Assessment: Literature Review
Description: : This assignment provides us with the opportunity to conduct a small-scale literature review, leading to a conclusion about the current state of knowledge on the topic area and possibly further questions that my need to be addressed.
Task:
• Leading technological changes in health care
Before you start your literature review, read the following document that gives you useful information on conducting and writing a literature review.
Literature Reviews: Getting Started
In any literature review, you need toestablish focus and develop search strategies around thatfocus. This information sheet provides some strategies for getting started, defining a cleartopic, and developing a research question or questions to guide your literature review.
The Purpose of Literature Reviews You may be required to do a literature review in postgraduate or undergraduate courses at university. Literature reviews can be used alone,or in research projects, reports, articles and theses, to:
•Establish context, by providing background information and identifyingprevious research in a particular area;
•Discuss different theories and/or methodologies, and critique why they might be problematicor useful for a research project; and/or
•Demonstrate the relevance, importance, and/or strength of theresearch problem orargument that you are presenting.
Literature reviews are a way of bringing together, analyzing and evaluating a range of sourcesin relation to a particular topic or research question.
Step 1: Establishing Focus
You may have a set research topic, problem, or even question to analyze.
Refer to the ‘Unpacking the Assignment' information sheet to get started on analyzing this topic/question. This will also guide you through the processof formulating key questions tofocus your research.
Developing your own research question If you are developing your own research topic and question(s), try using the ‘inverted triangle' or‘funnel' model. This involves narrowing the focus of your literature review, by following these steps:
• Definethe general topic area, taking intoaccount what is appropriate inyour discipline, program, and/or course.
• Identify the particular problem or issue thatyouare interested ininvestigating.
• Turn the problem into questionse.g. Why does this happen? How can we solve this problem?
What are the main features of this issue? - These help to focus yourresearch and writing. They also help you to define your aims and objectives in the literaturereview.
•Brainstormideas and key points, using your researchquestion(s) as a foundation. Conceptmapping may be useful here.
•Always maintain your focusand purpose: Continue to check that you are ‘on track'.
As you begin to collect literature, revisit your research question(s), and ask:
• Is the literature answering or helping to address my research questions?
• Is the literature informing my understanding of the topic area?
• What seem to be the important aspects of the problem or topic?
• What am I trying to communicate in this literature review?
The Next Steps...
Once you have analyzed or formulated your research focus, and developed search strategies, you need to start managing the information that you collect. As part of this, you will need to:
• Critically analyze, compare, and evaluate.
• Classify information as you read, and sort similar evidence together.
• Note different or conflicting evidence.
• Take notes and cite references.
• Revise your question(s) as appropriate.
Read the second information sheet on ‘Literature Reviews: Staying on Track' to identify strategies for continuing your literature review, and ‘putting it all together'