This book is intended for anyone wants to research social, health, educational, and business issues. It is ideal for students, researchers, marketers, planners, and policymakers who design and manage public and private agencies, conduct research studies, and prepare strategic plans and grant proposals. This new edition includes: - Flow diagrams to assist the reader in linking each step of the review to the contents of each chapter. - New references and other online resources to help users learn more about literature reviews. - Links to online literature reviews and meta-analyses. - Guidance in choosing online public and private bibliographic databases for literature reviews. - Guidance about searching the web for research information. The text also discusses the use of Boolean operators for simple and advanced searches, tells readers how to use bibliographic software to organize literature reviews and search 'The Virtual File Cabinet,' and describes how to synthesize the literature as a stand-alone report or as a component of a paper or proposal to justify the need for and significance of research, and/or to explain a study's findings.
Providing readers with an accessible, in-depth look at how to synthesize research literature, Conducting Research Literature Reviews is perfect for students, researchers, marketers, planners, and policymakers who design and manage public and private agencies, conduct research studies, and prepare strategic plans and grant proposals. Bestselling author Arlene Fink shows readers how to explain the need for and significance of research, as well as how to explain a study’s findings. Offering a step-by-step approach to conducting literature reviews, the Fourth Edition features updated examples and covers: how to select databases and evaluate their quality; selecting and organizing key words and other terms in order to effectively search databases and the Web; setting standards for evaluating the quality of research and other literature; extracting and recording information from articles and studies; synthesizing what the reader finds either descriptively or via a meta-analysis; recording and storing the results in a virtual file cabinet; and how to use bibliographic software.
Providing readers with an accessible, in-depth look at how to synthesize research literature, Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper is perfect for students, researchers, marketers, planners, and policymakers who design and manage public and private agencies, conduct research studies, and prepare strategic plans and grant proposals. Bestselling author Arlene Fink shows readers how to explain the need for and significance of research, as well as how to explain a study’s findings. Offering a step-by-step approach to conducting literature reviews, the Fifth Edition features new research, examples, and references from the social, behavioral, and health sciences, expanded coverage of qualitative research, updated and revised meta-analysis procedures, a brand new glossary of key terms, double the number of exercises, and additional examples of how to write reviews.
This book will help students formulate a strategy for making clear decisions about what to include and not include in their literature reviews, and avoid getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume of available research. It will also help them understand the steps that are needed to produce a reliable and unbiased summary of the existing research.
This Second Edition of Diana Ridley’s bestselling guide to the literature review outlines practical strategies for reading and note taking, and guides the reader on how to conduct a systematic search of the available literature, and uses cases and examples throughout to demonstrate best practice in writing and presenting the review. New to this edition are examples drawn from a wide range of disciplines, a new chapter on conducting a systematic review, increased coverage of issues of evaluating quality and conducting reviews using online sources and online literature and enhanced guidance in dealing with copyright and permissions issues.
Doing a Literature Search provides a practical and comprehensive guide to searching the literature on any topic within the social sciences. The book will enable the reader to search the literature effectively, identifying useful books, articles, statistics and many other sources of information. The text will be an invaluable research tool for postgraduates and researchers across the social sciences.
This new edition of the best-selling book offers graduate students in education and the social sciences a road map to developing and writing an effective literature review for a research project, thesis, or dissertation. Organized around a proven six-step model and incorporating technology into all of the steps, the book provides examples, strategies, and exercises that take students step by step through the entire process: Selecting a topic Searching the literature Developing arguments Surveying the literature Critiquing the literature Writing the literature review The second edition includes key vocabulary words, technology advice, and additional tips on when and how to write during the early stages--including the use of journals and memoranda--to make the literature review process a success.
• Illustrates all the steps in preparing qualitative and quantitative literature reviews. • Emphasizes topic selection, locating literature, and avoiding major pitfalls in evaluating and synthesizing literature. • Shows how to improve literature reviews through the judicious inclusion of statistical results found in the literature. • Provides easy-to-follow advice on how to avoid misrepresenting the results of published research in literature reviews. • The numerous examples throughout the text and the nine model literature reviews clarify the process of following the guidelines for writing solid, state-of-the-art literature reviews. • Shows students how to blend qualitative and quantitative approaches to preparing literature reviews without being overly mathematical. • Two chapters present clear explanations of how to conduct meta-analyses. • All examples have been updated to ensure consistency with the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association and the fourth edition of the American Sociological Association’s Style Guide.
`This is a great book for students, both for classroom use and to keep on their bookshelves once they graduate′ - Gale Spencer, Binghamton University Conducting Research Literature Reviews, Second Edition shows readers how to identify, interpret, and analyze published and unpublished research literature. Through the use of checklists, case examples, and exercises, author Arlene Fink unravels the intricacies of * Selecting questions to maximize the efficiency of the review * Identifying subject headings and key words for electronic searches * Identifying the most appropriate databases, including supplementing computer and Web-based searches * Dealing with unpublished studies * Setting inclusion and exclusion criteria * Justifying methods for reviewing only the ′highest quality′ literature * Preparing a structured literature abstraction form * Ensuring the reliability and validity of the review * Synthesizing and reporting results * Conducting and evaluating descriptive literature reviews * How to understand and evaluate the principles of meta-analysis New to the Second Edition: * Flow diagrams to assist the reader in linking each step of the review to the contents of each chapter * New references and other online resources, including links to online literature reviews and meta-analyses * Guidance in choosing online public and private bibliographic databases for literature reviews * Tips for searching the web for research information The text also discusses the use of Boolean operators for simple and advanced searches and shows readers how to use bibliographic software to organize literature reviews and search ′The Virtual File Cabinet.′ It also describes how to synthesize the literature as a stand-alone report or as a component of a paper or proposal. This book is intended for anyone wants to research social, health, educational, and business issues. It is ideal for students, researchers, marketers, planners, and policymakers who design and manage public and private agencies, conduct research studies, and prepare strategic plans and grant proposals. Praise for the First Edition ′There is finally a book available that removes the mystery and guesswork from doing literature reviews. This is especially important for both graduate and undergraduate levels if you are asking the students to make judgments about the quality and applicability of articles they may read. This book is not only timely but also a valuable way to help students evaluate articles they find on the Internet.′ --Anita VanBrackle, Kennesaw State University
