Printable handout about literature reviews

Research Modules (Tourism, Hospitality and Events)

The Literature The starting point for any research is to read what has already been covered on the topic. The books, journals, articles, websites, newspapers and magazines you are reading are known as the literature - information that has been produced covering the topic.

When you start to read books and articles on a topic you will find a number of areas where authors discuss the same topics and they may have similar or different views on these topics. There will also be some topic areas that one article covers but some of the others do not cover. How we organise these summaries can help, or hinder, our research.

The more you read the more confusing all this information can get. If when you write an essay or research project you just describe the content of each article or book in turn your reader will be left as confused as you might be.

This also only shows that you can find information but, by doing this, you do not prove that you understand how it all fits together.

Making sense of the Literature One way of dealing with this complex collection of information is to summarise all the different ideas. A good way to do this is to use a table that summarises all the different ideas and helps you to organise them. This summary table is known as a literature matrix. It identifies the different topics relevant to your reading/research and what each author has said about these themes.

Once you have this summary of the issues you can work your way down the themes, indicating the main points and which authors agree and disagree and write up these findings. This written summary of what the literature says is the literature review. This is, therefore, much more than a description of what the articles say because you are comparing and contrasting the content and helping the reader to understand the issues.

Identifying Themes (a) Deciding on themes before reading The themes you will explore will be determined by your research topic. For example, if you are researching the value of work placements for full-time students there are a number of areas that might seem to be relevant: • • •

Employers’ perspective Students’ perspective Institutional perspective

Or you may decide to narrow these down more precisely: • • • • • •

Benefits from the students’ perspective Drawbacks from the students’ perspective Benefits from the employers’ perspective Drawbacks from the employers’ perspective Benefits from the institutional perspective Drawbacks from the institutional perspective

An alternative way to decide on themes is given on the next page.

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Identifying Themes (b) Basing themes on reading An alternative way of deciding on the themes is to read around the topic and let the themes suggest themselves from your reading.

Extract from: Riggert, S., Boyle, M., Petrosko, J.M., Ash, D. & Rude-Parkins, C. (2006) Student Employment and Higher Education: Empiricism and Contradiction . Review of Educational Research, Vol. 76, No. 1, pp.63-92

“A number of sources raised concerns about the impact of student employment. The NCES (Horn & Malizio, 1998) observed that “the likelihood of students attending for a full year was related to their employment intensity” (p. 18). Astin (1993) noted that “working full-time is associated with a pattern of outcomes that is uniformly negative. . . . Working full-time also has uniformly negative effects on every arena of (student) satisfaction except [with] Facilities, and on willingness to re-enroll at the same college” (p. 388).”

This extract suggests one main theme, ‘problems with students working’. You may have used other words to identify the same idea. If you continue to read the article you will see other themes emerge.

Using the themes to summarise your reading Once you have an idea of the themes, you can start to draw up a summary table like the one below. This will label all the areas of each article that need to be summarised.

You can use MS Word or MS Excel to create a table like this one for yourself or look in the resources for this lesson and you will find a template for one that you can edit.

As you read a book or journal you should note the main findings under the respective headings.

Author

Date

Type of Publication

Employer views

Student views

Institution Views

You should record the articles in chronological (date) order to help you see changes over time, as you read down the list. © KP UCB 2015

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Literature Matrix By completing a table like the one above, you are making a literature matrix.

Extract from book: Pens, H. (2004) Work and Study – Higher Education. Pitman, London, UK “Students are increasingly opting for work experience when given the opportunity and university careers departments often make links with the local businesses in order to facilitate this. The ever increasing financial demands on students also pressures students to take up employment.” (Pens, 2004, p.45) Extract from journal article: Seam, T. & Knols, R. (2002) Work and Study. Journal of Occupational Employment . Vo. 5, No. 2, pp. 200-296.

“It has been identified by a number of researchers that work experience prior to graduation has a significant impact on the employment chances of graduates (High, 1999). Employers frequently responded that they preferred to employ people with prior work experience. Indeed such is the volume of these publications, students are also aware of the value of this and an increasing number are applying for programmes with a compulsory work experience year. …..Research by Jones (1997) found that 86% of students who opt to do a work placement while they study and students who chose to work in their chosen industry part time during their course believe that it will help them gain higher marks as well as increase employment chances. Support for the idea of increased academic achievement that results from work experience has been identified by Kinson (2009) who compared students who were working with those who were not working 3 institutions.” (Seam and Knols, 2002, p.254) Extract from journal: Benis, R. (2006) Working Students – is it worth it? Journal of Occupational Employment . Vol. 8, No.1, pp. 123178.

“Research by several authors (Jones, 2000 and Lowe, 2005) all found that for students who were working more than 20 hours a week while studying full time there was a drop in grades achieved and Smith, (2002) also found that there was a number of students who found it too difficult to balance their time and so dropped out of their studies. In addition some employers criticized employees who study while they work because they insist on taking time off work to attend examinations or meet assessment deadlines.” (Benis, 2006, p.76

Literature Matrix - sample

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If you completed the task you were set, your literature matrix table might look something like the one below.

Author

Date

Seam, T. and 2002 Knols, R.

Type of Publication Journal

Pens, H.

2004

Book

Benis, R.

