How to do Research III: The Literature Review, Part B.

How do you "review" the literature?

I've served as Chair on over 25 dissertations, and I've written many articles for "scholarly" publications, so I think I know how to review literature. A review of literature doesn't necessarily mean a "critical" review, that is it doesn't mean you have to criticize the studies you are describing. If a study has serious flaws, you would mention that, but many if not most articles in journals are reporting on studies that are basically sound, if they weren't they wouldn't have been accepted for publication. When I write a literature review, what is expected is that I report on the studies that came before the one I'm presenting or that led me to want to do the study I've done. "The literature" means in essence, the published results of studies in a given area. To review the literature means to write a readable summary of published research reports related to my study. Its that simple.

Please, don't write detail after detail and after detail

Students often begin the literature review, thinking they are supposed to write details about the studies they're describing, and they start listing the number of subjects in the study, all the measures used, the demographics of the study, one right after the other --almost like they are summarizing methods sections of prior research reports. This is not what I want to read, nor what I write, when I'm summarizing a body of studies, that is "the literature." Instead, what is more appropriate, is to write about the essence of a study, to report on the main findings, and only include details as much as is needed to provide the story of the study. Think about a body of research on a topic that has been "hot" for a decade, and I am doing research on some different aspect of the topic. Perhaps there are fifty studies that are relevant to the current study being presented in the dissertation or journal article. No one wants to read details about fifty studies. What we want to know is the basic findings of these studies, and we want to read this material after it has been organized coherently, so it is relatively easy to read. We want the author to figure out and present the conclusions from the mass of data presented in numerous research reports. If the findings of the studies on the topic are contradictory, that is more important than findings from any one study. We want to know right off that the literature presents contradictory findings. This tells us that the data found in all these studies suggests different conclusions, and therefore there is not yet a consistent and coherent understanding of whatever it is that is being studied. Perhaps our study will provide some new slant that will clear up areas of confusion, perhaps it will just add more to the mix. The point here is that we want to know the conclusions we can come to, even if it is only to say we don't yet have a clear conclusion. This all forms the background for presenting our own current study. Thus the literature review presents the story of a body of research.

Learning how to read studies is not the same as writing the literature review

In trying to teach students how to read literature, professors often come up with a fairly complex structure that they hope will help students focus on the details of an article, thereby be able to understand the study being described. This is useful for learning to read research articles, however it is not a model for describing prior research in a literature review. To use the model of the 50 studies done around a given topic --in preparing to write the literature review, it is fine to tear each study apart into this complex structure. This might ensure that you know what a study is about, what was done, and what was found. But in writing about the study, you only need to summarize what was found, what was concluded by the study. On occasion you might provide a detail, for example if a study was unusually large, you might refer to that .."In a large multisite study of treatment for unipolar depression" provides the picture of a very large, or substantial study and suggests that one should probably pay attention to the conclusions. This is obviously different from writing "in a study of 98 subjects diagnosed with unipolar depression..." although you could get away with this phrasing, provided you don't repeat that level of detail for one study after the other.

The literature review is the story of a body of research

When you write the literature review, you are transmitting the story of the relevant research. You are saving readers a whole lot of time and trouble by summarizing prior studies and then presenting some conclusions. If you keep the concept of a story or a series of stories in mind, you are more likely to write something that is lively and readable. There are limits of course because academic writing is by nature, likely to be, at least, slightly, boring. However, as you have found a topic interesting enough to conduct a study of your own about it, you have a good chance of presenting an interesting background story in your presentation of the literature. An essential feature of an outstanding literature is that it is interesting -- the author has managed to report on many sources of data, in and of itself rather dry, and has woven it all together with important conclusions, thereby lifting it out of the realm of tedium and into something that is almost light and interesting. That is the kind of lit review I want to read, and the kind I hope I know how to write.

