is harder.

The question of should involves the broader academic ecosystem.

What's fascinating here is how that should is framed.

It basically comes down to, does your study actually add to the pool of research knowledge?

Are you doing something new?

Exactly.

You could study an unusual location like rural America or an unusual group like refugees.

Or you could take an unexpected perspective that completely reverses an expectation.

Right.

Yeah.

For example, instead of studying why marriages fail, you study why they do work.

You could use a novel means of data collection like analyzing sounds instead of text.

Oh, that's cool.

Or study a highly timely topic like immigration policies.

You might replicate an old study in a new situation or lift the voices of underrepresented groups.

The point is, your work must contribute a new puzzle piece to the field.

I've always struggled with that, honestly.

If I'm the one suffering in the library for 400 hours, why isn't my own curiosity enough to justify the study?

Why do we have to play the game of broader significance?

It's a very real frustration for graduate students.

I hear it all the time.

But the pragmatic reality is that research does not exist in a vacuum.

Yeah, fair enough.

To bring a study to life, you are going to need the support of faculty committee members, journal editors, conference planners, and potentially funding agencies.

The people with the money.

Right.

They need to see a broad appeal to justify giving you their time or their money.

Furthermore, consider your own career trajectory.

This project will demand a heavy commitment of your life.

Years, usually.

Years.

It needs to pay off for you, whether that means enhancing your career goals, securing a future position, or advancing toward a degree.

Yeah.

If the topic is so niche that no one else cares, it won't serve the field, and ultimately, it won't serve you.

That makes total sense.

It's a strategic decision, not just an intellectual one.

Okay, so we have a significant topic.

Now we have to figure out how we are going to use the literature.

This is where it gets structural.

Right, because once you have that singular focus, you hit a fork in the road.

You have to decide your fundamental approach to truth.

Are you building a theory or are you testing one?

And that dictates everything.

It dictates whether your design is qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods.

Your foundational assumptions dictate exactly where the literature goes.

Let's start with the qualitative structure.

Okay, so qualitative research is inherently inductive.

It is exploratory.

You are going in because not much has been written about the topic or the specific population, and your primary goal is to learn from the participants themselves.

You are deliberately trying not to prescribe answers based on what past researchers have said.

And when we look at table 2 .1 in the text,

there are three distinct places the literature can live in a qualitative study.

First, you can put the literature in the introduction.

Yeah, which is just to frame the problem, to say here is why this issue matters based on what little we do know.

The second option is placing it in a separate section, much like a traditional literature review.

And what's interesting is that this approach is often done specifically to appease audiences who are more familiar with the traditional post -positivist approach.

Wait, post -positives appeasement, just to make sure we're all on the same page, we're talking about the old school hard numbers and absolute truths crowd, right?

The folks who expect a traditional format even when you're doing exploratory work?

You nailed it.

Post -positivists generally look for objective measurable realities.

When they evaluate a qualitative study, they often expect to see that traditional literature review upfront.

So placing it in a separate section is a nod to convention.

A little academic diplomacy.

A lot of academic diplomacy.

But the third option, which is incredibly powerful for strong qualitative researchers, is putting the literature at the end of the study.

Putting the background research at the end seems so counterintuitive.

Why does that work?

Because in an inductive process, you don't want the literature to bias your lens.

You want the participants' voices to shape the categories.

Oh, I see.

So you gather your data, you identify the patterns, and then you bring in the literature at the end to compare and contrast your fresh findings with what others have historically found.

Now compare that to a quantitative structure, which is completely different.

Quantitative research is deductive.

Totally deductive.

In a quantitative study, you use the literature deductively as a framework to provide direction for your research questions and hypotheses.

You're testing expected relationships.

Right.

You cannot test a hypothesis without a theoretical framework, which means you need substantial literature right at the beginning of the study to establish those expectations.

And there is a very strict five component model for organizing a quantitative literature review.

It's almost like a recipe.

It really is.

You start with component one, which is an introduction telling the reader how the section is organized.

Then component two is topic one.

This is where you review the scholarly literature solely about your independent variable.

Just the independent variable.

Then you move to component three, which is topic two, the literature about your dependent variable.

Keep them separated.

It is vital to keep these separate at first.

You must independently establish what is known about variable A and what is known about variable B before you try to connect them.

So if topic one is A and topic two is B, I'm guessing component four or topic three is where we finally smash them together.

That's the crux of the study.

You isolate the variables.

Then you look at the exact intersection where they collide.

And that section should be relatively short, right?

Yes, very short and containing studies that are extremely close to your proposed topic.

And finally,

component five is the summary, highlighting major themes and pointing out exactly why more research is needed at that specific intersection, which seamlessly justifies your study.

It makes me think of an analogy.

A quantitative design is like building a house from a strict architectural blueprint.

I like that.

