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Approaches to the Study of Religion in North America

Course Number: RE710

Planning a literature review

Read about the process in this book:

Campbell, A., Taylor, B. & McGlade, A. (2017). Reviewing the literature. In Transforming Social Work Practice Series: Research design in social work (pp. 9-26). 55 City Road, London: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi:10.4135/9781473909618.n2

Literature Review Planning Tool
What is a library database?

A library database is an online searchable collection of information, often in the form of references to articles, books, and book chapters (but also newspaper articles, thesis, music, etc). These examples offer a glimpse of how databases are used.

Dissertation

Tobin, S. M. (2019). Exorcism, deliverance, and psychotherapy from a catholic-christian perspective: A critical literature review. [PhD thesis, Azusa Pacific University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2301893125).

Scholarly Article

Thurman, W., Moczygemba, L. R., Welton-Arndt, L., Kim, E., Hudzik, A., Corley, K., & Tormey, K. (2021). Faith-based health and social services for people experiencing homelessness in the united states: A scoping review of the literature. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 32(4), 1698-1719.

Database searching tips
  1. Tutorial: Developing a research question: for graduate students
  2. Consider word variations and synonyms
    • think about how others might refer to your ideas
    • e.g, homeless OR homelessness OR unsheltered OR unstably housed OR displaced OR evicted, etc.
Search Tactics

 

What is the tactic?

What does the tactic do?

Examples

Boolean AND

Use AND to ensure that all terms appear in every search result.

shelter AND homelessness

Boolean OR

Use OR to ensure that at least one term appears in every search result.

homeless OR homelessness OR unsheltered OR unstably housed OR displaced OR evicted

Phrase searching

Use quotation marks to find more than one term in a row.

community services

Truncation

Use an asterisk* at the end of a term to include multiple endings. (sometimes $)

trauma*

trauma, traumatic, traumatically, traumatize, traumatized, traumatizing

Wildcard

Use a question mark ? within a term to search for variations of a single character.

decoloni?e

decolonize, decolonise

Proximity

Use NEAR/n to search for terms within n words of each other (sometimes ADJ/n)

religio* NEAR/5 healthcare OR "health care"

Tutorial: Better searching using AND, OR, NOT 

  1. Employ search limiters (available limiters depend on the database)
    • peer reviewed, article type, date
    • e.g, in PsycInfo, can include: age group, population group, methodology
  2. Identify key publications and authors
    • note citations, and cited references, repeated author names
  3. Document and track everything you do in the steps above
Books and ebooks

Tutorial: Finding books in Omni
Tutorial: Requesting books from other libraries in Omni

  • Search with Omni
    • limit to "Books and eBooks"
    • sign in to request from other Omni libraries
    • use Scan on Demand for chapters or articles

Tip: Search within ebook collections to search within the full text of eBooks (as opposed to searching titles in Omni)

Articles

Tutorial: Finding scholarly articles on a topic

Search in Omni

  • limit to "Articles" and "Peer-reviewed journals"
  • article content in Omni is not chosen or curated, but dumped in, i.e, it may not have everything on a particular topic.

Databases for Religion and Culture

Other interdisciplinary subject databases that may be helpful depending on your topic:

Other considerations

Predatory journals

Predatory journals are a global threat. They accept articles for publication — along with authors’ fees — without performing promised quality checks for issues such as plagiarism or ethical approval. (Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., & Ardern, C. (2019). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature, 576(7786), 210+)

Research methodologies

Grant, M., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26(2), 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x

Dissertations and Theses 

Dissertations and theses may be considered scholarly sources since they are closely supervised by a dissertation committee made up of scholars, are directed at an academic audience, are extensively researched, follow research methodology, and are cited in other scholarly work.

However, dissertations are still considered student work and are not peer-reviewed. Always clarify with your instructor as to whether you can include and cite dissertations and theses in your research.

Managing your citations

Page Owner: Greg Sennema

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