SOURCES AND LOCATION OF LITERATURE REVIEW

DEFINITION OF LITERATURE REVIEW

• A literature review is reading surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and that provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources explored while researching a particular topic and to demonstrate how research fits within a larger field of study.

SOURCES OF LITERATURE REVIEW

• Literature sources should be classified as the following
  • Primary Source
  • Secondary source &
  • Tertiary Source

PRIMARY SOURCES: Primary sources means original studies, based on direct observation, use of statistical records, interviews, or experimental methods, of actual practices or the actual impact of practices or policies. They are authored by researchers, contains original research data, and are usually published in a peer-reviewed journal. Primary literature is also called empirical research.

• Characteristics of Primary Sources
  • Are original materials
  • created in the time period involved
  • Have not been filtered through interpretation or evaluation by experts
  • Represent original thinking or experiences, reporting of a discovery, or the sharing of new information.
• Examples of Primary Sources
  • Artifacts [e.g. furniture or clothing, all from the time under study]
  • Audio/ video recordings [e.g. radio programs]
  • Diaries
  • Internet communications on email, listservs, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms
  • Interviews [e.g., oral histories, telephone, e-mail]
  • Newspaper articles written at the time
  • Original official documents [e.g., birth certificate, will, marriage license, trial transcript]
  • Personal correspondence [e.g., letters]
  • Photographs Proceedings of meetings, conferences and symposia
  • Records of organizations, government agencies [e.g. annual report, treaty, constitution, government document]
  • Speeches
  • Survey Research [e.g., market surveys, public opinion polls]
  • Transcripts of radio and television programs
  • Works of art, architecture, literature, and music [e.g., paintings, sculptures, musical scores, buildings, novels, poems]

SECONDARY SOURCES: Secondary sources describe, summarize, or discuss information or details originally presented in another source; meaning the author, in most cases, did not participate in the event.

This type of source is written for a broad audience and will include definitions of discipline specific terms, history relating to the topic, significant theories and principles, and summaries of major studies/events as related to the topic.

Secondary sources are not evidence per se, but rather, provide an interpretation, analysis, or commentary derived from the content of primary source materials and/or other secondary sources.

• Characteristics of Secondary Sources:
  • Reviewing secondary source material can be of value in improving overall research paper because secondary sources facilitate the communication of what is known about a topic.
  • This literature also helps to understand the level of uncertainty about what is currently known and what additional information is needed for further research.
  • However, the secondary sources are not the subject to analysis. Instead, they represent various opinions, interpretations, and arguments about the research problem.
• Examples of Secondary sources:
  • Biographical works
  • Books, other than fiction and autobiography
  • Commentaries, criticisms
  • Histories
  • Journal articles [depending on the discipline, they can be primary]
  • Magazine and newspaper articles
  • Certain website Database

TERTIARY SOURCES: A tertiary source consolidates and organizes primary and secondary sources together into one source in order to facilitate quick access to information. Tertiary sources are good starting points for research projects because they often extract the essential meaning or most important aspects of large amounts of information into a convenient format.

• Characteristics of Tertiary Sources:
  • Often compile factual information in one place. Searching for the data in multiple sources takes time but searching for names of heads of state can be found in an almanac.
  • Lead the reader to additional sources. For example, rather than citing in literature review a long list of additional sources on a topic, simply cite to a comprehensive bibliography compiled by another researcher.
  • Distill large quantities of closely related information or data [e.g., a statistical compendium].
  • Often contain references and bibliographies that can point to key primary and secondary sources.
• Examples of Tertiary Sources:
  • Abstracts
  • Almanacs
  • Bibliographies
  • Chronologies
  • Dictionaries and encyclopedias [also considered secondary]
  • Directories
  • Fact books
  • Handbooks
  • Indexes, databases, search engines, and bibliographies used to locate primary and secondary sources
  • Manuals
  • Statistical compendiums

LOCATING LITERATURE REVIEW FOR RESEARCH

• The ability to identify and locate documents on a research topic is an important skill that requires adaptability—rapid technological changes, such as the expanding use of the Internet, are making manual methods of finding information from print resources obsolete, and more sophisticated methods of searching the literature are being introduced continuously.
• It can be located by consulting with librarians at the institution or to search the Internet for updated information.