You have to buy all your materials, your literature up front and lay a solid deductive foundation before you ever start building the walls.

Right.

But a qualitative design is more like exploring a new city.

You might have a rough idea of why you're there.

That's framing the problem in the intro, but you are literally drawing the map as you walk.

You don't really know how your journey compares to other travelers until the very end of the trip.

That is a brilliant way to conceptualize the difference.

And then of course, we have mixed methods, which combines both the and the city exploration.

Right.

So where does the literature go if you're mixing them?

Well, it depends entirely on your specific strategy and the relative weight of the data.

If you are using a sequential approach that starts with a quantitative phase, you need a heavy literature review upfront to establish those hypotheses.

Like sense.

But if you start qualitative, you use less literature upfront and incorporate more at the end.

What if you do them at the same time?

If you are doing a concurrent study, meaning you are gathering and giving equal weight to both qualitative and quantitative data at the same time, the best practice is to tailor the form to your audience, specifically what your graduate committee would be most receptive to.

Always know your audience.

Okay.

So now we know how our review will be structured based on our epistemology, but we still have to actually go out and find the sources to fill it.

The fun part.

Or the terrifying part.

Yeah.

The methodology outlines a systematic seven -step process for this.

And we need to slow down here because this is where the actual labor happens.

It's a very practical chronological workflow.

Step one is identifying your keywords.

And this is actually harder than it sounds because terminology shifts over decades.

Oh, true.

What was called one thing in 1990 might have a completely different academic label today.

Exactly.

Then step two is searching the databases.

And this is where I think a lot of people panic.

It feels like drowning in an ocean of information.

You've got Eric for education, Google scholar, Pubman for health sciences, ProQuest for dissertations, EBSCO, Scopus, the directory of open access journals.

How do you avoid just sinking?

The lifeline here is having a strict priority of literature.

You don't just read randomly.

If you are brand new to a topic, you actually don't want to start with highly specific journal articles.

Really?

Yeah.

You start with broad syntheses, encyclopedias, summary articles, handbooks.

This gives you the lay of the land.

It tells you what the major debates even are.

That makes so much sense.

You need the map before you look at the individual trees.

Right.

And then you turn to the gold standard, which is journal articles, specifically peer -reviewed, refereed journal articles published in the last 10 years.

Because in a rigorous research study, the authors pose a question, collect data and answer it.

They are vetted by other experts.

Which leads right into step three, locate about 50 reports of research.

50 is a manageable threshold to see the landscape without spending five years reading.

Okay.

50.

Got it.

And step four is to skim and collect the ones central to your topic.

And skimming is an art.

You read the abstract, then the conclusion, then look at the methods.

You don't read front to back immediately.

So what does this all mean?

It means working backward from recent high quality journal articles is the ultimate time -saving hack.

Oh, absolutely.

You find one great recent article, look at its descriptors and its reference list, and you run a new search using those exact terms.

That iterative process is how you build a robust collection without wasting hundreds of hours reading irrelevant material.

Which brings us to step five, designing a literature map, which we'll dive into in a second.

Step six is drafting summaries of the relevant articles.

And this is crucial.

Why do we draft summaries immediately instead of just reading all 50 and writing the review?

To prevent mental burnout and accidental plagiarism.

If you read 50 complex papers and then try to write, everything bleeds together.

You will forget who said what, and you might accidentally adopt an author's phrasing as your own.

Drafting summaries locks in the core concepts.

Which finally allows you to execute step seven, assembling the review thematically.

Exactly.

Okay.

So let's say I've survived the search.

I have my 50 high quality sources.

How do I process them without my brain melting?

We need to abstract and map them.

Let's start with abstracting.

Good idea.

Abstracting is like stripping a car down to its chassis.

You take off the paint and the interior styling, the academic rhetoric, and just look at the engine.

The problem, the sample, and the results.

That is a perfect analogy.

For a data -based article, your stripped down summary must mention the problem being addressed, the central purpose, information about the sample or population, the key results,

and if you are doing a critical review, any methodological flaws.

There is a great example of a methodological abstract in the text from an article by Rose and Creswell in 2022.

It's an article about quality criteria for mixed methods research.

Yeah, that's a great example.

The abstract is incredibly tight, only 120 words.

It states the problem that there isn't a synthesis of recent recommendations.

It states the purpose to present six best practices.

And it clearly states the contribution, providing a parsimonious or simple and efficient list of core criteria for researchers.

That kind of precision is what you want in your own notes.

But compiling abstracts isn't enough.

You need to see how they relate to each other.

Here's where it gets really interesting.

We have the concept of a literature map, which is basically a visual picture like a family tree or a flow chart for your research.

It is an incredibly powerful tool.

A literature map forces you to visually prove how your specific study aligns with and departs from existing literature.

Let's paint a picture of figure 2 .1 for you listening.