2006

Journal

Employers’ views

Students’ views

Institutional Views

Prefer people with work experience

Seek programmes Work experience results with work experience. in higher marks Believe that they will gain higher marks from working Seek work experience. Careers departments Have to work for seek opportunities for money students. Recommend 15 hours max Unreliable employees Problems balancing Lower grades and more need time off for study work and study dropouts (>20 hrs per week)

There are a few things you might note here: • the articles are listed in date order • not every book/article will cover all the themes • References to other authors in your literature may lead you to also look at these books for more detail You should also be aware that there is no precisely correct matrix and if yours is similar, but not exactly the same, this is fine.

Literature Reviews This is simply a review of what the articles say on the topic but not a description of the different comments made.

•

It involves analysis (breaking down the content) and synthesis (bringing it back together - summarising).

•

It will identify where authors agree and disagree and make judgements about the evidence provided to support these views.

•

It should show your wide reading and understanding of the topic and related issues.

Once you have a literature matrix you have already broken the content down and, therefore, by putting it back together and comparing the comments under each theme, you are summarising the content. As you write your literature review you will also indicate the value of the information sources.

A Literature Review Please note that your literature matrix should usually include many more articles than in the sample we have considered in this lesson but the principles are the same.

Based on the literature matrix we have developed, it is possible to write a literature review.

Author

Date

Type of Publication Employers’ views

Students’ views

Seam, T. and Knols, R.

2002

Journal

Pens, H.

2004

Book

Seek programmes with Work experience results in work experience. Believe higher marks that they will gain higher marks from working Seek work experience. Have Careers departments seek to work for money opportunities for students.

Recommend 15 hours max

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Prefer people with work experience

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Institutional Views

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Benis, R.

2006

Journal

Unreliable employees need Problems balancing work time off for study and study

Lower grades and more dropouts (>20 hrs per week)

Seam and Knols (2002) established that employers are keen to employ people who already have work experience and so, by working while studying, students are gaining an advantage over their non-working peers. In contrast, Benis (2004) pointed out the problems students can cause for a workplace when they put their studies before their work duties.

There is general agreement in the literature that students are keen to work while they are studying and this may be to alleviate financial difficulties (Pens, 2004) or to gain work experience and increase their future employment options (Seam and Knols, 2002). Authors like Benis (2006) highlight the difficulties faced by working students and, in particular, the difficulty of balancing work and study which may impact on either their reliability in their employment or lowerlevel of performance in their studies. This is an interesting contrast with the work of Seam and Knols (2002) who found that students believed work experience would increase their marks. However, it should be noted that the Seam and Knol’s (2002) study focused on a small sample of students in one university and so might not be generalisable to the wider student population.

From an institutional perspective the literature also proposes contradictory findings with Seam and Knol (2002) finding that higher marks result from work experience but the study by Benis (2006), focusing on students who worked over 20 hours per week, suggests that working while studying led to lower grades and an increased drop out rate from higher education. In support of students seeking work, Pens (2004) identified that a number of H.E. institutions are seeking to help students find suitable work but are recommending a limit of 15 hours to the working week, which would exclude these students from the group researched by Pens (2004).

Note this has: • summary of each theme • comparison of views • reasons offered for differences in findings • evaluation of research done

Wording of Literature Reviews You will note from the literature review on the previous page that there are a number of ways to express the phrase “Benis said”.

Some possible ways are: • Highlights • Points out • Emphasises • Found that In order to help you develop skills in expressing these ideas the table below (also found on the additional handout in this week’s resources) that lists a number of verbs that you might consider using in your literature review.

Verbs – can be used to express your ideas without repeating the same words Show: Persuade: Argue: Support: Examine: Propose: Advise: © KP UCB 2015

demonstrate, establish, found, present, determine assure, convince, satisfy, establish reason, discuss, debate, consider, contend, maintains (that) uphold, underpin, advocate, affirm, agree, applaud, concur, promote(s) discuss, explore, investigate, scrutinise advance, propound, proffer, suggest (the view that), indicate, point out suggest, recommend, advocate, exhort, encourage, urge,

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Believe: Emphasise: State: Evaluate: Hypothesise: Disagree: Reject: Claim:

hold, profess (the view that), think accentuate, stress, underscore, focus, expound (on) express, comment, remark, declare, articulate, describe, instruct, inform, report, add, assert, express, inform (of, about), mention(s), outline, describe appraise, assess speculate, postulate dispute, refute, contradict, differ, object, dissent refute, repudiate, remonstrate (against), disclaim, dismiss, question, disagree (with), doubt allege, assert, affirm, contend, maintain

Your choice of word can reveal to your reader your stance toward the author you are reporting on. It will show whether or not you agree with the points being made. Take care in your word choices.

Summary A literature review provides an overview of the documents covering a research topic comparing and contrasting the issues and themes in order to provide a summary of what has been written previously. In the context of a research paper a literature review is a critical synthesis of previous research.

A ‘good’ literature review….. ….. is a synthesis of available research ….. is a critical evaluation ….. has breadth and depth

A ‘poor’ literature review is….. ….. a summary of different peoples’ ideas ….. description only ….. limited and superficial

If you find any of these ideas difficult to understand, go back to the sample literature review and see how it works in practice.

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