I love New York (I do)

I don't know how I've survived this long without an introduction to reality TV, probably because I never watch TV, that is until I discovered I could download pilot shows from ITunes, and scan it in the middle of the night so it didn't inconvenience me --and the next thing I knew I was hooked on "Gossip Girl" and then "Grey's Anatomy" and finally disaster hit, I fell into something called "At Shot at Love with Tila Tequila" and I was gone. Well that was nothing. Last week a client, upon hearing of my affection for Tila Tequila, said "You've seen nothing yet, you're really going to love "I love New York."

Stop.

36 hours later:
I have watched Year One and Year Two (up to now) non-stop, no breaks except for 40 minutes of Kundalini yoga and food intermittently.

I am so irritated, none of these second season guys are in any way good enough for New York. She doesn't like any of them, she feels the pressure of the time limit of the show, and the lousy characters they selected for the second season. She's still hot for Chance and who can blame her, Chance and his brother are intelligent, smart, come close to her high intelligence unlike the rest of the choices. New York is rather brilliant. Why did the producers pick out idiots to pair her up with? What's with her mother? Her mother can't stand Chance. He has fits of hysterics all the time. But he's not violent like "Buddha," he's just prone to hysterics. He would freak out if anyone got really violent. He poses. She's as hysterical as Chance, so what's the big deal. Why should she have to pretend to get into these second season losers? She can't stand them, and she's right. She's trying to get into the best of them, but in no way are they good enough. And as for last season's "winner" -what a turkey he turned out to be, upset because of New York's comments about his mom. OK so New York is not always the most political woman, so what. What did he expect anyway?

So what are the writers/producers going to do? I know nothing about reality TV, and it would have been better if I had remained in the dark. I have however, formed a strong opinion, namely that if the characters selected to be on the show this year suck, she should not have to settle on any of them. Surely the producers are not morons and will not force her to carry on with this charade.

I have been kidnapped by reality TV, and will continue posting on this heady topics. Whomever was reading for academic edification, read no more. My brain has been highjacked.

If you have ANY spare time, I recommend "I love New York." I have no spare time and I wouldn't miss a minute of New York. Finally a woman we can identify with. Just imagine if she turned her attention to real politics, psychology, academia.

How to Do Research III: The Literature Review, Part A.

The Background: Reading, thinking and writing
Writing a literature review for a dissertation or publication is difficult, only because it involves long stints of careful and sometime tedious reading and then shorter stints of consistent writing. From my perspective, preparing for, and producing a literature review is the only "difficult" part of doing research. It is an essential component of the dissertation and/or a scholarly or academic publication and at various moments, its not a whole lot of fun. It means in essence, knowing what is in the academic literature about your topic, knowing what studies have been done prior to your own, thoroughly reading the literature related to your own research, and then finding a way to write an organized report on "the literature" for others to read. Covering the literature can be deadly boring because scientific writing has traditionally been so archain, obtuse, and obfuscating, and therefore difficult to read. Writing it up coherently may at times be mind-bending but once you are solidly into it, its never as bad as feared. I may sweat over the literature review part of a paper, (and there's a chance that you will too), but only because I am easily bored, prone to restlessness, and the amount of reading required is not great for the restless. However in the end, its just a job like any other job, with an orderly series of steps to completion. Once you make up your mind to do it, you just dive in and do it. For some reason it brings out the most serious procrastination. We stall, we hesitate, put it off, find a million other things to do. But as I said, once you decide to do it, its just like any other job.