ELECTRONIC LITERATURE SEARCHES:

•  In most college and university libraries, students can perform their own searches of electronic databases—huge bibliographic files that can be accessed by computer.
• Most of the electronic databases of interest to nurses can be accessed either through an online search (i.e., by directly communicating with a host computer over telephone lines or the Internet) or by CD-ROM (compact disks that store the bibliographic information). Several competing commercial vendors offer information retrieval services for bibliographic databases.
• Currently, the most widely used service providers for accessing bibliographic files are the following:
  • Aries Knowledge Finder (www.ariessys.com)
  • Ebsco Information Services (www.ebsco.com)
  • Ovid Technologies (www.ovid.com)
  • PaperChase (www.paperchase.com)
  • SilverPlatter Information (www.silverplatter.com)
• online catalogue systems:
  • First, books and other holdings of libraries can almost always be scanned electronically using online catalogue systems.
  • Through the Internet, the catalogue holdings of libraries across the country can be searched.
  • Finally, it may be useful to search through Sigma Theta Tau International’s Registry of Nursing Research on the Internet.
  • This registry is an electronic research database with over 12,000 studies that can be searched by key words variables, and researchers’ names.
  • The registry provides access to studies that have not yet been published, which cuts down the publication lag time; however, caution is needed because these studies have not been subjected to peer review (i.e., critical review by other experts in the field).
  • Electronic publishing in general is expanding at a rapid pace; librarians and faculty should be consulted for the most useful websites.
• Electronic Databases:
• The two electronic databases that are most likely to be useful to nurse researchers are CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) and MEDLINE® (Medical Literature On-Line).
• Other potentially useful bibliographic databases for nurse researchers include:
  • AIDSLINE (AIDS Information On-Line)
  • Cancer Lit (Cancer Literature)
  • CHID (Combined Health Information Database)
  • EMBASE (the Excerpta Medica database)
  • ETOH (Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Science Database)
  • HealthSTAR (Health Services, Technology, Administration, and Research)
  • PsycINFO (Psychology Information)
  • Rndex (Nursing and managed care database)
  • The CINAHL database
• The CINAHL database: The CINAHL Database is the most important electronic database for nurses. This database covers references to virtually all English-language nursing and allied health journals, as well as to books, book chapters, nursing dissertations, and selected conference proceedings in nursing and allied health fields. References from more than 1200 journals are included in CINAHL.
• THE MEDLINE database:
  • The MEDLINE database was developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), and is widely recognized as the premier source for bibliographic coverage of the biomedical literature.
  • MEDLINE incorporates information from Index Medicus, International Nursing Index, and other sources.
  • MEDLINE covers more than 4300 journals and contains more than 11 million records. This database can also be accessed for free through the Internet at various websites, including the following:
    • PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed)
    • infotrieve(http://www4.infotrieve.com/newmedline/search.asp)
• Print Resources: Print-based resources that must be searched manually are rapidly being overshadowed by electronic databases, but their availability should not be ignored.
• Print Indexes: Print indexes are books that are used to locate articles in journals and periodicals, books, dissertations, publications of professional organizations, and government documents.
• Indexes that are particularly useful to nurses are
  • the International Nursing Index,
  • Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (the “red books”),
  • Nursing Studies Index,
  • Index Medicus, and
  • Hospital Literature Index.
  • Indexes are published periodically throughout the year (e.g., quarterly), with an annual cumulative index.
• Abstract Journals: Abstract journals summarize articles that have appeared in other journals. Abstracting services are in general more useful than indexes because they provide a summary of a study rather than just a title.
• Two important abstract sources for the nursing literature are
  • Nursing Abstracts and
  • Psychological Abstracts.