Developing a Knowledge Base Through Review of the Literature
Key terms
Concept/construct matrix
Database
Literature review chart
With the explosion of information on the Internet, sources of information and knowledge beyond refereed articles and other scholarship appearing in print have been increasingly accepted as part of the “literature” review. In this chapter, we therefore use the term “literature” to refer to the broad spectrum of sources that are relevant to an investigation.
Most of us have had the experience of spending long hours at the library or on the Internet poring through literature and materials to discover what others have written about a topic of interest. Although you probably have participated in this type of activity for various classroom assignments, reviewing information for research is more systematic and serves more specific purposes.
One important purpose of reviewing the literature for research is to help sharpen the focus of your initial research interest and the specific strategy you plan to use to conduct a study. Discovering what others know and how they come to know it is an important function of the review when conducted at the initial stage of developing a research idea. The review, when conducted at this stage, involves a process by which the researcher critically assesses text and other relevant material that is directly and indirectly related to both the proposed topic and the potential strategies for conducting the research.
Another purpose of a literature review is to help determine how your research fits within an existing body of knowledge and what your research uniquely contributes to the scientific enterprise. Reviewing the literature for this purpose occurs as you are formulating your research ideas as well as when you are ready to write up your findings.
A literature review also serves as a source of data. For example, in certain forms of qualitative research, literature and other sources are brought in at different points of the research process to emphasize, elaborate, or reveal emergent themes. Likewise, a systematic literature review is used in quantitative, or experimental-type, methodologies to gather data, such as when the review forms the unit of analysis for a meta-analysis (see Chapter 9) or when ranking the level of evidence for a particular issue.
Thus, reviewing the literature is a significant thinking and action process in the world of research. However, it is often misunderstood and undervalued.
In this chapter, we begin our discussion with a presentation of the various reasons to conduct a literature review. We then detail the specific steps involved in conducting a literature review and share strategies that will help you accomplish this task. Because typically there is so much information directly related to any one topic, as well as literature from related bodies of research that also should be examined, the review process may initially seem overwhelming. However, some “tricks of the trade” can facilitate a systematic and comprehensive review process that is feasible, manageable, and even enjoyable.
Why review the literature?
There are four major reasons to review literature in research (Box 5-1). Let us examine each reason in depth.
Determine What Research Has Been Conducted on the Topic of Inquiry
Why should you conduct a study if it has already been done and done well or to your satisfaction? Here, the key words are “done well” and “to your satisfaction.” To determine whether the current literature is sufficient to help you solve a professional problem, you must critically evaluate how others have struggled with and resolved the same or a similar question. Most novice researchers think that they are not supposed to be critical of published literature. However, being critical is the very point of conducting the literature review. You are supposed to examine previous studies critically to determine whether these efforts were done well and whether they answer your question satisfactorily.
An initial review of the literature provides a sense of the previous work done in your area of interest. The review helps identify (1) the current trends and ways of thinking about your topic, (2) the contemporary debates in your field, (3) the gaps in the knowledge base, (4) the ways in which the current knowledge on your topic has been developed, and (5) the conceptual frameworks used to inform and examine your problem.
Sometimes an initial review of the literature will steer you in a research direction different from your original plan.
Now suppose you want to examine the extent to which mild aerobic exercise promotes cardiovascular fitness in the elder population. You find several studies that already document a positive outcome, but you question the methodologies used by these studies, including the type of exercise, the research design, and the criteria for inclusion of study participants. Also, you find that many authors suggest further inquiry is necessary to determine the particular exercises that promote cardiovascular fitness, as well as those that maintain joint mobility. Although this area is not what you had originally planned, the literature review refines your thinking and directs you to specific problem areas that need greater research attention than the one originally intended. You need to decide whether replication of the reported studies is important to verify study findings, whether replication with a different sample (e.g., racially and ethnically diverse elder persons not included in previous studies) would be important, and whether your focus should be modified according to the other recommendations specified in the literature (e.g., need to examine different forms of exercise for a wider range of health outcomes).
Consider the following example.
An investigator was interested in examining the psychological outcomes of therapeutic riding. She had planned to do a case study inquiry, following one adolescent over a period of 2 years. However, after conducting a literature review, the investigator found ten case studies of psychological outcomes, each suggesting larger experimental-type studies that could predict outcome in large groups. Given the presence of sound and relevant research, the investigator changed her methodology to meet the recommendations of the previous studies.
Consider another example of how the literature can initially influence the investigator’s research direction. Peters1 was interested in examining the relationship between “victim blaming” and myths about the causes of domestic violence. He performed an extensive literature review to ascertain what studies had been conducted and what instrumentation would be available for his study. Because he was unable to locate instrumentation on myths about domestic violence, he shifted his initial study to developing and validating an instrument to measure the construct of domestic violence myth acceptance. It was necessary for Peters to shift the research focus to instrument construction as a first research step in addressing his initial question.
Determine Level of Theory and Knowledge Development Relevant to Your Project
As you review the literature, not only do you need to describe what exists, but more important, you need to analyze critically the knowledge level, knowledge generation, and study boundaries in each work (Box 5-2).
Level of Knowledge
When you read a study, first evaluate the level of knowledge that emerges from the study. As discussed in Chapter 7, studies produce varying levels of knowledge, from descriptive to theoretical. The level of theory development and knowledge in your topic area will strongly influence the type of research strategy you select. As you read related studies in the literature, consider the level of theoretical development. Is the body of knowledge descriptive, explanatory, or at the level of prediction? Typically in general inquiry, and necessarily in experimental-type inquiry, the development of knowledge proceeds incrementally such that the first wave of studies in a particular area will be descriptive and designed to describe the characteristics of the phenomenon. After the characteristics of a problem are described, researchers search for associations or relationships among factors that may help explain the phenomenon. On the basis of the findings from explanatory research, attempts may be made to study the phenomenon from a predictive perspective by either testing an intervention or developing causal models to explain the phenomenon further.
