Thesis

Table of Contents

1. Literature Review  2. Methods for Secondary Research  3. Searching  4. Research Question  5. Worksheet

Introduction

This guide accompanies an in-class workshop about starting a literature review for your thesis.

OBJECTIVE: draft a working plan for your literature review.

1. Literature Review

THE PRODUCT: A literature review is a survey of research about a particular topic.

• It's specific - focuses on a well-defined research question.
• It's selective - includes a curated selection of research.
• It's a synthesis - brings together discussions from across the research.
• It's a starting point - identifies where your research fits into the picture.
• It shows accountability - demonstrates how you're tuning-in to others' work and voices responsibly.

The Gray Test

Image Description

Gray test. If an article fails to meet this bare-minimum test, it’s biased and needs improvement: (1) Cite 2 women scholars, (2) cite 2 BIPOC scholars, (3) meaningfully engage with that scholarship. After Kishonna Gray, inventor of #citeherwork.

From Writing Your Academic Journal Article in 12 Weeks (Belcher, 2019)

2. Methods for Secondary Research

THE PROCESS: Literature review is a type of secondary research. There are different ways to review literature. Your methods need to fit your goals for the project at hand.

• Secondary research = how you identify and work with existing research. 
• Methods for secondary research = the strategies, processes, or techniques you use to identify and work with existing research.

Question: Where do you tend to search for peer-reviewed articles?

Example of Methods for Secondary Research

• Systematic review = identifying, appraising, and synthesizing ALL existing evidence to answer a specific question.
  • Researchers develop, document, and report their methods for secondary research.
    • E.g. "Music Interventions for Improving Psychological and Physical Outcomes in People with Cancer" (see Search methods for identification of studies, pp. 8-9).

Specific Goals for a Research Paper or Thesis

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Goals for your literature review. 1. Define your topic. It’s common to begin with a broad topic, but how will you develop a more specific focus? 2. Develop your understanding of the literature. Can you map out themes, outcomes, methodologies, controversies across a body of literature? 3. Identify where you fit in the conversation. How are you contributing to knowledge in your field? Throughout all 3 stages, you'll be finding relevant studies.

3. Searching

PART I: GETTING STARTED

a. Article Databases

There is a list of databases relevant to Kinesiology & Physical Education. Choose databases to search for your topic based on the descriptions.

• Limit results to peer-reviewed.
• Discover key articles.
• Recognize key scholars.
• Avoid missing important results.
• Cut out irrelevant results.

Question: What's a topic you're currently researching? Let's choose some databases.

b. Keywords

What are the major concepts in your topic? What are some synonyms or alternate terms you can use? 

• Consider the terms typically used in research literature.
• Google "synonyms for ..."
• If you have an on-topic article, see what terms get used in the title/abstract.

Major Concept	Keywords
Cancer	cancer, neoplasm, melanoma

c. Field Searching

• Use the drop-down beside a search box to find terms in specific areas of results. Codes beside each field tell the database where to search for a term.

Example: TI walking AND TI elderly in SPORTDiscus (all results will have these terms in titles).

d. Limits

• You can limit results to peer-reviewed or scholarly.
• A date limit is also sometimes useful.

e. Preliminary Searching

• Before brainstorming a research question, it's helpful to learn a bit about your topic. 
  • Do some preliminary database searching: what questions are researchers are asking?
    • From your search results, read just article titles and abstracts where the titles sound interesting.

Example: handedness AND sport* in SPORTDiscus

PART II: SEARCH LIKE A PRO

a. Search Tactics

Try using some of the following database search tactics to get better results.

What is the tactic?	What does the tactic do?	Examples
Boolean AND	Use AND to ensure that all terms appear in every search result.	depression AND home care
Boolean OR	Use OR to ensure that at least one term appears in every search result.	transgender OR LGBTQ OR GLBT
Phrase searching	Use “quotation marks” to find more than one term in a row.	“brain cancer”
Truncation	Use an asterisk* at the end of a term to include multiple endings.	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

b. Subjects

• These are controlled terms from a database thesaurus that are assigned to articles.
• Databases have different thesauri, which affects the subjects you use.

Example: MESH.EXACT("Health Services for Transgender Persons") in MEDLINE

Example: (MH "Transgender Persons+") in CINAHL

Major Concept	Keywords	Subjects
Cancer	cancer, neoplasm, melanoma	CINAHL: Neoplasms Melanoma

Question! What is the CINAHL subject for teenager?

Major Concept	Keywords	CINAHL Subject
Teenager	youth, adolescents, adolescence, teenagers, teens, young people, young person	???

4. Research Question

Question Frameworks

• A well-defined research question gives direction to your searching.
• Frameworks can give guidance about what to include.
• Pick any elements from the frameworks below that work for your topic.

PICO (for clinical topics) 

Patient, population, or problem - Who is my question about?

Intervention - What is the intervention?

Comparison - Is there a comparison intervention?

Outcome - What is the outcome?

PEO (for qualitative topics)

Population - Who is my question about?

Exposure - What issue am I interested in?

Outcomes - What do I want to examine?

CLIP (for health policy topics)

Client - Who is the service aimed at?

Location - Where is the service sited?

Improvement - What do you want to find out?

Professional - Who is involved in providing the service?

Developing a Research Question

 

5. Worksheet