This is based on Yonavec's 2001 map.

Imagine a visual hierarchy, like a corporate flow chart.

At the very top, in a box, is the broad topic.

Let's say procedural justice in organizations.

Right.

And from that top box, lines branch down into three middle boxes representing broad subtopics found in the database searches.

Things like justice perceptions formation,

justice effects, and justice in organizational change.

And inside each of those subtopic boxes are specific labels.

Like under justice effects, there's a box for outcomes.

And inside that box, specific authors are cited.

It's organizing the chaos.

It really is.

But the most important part is at the very bottom.

There is a box labeled need to study, procedural justice and culture.

This is the researcher's proposed study.

And they draw lines from that bottom box back up to the specific past literature that their new project will extend.

If we connect this to the bigger picture, that map is the visual justification for your entire project.

When a committee member asks, why are you doing this study?

You don't just ramble.

No rambling allowed.

Right.

You literally point to the map and say, because the literature branch is here and here, but it stops short of the specific intersection, my study builds out that branch.

It definitively proves you aren't doing redundant research.

It's brilliant.

It takes all this abstract reading and makes it tangible.

Okay.

So we've mapped our ideas.

We know where we fit in the crowded room.

Now we have to actually write the thing.

The hard part.

Which means translating all this into precise scholarly language that academic readers will respect.

Which brings us to style manuals and defining terms.

Oh, yes.

And of course, we have to talk about the gatekeepers of it all, the APA publication manual, specifically the seventh edition.

For everyone who spent years memorizing how to format publisher locations, I have good news.

You can finally stop typing Thousand Oaks, California.

Yes.

Dropping the publisher's physical location is one of the more merciful updates.

Truly.

A style manual provides uniform communication so readers can focus on your ideas rather than getting distracted by formatting.

Under APA seventh edition, there are a few other critical updates.

For instance, when citing works with three or more authors in the text, you now just use the first author's name followed by, at all, right from the very first citation.

Which saves so much space.

They also heavily emphasize bias -free language, mandating the use of the singular they instead of him or her.

Plus, there are new formatting rules, like making sure the titles of your tables and figures are consistently italicized.

It might sound nitpicky, but it is the handshake of the academic world.

It shows you know the rules of the room.

Definitely.

But beyond formatting, there is the crucial task of defining your terms.

The rule of thumb here is, if a term goes beyond common language, or if you are using a common word in a highly specific way, you must define it operationally.

And you don't invent definitions, you use accepted definitions from the literature.

And how you handle definitions, again, depends heavily on your research design.

In qualitative studies, because you are using an inductive evolving design, you might actually delay defining terms until themes naturally emerge from the participants.

Yeah, you might offer tentative definitions in the introduction, but you let the data speak.

But in quantitative studies, which are deductive and fixed, you must define everything extensively up front, usually in a separate section.

You lock the definitions in before you test the variables.

And if you're doing mixed methods, you have to define not just your topic terms, but your methodological terms.

So readers understand exactly what you mean by a convergent design or integration.

To give a real -world example, the book talks about example 2 .2, a dissertation by Van Horn Grasmire in 1998.

She studied how new student affairs professionals engage in reflection.

Because those terms are central to her study, she defined them explicitly early on.

For individual reflection, she didn't just make up a definition.

She grounded it in past literature from Shukon in 1983, breaking it down into an artistry of practice and thoughtful discourse within the mind.

She did the exact same thing for student affairs professional, grounding it heavily in past literature.

It anchors your work.

It strips away the multiplicity and vagueness of everyday language in the interest of scientific precision.

It tells the reader, when I use this word, this is exactly the conceptual weight it carries.

Okay, let's take a breath and synthesize the journey we've been on.

We started in that massive, intimidating, noisy room of past scholars.

Very noisy.

But now, we know how to draft a working title to act as our orienting compass.

We know how to choose a structural layout, whether that's the inductive, qualitative city exploration or the deductive, quantitative architectural blueprint.

We know the seven steps to systematically search databases, prioritizing encyclopedias down to recent journal articles to save time and sanity.

We know how to strip those articles down to their chassis with abstracts and map them out visually with Yonavec's model to prove our study's worth.

And finally, we know how to format it all with APA guidelines and precise operational definitions.

You've moved from being overwhelmed by the literature to actively commanding it.

But before we go, this raises an important question.

Oh, laid it on me.

If a literature review requires us to strictly build upon what past scholars have already written, how do we ensure we aren't just trapping ourselves in the same old perspectives?

How do we use the literature as a foundation rather than a cage?

That is a brilliant thought to leave on.

The goal isn't just to repeat what's in that massive crowded room.

The goal is to finally speak up, synthesize the human element and add a totally new sentence to the conversation.

On behalf of the last -minute lecture team, thank you for joining us on this deep dive.

Good luck with your research.