Ed 603 - Lesson 5 - Preparing an Outline and Writing the Literature Review

Lesson 5 will consist of the following topics

· Text Assignment for Lesson 5

· Abstracting the articles found in the literature review

· Coding articles and preparing an outline for the review

· Suggestions for writing a review of related literature

· Lesson 5 Assignment

· Lesson 5 Quiz

Text Assignment for Lesson 5

For lesson 5, read pages 60-62 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 110-115 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)

Abstracting the articles found in the literature review

Now that you have selected a research topic, formulated your research problem, selected key words for a literature search, and identified the articles that potentially will be included in your review of related literature, it is time to read the articles, and write your own summary or abstract of the articles.

Gay (1996, pages 56-58) suggests that you use the following procedure for abstracting the contents of your articles.

Read the article's abstract or summary to see if it is a usable article for your topic.
Skim the entire article making a mental note of the main topics.
Write the complete reference in APA style.
Classify and code the article according to some system of your own devising. Put the code:

on an index card.
on the photocopied article (if you photocopied it).
on the computer so you can sort the article abstracts in any way you wish to.

Abstract or summarize the reference by paraphrasing the essential points of the reference. If it's a study you will probably want to include the problem, the procedures, and the major conclusions.
Add any thoughts that come to your mind about the article.
Indicate any statements that are direct quotations (use quotation marks and also jot down the page number, i.e. Snurd, 1995, p.45). Keep personal reactions seperated from direct quotations.

Most student researchers find index cards an indispensable tool for writing, but maybe with the advent of small portable computers, you can take your computer into the library with you and make your notes directly on the computer.

Coding articles and preparing an outline for the review

By the time you have considered your research problem, read articles about the topic, and abstracted the articles, a tentative outline for your literature review should be coming together. To create an outline at this point:

Identify the main points in the order they should be presented.
Differentiate each main heading into logical subheadings.
Use further subdivisions if necessary.

After you have completed the outline you are ready to start writing your review of the literature.

Suggestions for writing a review of related literature

The following are some suggestions that you might find helpful as you start to write your review of related literature.

Make an outline (if you have not already done so).
Analyze each reference in terms of your outline.
Take all references identified for a given subheading and analyze the relationships or differences between them.
"Do not present your references as a series of abstracts or annotations (Jones found X, Smith found Y, and Brown found Z). Your task is to organize and summarize the references in a meaningful way." (Gay, 1996, page 60).
Use APA style for citations to references within your paper. For examples see pages 168 to 174 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.
Gay, the author of the text for this course, suggests that your review should start with the articles least related to your research problem and proceeed to those most related. The later articles converge on the research question.