Identifying the level of knowledge in the area of interest helps you identify the next research steps.
Since the 1990s, a rich body of literature on family caregiving has been generated at each of the three knowledge levels and in many disciplines, including family studies, social work, occupational therapy, nursing, and gerontology. Initially, descriptive research was necessary to identify the phenomenon of caregiving and describe the physical and psychological concomitants of this activity. Explanatory research then showed the role of gender, relationship, culture, and other factors in caregiver appraisals of their experiences. More recently, predictive studies have focused on evaluating complex causal models to predict long-term outcomes of caregiving, as well as testing interventions that attempt to reduce the negative consequences of providing extended care.
How Knowledge Is Generated
After you have determined the level of knowledge of your particular area of interest, you need to evaluate how that knowledge has been generated. In other words, you need to review the literature carefully to identify the research strategy or design used in each study. Many people tend to read the introduction to a study, then jump to the discussion section or set of conclusions to see what it can tell them. However, it is important to read each aspect of a research report, especially the section on methodology. As you read about the design of a particular study, you must critically examine whether it is appropriate for the level of knowledge that the authors indicate exists in the literature and whether the conclusions of the study are consistent with the design strategy. This is an important critical analysis of the existing literature that you need to feel fully empowered to perform. You may be quite surprised to find that, unfortunately, the literature is full of research that demonstrates an inappropriate match among research question, strategy, and conclusions.
In a 2005 study of social work as a career choice, Sellers and Hunter investigated the extent to which family background, particularly family dysfunction, was a predictor of choice of social work as a career.2 Within a descriptive design approach, Sellers and Hunter chose several “survey-type” measures to answer their questions, a demographic measure, a frequency count of predefined family problems, and a single item asking students whether their family background influenced their career choice. Although these measures could answer descriptive and associational questions, the method was limited in detecting predictive relationships between family dysfunction and career choice.
As you read a study, ask yourself the three interrelated questions in Box 5-3. The answers to these questions will help you understand and critically determine the appropriateness of the level of knowledge generated in your topic area. This understanding in turn will help to shape the direction of your research.
Boundaries of a Study
It is also important to determine the boundaries of the studies you are reviewing and their relevance to your study problem. By “boundaries” we mean the “who, what, when, and where” of a study.
If you do not find any literature in your topic area, you may choose to identify an analogous body of literature to provide direction in how to develop your strategy.
Even though many studies have been conducted at the descriptive, explanatory, and predictive levels, more research is needed on this topic at each level to fill in important gaps in knowledge. For example, although previous research suggests that caregivers from diverse cultural groups express varying levels of distress and stress from caregiving, we do not know the reasons for this. Also, we do not fully understand the caregiving experience for people from diverse cultural groups or how the experience may differ in urban and rural environments.
Suppose you are interested in testing the effectiveness of a hypertension reduction program in a rural setting, and published studies report positive outcomes for a range of interventions. On closer examination, however, you discover that these studies have been conducted in urban areas and include primarily male participants with backgrounds different from the population you plan to include in your study. Therefore, it will be important to examine studies that test health promotion interventions in rural settings and to include participants with characteristics similar to the intended targets of your study. By extending the literature review in this way, you will obtain a better understanding of the issues and design considerations that are important for the specific boundaries of your study. Also, you may discover that the level of theory and knowledge development in hypertensive risk reduction programs is advanced for one particular population (e.g., urban men) but undeveloped in respect to another population (e.g., rural women).
Determining the boundaries of the literature helps you to evaluate the level of knowledge that exists for the particular population and setting you are interested in studying. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been vigilant about boundaries, recognizing that many studies are applied to populations that have not participated in the study. In efforts to redress this problem, NIH has instituted policies to include populations such as women, children, and minorities who have not been included in research.
Determine Relevance of the Current Knowledge Base to Your Problem Area
Once you have evaluated the level of knowledge advanced in the literature, you need to determine its relevance to your idea.
Let us assume you are considering conducting an experimental-type study. In your literature review, you must find research that points to a theoretical framework relevant to your topic and research that identifies specific variables and measures for inclusion in your study. Your literature review must also yield a body of sufficiently developed knowledge so that hypotheses can be derived for your study. In other words, in the experimental-type tradition, the literature provides the rationale and structure for everything that you investigate and for all action processes.
Suppose you are planning to conduct a study to identify the factors that predict residential placement by family members of older adults with mobility impairment who live in rural communities. You review the literature and find that single predictors, such as the aging member’s satisfaction with current living arrangements and the fit between family needs and available community transportation services, are important in determining outcome. This comprehensive review supports the need to conduct a predictive study to examine the interaction of variables.
For each variable you choose to include in your study, even demographics, you must support or justify your inclusion of the variable on the basis of sound literature. Just think of all the extraneous information that could be introduced into a research study. For theoretical, ethical, and methodological soundness, experimental-type approaches require supportive literature for all variables.
Consider research involving the testing of interventions designed to support family caregivers of persons with dementia. You find literature that identifies, tests, and verifies what interventions are needed to enhance safety in the home. Given the weight of evidence that families experience great distress and express the need to learn new strategies to manage dementia care, particularly as the disease progresses, the intervention approach and use of a randomized trial was well substantiated.
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