Ed 603 - Lesson 4 - Conducting a Review of Related Literature

Lesson 4 will consist of the following topics

· Text Assignment for Lesson 4

· Sources of information for a literature review.

· Activity - Identifying keywords to use in a literature review

· Using the ERIC system

· Searching the World Wide Web

· Lesson 4 Assignment

· Lesson 4 Quiz

Text Assignment for Lesson 4

For lesson 4, read pages 46-59 in Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application, Seventh Edition by L. R. Gay and Peter Airasian (2003, Merrill/Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-099463-4)

or read pages 39-55 in Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application, Eighth Edition by Lorrie Gay, Geoffrey Mills, and Peter Airasian (2006, Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-118534-9)

or read pages 88-109 in Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research, 3^rd Edition by John W. Creswell (2008, Merrill/Prentice Hall, ISBN-13: 978-0-13-613550-0)

Sources of information for a literature review

There are a wide variety of resources available to assist you in locating articles for your review of related literature. Many of these are available through your college or public library in computerized database form.

Education Index - covers professional publications, precedes the use of CIJE (current Index to Journals in Education).
Readers Guide to Periodical Literature - covers articles from 200 widely read magazines (popular literature).
Expanded Academic Index - covers journal articles from over 1500 periodicals.
Dissertation Abstracts International - contains bibliographic citations and abstracts from doctoral disserations and master's theses worldwide.
Psychological Abstracts - presents summaries of studies completed in psychology, including developmental psychology and educational psychology. These two areas are of special interest to eduational researchers.
ERIC - the Educational Resources Information Center collects and disseminates reports of current educational research, evaluation, developmental activity. ERIC maintains two databases searchable by computer. ERIC is probably the single most important source of information for educational researchers. We will do an extensive activity using the ERIC database sytem.

RIE - Resources in Education, this ERIC database contains bibliographic citations and summaries to information not published in journals, e.g. conference presentations, technical reports, and unpublished research results. The items in this database are identified by ED numbers.
CIJE - Current index to Journals in Education, this ERIC database contains bibliographic citations and article summaries to journals. The items in this database are identified by EJ numbers.

Internet Search - We might also like to look on the world wide web for information on our proposed research topic using one of the internet search engines such as Ask Jeeves, LookSmart, Lycos, Netscape, NBCi, Overture, or Google.

Activity - Identifying keywords to use in a literature review

Prior to conducting a literature search, we have to identify the key words or key descriptors that we will be using in our literature search.

As an activity, jot down some descriptors you might use to search for articles and other materials related to each of the following research topics. These topics were generated by students taking this course during the summer of 1997, at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

8. The relationship between personality correlates and anorexic symptomatology in female undergraduates.

9. The effect of expressive arts on counseling efficacy of adolescents.

10. The effect of cognitive-behavioral techniques on chronic pain management for the elderly.

11. The effect of a structured peer consultation model to address the needs of regular counseling supervision for school counselors.

12. The relationship between social integration and academic performance among minority university students.

13. The educational characteristics of gifted learning disabled students in the middle school.

Now that you have generated a list of key words for the above research topics, here are some suggestions, probably similar to those you thought of.

14. The relationship between personality correlates and anorexic symptomatology in female undergraduates.
Possible keywords: personality, anorexia, and female.

15. The effect of expressive arts on counseling efficacy of adolescents.
Possible keywords: expressive arts, counseling, and adolescent

16. The effect of cognitive-behavioral techniques on chronic pain management for the elderly.
Possible keywords: cognitive, behavioral, chronic pain, and possibly geriatric

17. The effect of a structured peer consultation model to address the needs of regular counseling supervision for school counselors.
Possible keywords: peer consultation, supervision, and counselors.

18. The relationship between social integration and academic performance among minority university students.
Possible keywords: social integration, academic performance, and minority student.

19. The educational characteristics of gifted learning disabled students in the middle school.
Possible keywords: gifted, learning disabled (or learning disabilities), and possibly middle school or junior high school.

Using the ERIC system

As an example, let's take the last research topic, the educational characteristics of gifted learning disabled students in the middle school, and do an ERIC search to see what articles we come up with for possible inclusion in a review of related literature.

We can access the ERIC system on the internet at Minnesota State University Moorhead, as well as other places. To do an ERIC search at MSUM, point your web browser at http://www.pals.msus.edu/cgi-bin/pals-cgi?palsAction=restart&documentName=selectre.htm and you will come to the MSUM online Library Catalog.

Here is an alternative way to get to the library catalog page at MSUM, less direct but more logical.

20. Go the MSUM home page at http://www.mnstate.edu/ and click on the Library button.

21. On the Livingston Lord Library home page, click on WebPALS Library Catalog.

22. On the WEB PALS home page click on Search PALS which will take you to the MSUM online library catalog page.

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To use the ERIC system select the ERIC button. If you just wish to use the Journals in Education subset of ERIC select that button instead. Similarily if you only wish to use the Resources in Education subset of ERIC select that button. We wish to use both resources so we will select the ERIC button.

