Week

June 4, 2021

Review of Related
Literature

Ali G. Anudin, Ph.D.

Faculty of Arts and
Languages
Where do research questions come from?

One broad answer to this question is ‘the literature’. In the

process of reading and of writing a literature review around your
topic:

▪ you may come across a suggestion for an (unanswered) research

question; however, do check that it has not, in fact, been
addressed, and, indeed, that as a question it is both worthy of
investigation (is it still interesting and original?) and
operationalizable
▪ you may decide to replicate someone else’s work, perhaps to
challenge it, perhaps within a different or particularly interesting
context, or perhaps to use a different form of analysis on the same
or related data
▪ you may identify a ‘niche’ in the research literature, that is,
something related to your topic has been asked, but something
else has not.
Where do research questions come from?

The advantages of arriving at research

questions through a literature review are, as
Andrews (2003) points out, “that the question(s)
will be well grounded in existing research
(assuming the literature review is a good one);
there will be a coherence between the literature
review and the rest of the thesis (again
assuming the rest of the thesis is driven by the
questions)” (pp. 17-18).
Where do research questions come from?

In order to come up with an original research

question you need to know (very well) the
literature in the area under study.

Find out what has been done and how you can
contribute to the existing academic debate.
Literature Reviews

Literature reviews are important as research tools,

especially in emerging areas, with populations that
typically yield small samples (e.g., special education
research often does), or in areas that represent
value-laden positions adopted by advocacy groups.

Literature reviews are also valuable in light of the

knowledge explosion and the consequent
impossibility of reading everything. Therefore, it is
good that someone does reviews.
Literature Reviews
Need to know definition of terms:

1. Preliminary sources: Databases that contain

information about research articles that are published
on the topic of interest to you.
2. Secondary sources: Literature reviews that are
published on your topic of interest consisting of a
synthesis and analysis of previous research published
on that topic.
3. Primary empirical research: Reports of studies that
are conducted by the researcher(s) that include a
description of the methods, sampling and data
collection strategies, and data analysis and results.
Literature Reviews
Reasons for Doing Literature Reviews:
Researchers use the literature review to identify a
rationale for the need for their own study. Some of the
specific rationales for your research that might emerge
from your literature review include the following:

1. You may find a lack of consistency in reported results

across the studies you have chosen to review and
undertake research to explore the basis of the
inconsistency.
For example, Berliner et al. (2008) noted inconsistencies
in research on high school dropouts; they suggested that
the problem might be that researchers were not
differentiating between high school dropouts who
reenrolled and those who did not.
Reasons for Doing Literature Reviews:

2. You may have uncovered a flaw in previous research

based on its design, data collection instruments, sampling,
or interpretation.

For example, Borman et al. (2007) reviewed research on

the Success for All literacy program and found that no
randomized control studies had been conducted on its
effectiveness.

The quasi-experimental designs from past research left the

findings open to possible criticism based on uncontrolled
extraneous variables.
Reasons for Doing Literature Reviews:
3. Research may have been conducted on a different population
than the one in which you are interested, thus justifying your
work with the different population.

For example, Schirmer and McGough (2005) reviewed research

literature on reading development and reading instruction and
found that there was a lack of research of this type on students
who are deaf. Therefore, they proposed a need for research on
reading instruction that has been found to be effective with
hearing students to be conducted with deaf students.

Another justification for the conduct of research with deaf

students when the previous research is based on hearing
children might be to devise a very different innovative method of
reading instruction that is based on sign language and deaf
culture.
Reasons for Doing Literature Reviews:

4. You may document an ongoing educational or

psychological problem and propose studying the effect of
an innovative intervention to try to correct that problem.

For example, Burnard (2008) wanted to explore innovative

pedagogical practices to engage students who were facing
challenges stemming from poverty, class, race, religion,
linguistic and cultural heritage, or gender.

In particular, she was interested in how music teachers

engaged students who were disaffected.
Reasons for Doing Literature Reviews:

5. Uncertainty about the interpretation of previous studies’

findings may justify further research.

For example, prior research with people with

schizophrenia indicated that participants sometimes
continued to feel bewildered about their condition and
treatment, even after meeting with a health care
professional.

Schneider et al. (2004) undertook a study from the

perspective of people with mental illness to determine what
contributed to their perceptions of effective and ineffective
relations with professionals.
Purpose of a Literature Review

The literature review is a critical look at the existing

research that is significant to the work that you are
carrying out.

❑ To provide background information

❑ To establish importance
❑ To demonstrate familiarity
❑ To “carve out a space” for further research
Characteristics of
Effective Literature Reviews

❑ Outlining important research trends

❑ Assessing the strengths and weaknesses
of existing research
❑ Identifying potential gaps in knowledge
❑ Establishing a need for current and/or
future research projects
Analyzing Sources
❑A literature
review is never just a list of
studies—it always offers an argument
about a body of research

❑Analysis occurs on two levels:

Individual sources
Body of research
 Four Analysis Tasks of the Literature
Review

TASKS OF
LITERATURE
REVIEW

SUMMARIZE SYNTHESIZE CRITIQUE COMPARE

 Summary and Synthesis
In your own words, summarize and/or synthesize the
key findings relevant to your study.

❑ What do we know about the immediate area?

❑ What are the key arguments, key characteristics,

key concepts or key figures?

❑ What are the existing debates/theories?

❑ What common methodologies are used?

Sample Language for Summary and
Synthesis

❑ Tarrayo (2020) has demonstrated…

❑ Early work on Language Vitality by Fisher
(2011) was concerned with…
❑ Canale and Swane (2016) compared indicators
for strategic competence for handling…
❑ Additional works by Brown et. Al (2015), Gee
(2016), and Parry et. Al (2018) deal with…
Comparison and Critique

Evaluates the strength and weaknesses of the

work:
❑ How do the different studies relate? What is new,
different, or controversial?
❑ What views need further testing?
❑ What evidence is lacking, inconclusive, contradicting, or
too limited?
❑ What research designs or methods seem unsatisfactory?
Sample Language for Comparison and
Critique

❑In this interesting but inconsistent study on

MTB-MLE, Suarez and Villanueva (2019)
show that…
❑These general results, reflecting the
inclination of children to subtractive
bilingualism, are similar to those reported
by Dehouver and Meisel (2018)…
Analyzing: Putting It All Together

❑What do researchers KNOW about this

field?

❑What do researchers NOT KNOW?

❑Why should we (further) study this topic?

❑What will my study contribute?

THANK YOU FOR
YOUR
KIND ATTENTION
 FOCUS QUESTION:

• Based on our discussion, choose

one issue about language
development that you would like to
explore and investigate.