Overcoming inertia: How to deal with procrastination
There is a simple, across-task method of overcoming procrastination called the "ten-minute dash" (for me this originated with Merlin Mann although I don't know if he was the first anti-procrastination dasher http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination-hack-1025). The secret here is acknowledging that you can do anything for ten minutes, no matter how boring or difficult it might be. Get a timer, set it for ten minutes, and GO. Take whatever part of the job you're doing, and work as hard as possible until the timer goes off at ten minutes. Stop, do whatever you want to do (surf the web, look at TV, get something to eat) for 2 minutes, and then set the timer for another ten minute dash. If you're like many people, once you get over that initial inertia, you'll keep on task and want to keep going. At worst, make yourself do another ten minute dashes in a half hour, or sometime relatively soon. If you do this on and off all day, through the weekend, you'll get quite a bit done, and you'll have overcome the inertia. Another method, perhaps a precursor to the ten minute dash, is "time boxing" described by Steve Pavlina http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2004/10/timeboxing/. Here, when you have something that you're procrastinating, it seems to stretch endlessly in front of you, you block out a period of time in which you can make a dent in it. For example you block out 30 or 40 minutes during which you'll begin some part of the work of the literature review, without planning to finish any specific piece of it. Like the ten minute dash, it gets you over that inertia. Personally, I like the speed of the ten minute dash, it works for me. The time box is usually a bit longer and if I am seriously procrastinating, it seems like too much.

What is a literature review?
Before we get to the "how to do it," its a good idea to have a clear picture of what the literature review is. To put it simply, its an organized written review of all the studies, articles, summaries, that came before your study. The lit review is your presentation to your readers of everything that you know about the studies, the articles, the theories, the history, of the constructs that were done earlier, before you got interested in your topic. Its a summary of all the work done before your work. Its literally, a review of the literature preceding whatever you are going to do to add to the literature. Keep this in mind as you proceed. You have readers. They don't know much about your topic. Pretend you are talking to your readers, and tell them everything that you know, that you have gained from reading the literature. They don't want to read all that stuff that you are being forced to read, you are doing it for them. This is definitely not magic, or particularly difficult in concept. Think of someone who might be interested in your topic and start writing after you have done the reading or while you're reading. If you have trouble writing when you think it is something "formal" write it as if you're writing an email. Talk to you audience.

How to gather the literature
I recommend starting with whatever seems to be easiest to tackle. If I am approaching a relatively new topic, I like to begin with popular books if there are any out there. A well written popular book on a scientific topic is relatively painless to read, and has within it, either in a reference section or within the text itself, leads to the most important studies already conducted, that you will need to refer to in your literature review. So start with popular books. While you're reading, make lists of all the experiments, studies, articles, other books, mentioned. Don't skip by references without listing them, thinking you'll remember to go back to them without reminders. You won't, and you'll be missing some of the best leads you can find. If you don't want to write everything down, xerox the reference pages and then mark with colored marker all the references that you know you should have in your literature review. You'll go back to these shortly.

Heading into Google Scholar
Then head to Google Scholar, or if you prefer, PsychInfo or another professional data base. Personally, I prefer Google Scholar because it draws from data bases across disciplines. I'm a psychologist and any phenomena I'm investigating has, in one way or another, been approached by biologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists as well as psychologists. Using Google Scholar I'm likely to find references across a wide range of fields and data bases, which serves me well. I suggest starting with an obvious combination of words that describes in some way, the topic you are studying. I study self-conscious emotions, and specifically, I'm an expert in empathy-based guilt. So I begin with "guilt" and "empathy" and then "empathy and guilt." This connects to "altruism" so that gets thrown in both by itself and in combination with the other words. Very quickly I have found numerous articles that look interesting. Many are immediately available on line, and if not, at least the abstracts are available instantly. I print out page after page of abstracts, lists of articles, and more abstracts. I put in more words, and go at it again. I may leave Google Scholar and go into PsychInfo, or the APA wider data bases, and go at the whole thing again. I end up with a huge pile of pages of references, and abstracts.

How to start reading: Skim abstracts like you read gossip in the Enquirer
This part is fun. I hole up and skim abstracts. For me this part feels some like reading the Enquirer, which I happen to enjoy. There are these brief summaries of a study, like bits of gossip. I read rapidly and get completely absorbed in whatever I'm reading. Abstracts are usually succinct and to the point. I always have colored highlighters with me as I do this, and mark clearly the articles/abstracts that may be related to my topic. Through this process, I discover at least a reasonable number of articles that are connected to my topic. I then go back into a data base that I have access to (meaning that I will have access to the PDF of whole articles), and I begin to go after the articles that have grabbed my attention when I read the abstract. I gather large piles of articles in this way.