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Then click on the Go button. If we do this we come to a screen that informs us that the ERIC system is a subscription service and we must logon to use the system.

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To logon enter your MSUM Library Barcode Number in the first blank, your Password in the second blank, and click on the Go button. If you do not have an MSUM library card (or more specifically a library Barcode Number and Password) you will have to take a trip to MSUM to get one. If you are registered for this course at MSUM you are eligible for a library card.

On the ERIC search main page, we have an opportunity to select which kind of search we wish to conduct (keyword, title keyword, descriptor keyword, author, exact title, or exact descriptor.

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Since Keyword yields the broadest search, and thus identifies the largest number of resources, we will check that. We will be searching by Keyword. We will enter Gifted Learning Disabled in the for what: box and click on Go to start our search.

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We can see that our search has identified 21 references.

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Just for comparative purposes, we will try gifted learning disabilities as our keywords. To do this we press the back arrow of our browser to return to the Search ERIC page, enter the keywords gifted learning disabilities in the for what: box and click Go.

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We can see that we have identified 59 references by using the keywords gifted learning disabilities. This is certainly enough references to start with.

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We could look at the individual references by clicking on a reference number in the NMBR column. Instead lets just have the entire list of 59 references sent to us by email. To do this select the Print/Email button to go to the Print Options page.

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To have the system email the results to us, we will select E-mail to this address: in the How to print: section, and enter our email address in the box.

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Click Go and then we will see the e-mail request results screen. We can see from this screen that Remote Printing is complete, i.e. the results have been sent to our email address.

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When we open our email from the library system we should see the 59 articles we identified in our literature search. We can see that the first record is from the Resources in Education data base (It has an ED number). We can also see the author (editor in this case, Phyllis Miller), title (Gifted and Talented and Learning Disabled), and publication date (2000) of the article. We also have an abstract of the article that should give us enough information to decide if we are going to keep this article in our review of the literature.

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In the next figure we can see another article, This article is from the Journals in Education (JIE) database and we can see the name of the author (Erin A. Fetzer), the title of the article (The Gifted/Learning Disabled Child: A Guide for Teachers and Parents), the journal citation (Gifted Child Today Magazine, Volume 23, Number 4, Pages 44-50, Jul-Aug 2000), and an abstract of the article. We can also see after Libraries: that the Journal can be found at Bemidji State University (now MSUB), Winona State University (now MSUW), and MSU, which unfortunately does not mean Moorhead State University but Mankato State University (now MSUM). The designation for Minnesota State University Moorhead is TRM. If we are working out of Moorhead and we wish to use this article we will have to get it through an interlibrary load. One of the libraries that has the journal will copy the article for us and send it to the MSUM library for us.

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After going through the list of articles, we will retain those we wish to keep in our review and then go to the library to find the actual articles or send for them through interlibrary loan. The articles we identified in the Resources in Education Database, those with ED numbers, we can get from the periodicals desk at MSUM in the form of microfiche. We can then scan through the article with a microfiche reader.

You will notice that we do not have enough information from the database entry to write a complete APA style reference for the article. Once we locate the article we will write down the complete APA style reference. We will also want to take some notes on the article to assist us in writing our review of the literature, but we will go into more detail on that subject in Lesson 5.

Searching the World Wide Web

There will also be a large body of information on our research topic on the World Wide Web. We may wish to explore the World Wide Web and look for further information.

For example, I went to one of the internet search engines on my internet browser (Lycos) and entered the key words gifted learning disabilities in the Search the Web: box and clicked on Go Get It!!.

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The result, which you can see in the next figure, is the identification of 29,580 URLs (addresses or sites on the internet) which ostensibly have something to do with gifted students with learning disabilities. The first reference does look promising as it appears to be involved with "Special-Twice students How do I know if my child is Gifted/LD? Characteristics of Gifted/Learning Disabled Students." What I will probably do is go to any sites, that look promising, among the first 10 to 20 references.

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I also tried another search engine (Google) to see if similar results would be found. On the Google search page, which I got through my web browser's search section, I entered Gifted Learning Disabilities in the Search the Web: box and then clicked the Search button.

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The results were the identification by Google of 110,000 internet sites that have something to do with Gifted Learning Disabilities. As you can see from the figure below (if you enlarge it by clicking on here), the first three URLs mentioned look promising for the research topic.

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In the assignment for this lesson you will be asked to select some keywords for your research topic and do an ERIC search to identify possible references for your review of related literature. You will also want to list the promising references you find in APA style. In our next lesson, we will consider reading (or scanning) our relevant articles, making an outline, and then writing our review of the related literature.