Literature Review for Nursing Students

Reviewing of the Literature (LR)

• This lecture is about reviewing literature for nursing students

• Objectives of the lecture:

  • Identifying the purpose of literature review
  • Outlining sources of literature review
  • Describing strategies for searching literature
  • Discussing how to write a literature review
  • Demonstrating styles for writing references

• Introduction:

  • A literature review analyses and synthesises information from research studies, books, dissertations, articles, conference proceedings, and other similar materials relevant to a particular topic.

• Purposes of Literature Review:

  • Understanding existing knowledge on a topic
  • Defining the research problem
  • Classifying sources of information (classic and recent)
  • Developing the methodology for a study
  • Identifying successes and mistakes of prior research

• Literature Sources:

  • Primary sources: Original accounts of research studies written by the researchers. Often found in journal articles (e.g. Nursing Research, Advances in Nursing Science)
  • Secondary sources: Summaries or descriptions of studies written by someone other than the original investigators
  • Grey literature: Reports, conference proceedings, standards, technical documentation, government documents, fact sheets, and policy briefs.

• Search Strategies:

  • Defining a clear research question
  • Identifying specific terms or phrases (e.g., induce, labor, morning, evening, pregnancy, birth, labor, childbirth, delivery)
  • Determining if time period (e.g., past 5 or 10 years) is important
  • Using search options and limiters (e.g., using "and," "or," "not," exact phrases, without a specific word, date range, language, including references, audience, URL, research type, age, and peer review).
  • Consulting a librarian for database research assistance (e.g., CINAHL, MEDLINE, Cochrane, Ovid Nursing, Joanna Briggs EBP, PsychINFO, ProQuest, Dissertations & Theses databases, Science Direct, and Scopus are useful to nursing researchers)

• Search Strategy Cycle:

  • Focus on the research question
  • Identify key concepts and synonyms (e.g., using MeSH on demand tool)
  • Use the appropriate database(s)
  • Use Boolean operators (and/or/not) and apply inclusion/exclusion criteria
  • Save search results
  • Manage citations and references using software (e.g., EndNote)

• Writing the Literature Review:

  • Organizing information from a comprehensive literature search
  • Identifying central research topic information
  • Analyzing strengths and weaknesses related to arguments in the study

• Extracting Information from Literature Sources

  • Analyzing and interpreting pertinent material taken from sources

• Critiquing the Literature Review in a Research Article

  • Carefully review citations for potential additional sources
  • This parallel searching should be conducted by a researcher or someone in their research team

• Components of a Literature Review:

  • Introduction
  • Body of the review
  • Suggestions for further research
  • Summary

• Citations:

  • Crucial for every research project
  • Applying appropriate citation standards and styles

• Plagiarism:

  • Taking other researchers' or scholars' work without proper attribution
  • Avoid plagiarism. Always properly cite work

• APA Style:

  • Standardized citation format in scientific and social scientific disciplines; including nursing
  • Two types:
    • In-text citation
    • Reference citation

• Various examples of citations in APA style (single, two, three to seven, and more than seven authors)

  • Examples of short and long quotations
  • Paraphrasing

• Major sections in a paper:

  • Title page (title, author, affiliation, and institutional affiliation)
  • Headers (shortened versions of paper title)
  • Abstract (brief summary of paper)

• Essential to utilize citation software