The next step is to return to the lists of references that I located in popular books, and I search for the the abstracts or whole articles in the same manner. If an article looks relevant from the abstract, go for the gold, the PDF of the whole article. Add these to the piles of article you obtained from your search in Google Scholar or whatever data base you have been using. Your pile of articles is by now, growing. Make no effort to organize at this point, go back and forth between data bases, when you get bored working in one format, move to another. The goal here is to get as much as you can. Its rather like the brainstorming state of a project. You don't need to be critical or highly selective, you are aiming for quantity; quality comes later.

Beginning to read:
At this point (there may have been many ten minute dashes, many blocks of time, and days or weeks gone by) I try to select out what seem to be summary-type articles that include rather extensive literature reviews themselves. Now the more difficult task begins, and stalling or procrastinating is again a problem. Pull in the ten minute dash to get yourself to start reading one of those thick and often difficult articles, that review all the work that has already been done. Read slowly and carefully, sometimes it is helpful to outline as you read, as it forces you to pay attention by being an active reader. This will pay off in the end, as it begins to make you an "expert" in your field of study. Mark all the studies noted that have high relevance to your topic. At the end of an article, pour over the references at the end. There you will find numerous articles that you somehow missed when you did your initial search in Google Scholar or Psych Info etc. Go back to your search engine, and go after those articles, they belong in your growing piles that may by now, be taking over your desk, your couch, the whole floor. Read another one of those thick summary articles that are in themselves extensive lit reviews, in the same rather tedious but conscientious manner. Again, pour through the references and grab anything that you missed earlier. Find the references, get them in PDF format, print them out, and add them to the piles. By the time you've done this three or four times, without knowing exactly when it happened, you're beginning to become an "expert."

Organize the piles: Getting ready to write
The next phase may be the most mentally challenging, as it involves figuring out how to organize the material you're going to review so its comprehensive and coherent. Sometimes its by topic, sometimes it may be historically sequential. Meaning, in what order were the studies done, where did the field begin, what were the first studies conducted relevant to the one you're going to do. I have also organized lit reviews by method of study --theoretical papers go in one pile and are approached together, empirical studies in another. Finding the links between sections of your review is difficult but again none of it is magic, no one has ownership of "the right way" and you may as well be confident that however you decide to organize the material is the best. Intellectual confidence goes a long way here. If you lack confidence, fall back on the old "fake it till you make it" and pretend you have it. If you are in the position of having to write a literature review, you are already at the top of your area. In fact, by the time you have the job of writing a literature review, you are in the top of your field in education and experience. Most people never dream of writing a lit review, so if its a task in front of you, you have every reason to feel confident and competent. You had to do something academically impressive in order to get to that position in the first place, so slide into feeling like you belong there. Take over and be your own boss.

Give yourself permission to be the expert you already are
Taking the reins here may be the ultimate secret to writing the literature review. At some point, as you keep gathering and reading more and more articles, you begin to note the same references cited over and over. This is a sign that you have really covered the terrain, you know a whole lot about the field, and you have become an expert. Expertise in activities like building a house, putting in and fixing plumbing, sewing a suit, filling cavities, repairing a heart valve, conducting an exposure and response prevention therapy, all require carrying out a process numerous times until the necessary actions become automatic. Writing a literature review requires a set of sequential steps over and over; searching for literature, printing it out (or xeroxing it in a library), reading it and noting whatever is important in your head or somewhere on paper, organizing numerous articles you've read in some coherent manner, and finally telling the story in written form. By the time you have to write a lit review you've already mastered most of the specific steps involved, they're already automatic. You know how to look for articles, you know how to read, you know how to take notes (maybe) or at least you know how to make lists, you know how to think about an outline or how to organize thoughts. Its easier than mastering other tasks that consist of things you don't already know how to do. If you give yourself permission to be the expert you already are and just dive into extensive reading and a little thinking, you're already there.