Literature review

In the first part of the assignment you will briefly review some scientific literature that relates to the research question you identified in your first assignment. Your goal in reviewing the literature about your topic is to answer the question - "What is known about my chosen research problem?"

1.1. Some important tips

1. As mentioned before, please provide your research question or updated research question (If your research question is different to that of the first assignment.) at the beginning of the second assignment. This is very important. Please do not forget!

2. Start early!Even writing a brief literature review section takes time!

3. Understand your topic: Before you start reviewing the literature, it is important for you to have a clear idea about the problem that you are trying to solve.

4. You don't need to use figures in your literature review. But if you want, you can. If you do, please make sure to use a caption and refer to each figure in the text.

5. Please do not copy paste from the papers or books! Rephrase or reword your sentences.

6. Don't just report what other people have done! Alsotry to evaluate, organise and synthesise.

7. Begin your discussion from a general perspective (but not too general!).

8. As you proceed, deal with more specific but important studies.

9. Don't forget to insert in-text citations.

10. Because this is ashort literature review (compared to a thesis for example), you do not need to have an advance organiser (preview of the topic that you will talk about in your literature review), or a summary section. You may have some headings or subheadings if you want, but if you don't think it is necessary, forget about it!

11. Use separate paragraphs, when the focus of the discussion changes. Expand acronyms when you use them for the first time.

1.2.Referencing style

You can either use author name style or numerical style. In the class I mostly talked about author name style, so if you want to use numerical style, you should make sure you are using it right. Note that in the author name style, the entries in the reference list are presented in alphabetical order by the last name of the first author. However, in the numerical style, the references are numbered sequentially.

For more information, look at the slides of Week 5 about referencing. Ideally, the number of references is between 5 and 10, but there is no specific requirement on the number of references (Just remember to include important references not any random study.).

Selecting quantitative and/or qualitative approach(s)

In the second part of your second assignment, you determine if you need a quantitative and/or qualitative approach for your research problem chosen in assignment 1. Note that your specific research question may be only quantitative or qualitative or it may have both quantitative and qualitative components. Please answer the questions in sections 2.1 and 2.2 and then determine if your research question is quantitative and/or qualitative.

2.1. Selecting a quantitative approach
Based on the problem statement developed in Assignment 1, develop a brief answer for questions given bellow. These questions are all related to characteristics typical of a problem requiring a quantitative methodology.

1. Define variable(s) that you need to measure in your research (quantitative source(s) of data).
2. Describe factors that indicateyou do not need to work with people directly as subjects to gather qualitative data.
3. Describe factors that might dictate a high level of structure in this research.

2.2. Selecting a qualitative approach
For each of the following questions, based on the problem statement developed in Assignment 1, write a brief answer. These questions are all related to characteristics typical of a problem requiring a qualitative methodology.

1. Describe the qualitative source(s) of data that you need for your research that cannot easily be converted to quantitative information.
2. Describe factors that indicate you need to work with people directly as subjectsto gather qualitative data.
3. Describe factors that might dictate a low level of structure in this research.

Considering your answers given to the questions in the subsection 2.1 and 2.2, do you think your research topic requires a quantitative or qualitative methodology or both?