Objectives:

Assignment 2 moves from the work you have done with your single article (many weeks I realize) to assessing the body of knowledge as a whole. This is something that we are routinely required to do in our jobs as professionals. If we fail in our ability to assess the reliaiblity, validity and explanatory power of the conclusions that are reached through research we have little basis for making recommendations to the people we work with and for. Literature reviews play a very prominent role in assessing the body of knowledge about any problem, issue or need. We will use a traditional "relational" or "network" literature search in Assignment 2. This involves tracing the literature about a very specific topic from on or a very few key articles to the more complete literature (see the instructions for Assignment 2). You will start with one research report per person on your team. You will finish with six diferent articles from each member. Then you will analyze the quality of the body of knowledge -- treated here as the key conclusions reached by the researchers as a group. Your will base your assessmen on the rigor of the research design in each article and the degree to which the body of knowledge rests on the full range of research designs. Often, social science research conclusions rest almost completely on one or two designs, cross-sectionals being the most common and some form of case study the second-most common. This is a major weakness in our research in many areas. A discussion board is open on Canvas for each team. This is where you will post required materials. Please post your list of articles as soon as you can. Thank you.

In this class session we will examine more rigorous ways to conduct literature reviews that are becoming commonly used and do, in my view, represent a distinct step forward in terms of both the reliability and the validity of the conclusions we can draw from our body of research as a whole. This is important because the literature review provides, in most cases, the justification for conducting a study and lays out the authors specific objectives, often based on "gaps in the literature." If the literature review is biased to reflect one theoretical or operational perspective, the problem may be misrepresented and the justifications for the research may be misleading. The more thorough kinds of literature reviews we will discuss today can reduce or even eliminate this persistent problem of bias in the literature review. The reviews fall into two major groups: scientometeric (or systematic) literature reviews and meta-analyses. Whether or not you ever conduct one of these types of reviews yourself, finding one in the literature on a topic that you need to address is very fortuitous. I always immediately look at these reviews when they are published about my interest areas because the authors have done a lot of my work for me. Of course, one has to examine the reviews critically. Hopefully today's session will tell you what to look for in a review.

The literature below includes reviews, hopefully some in areas useful to you, and articles about how to conduct such reviews and what to look for in them, including some common problems with meta-analyses and scientometric reviews. I have included several materials (including a slide show) from a presentation that one of my former graduate students made to my research methods class. I would definitely keep a copy of those for future use.

Required Materials

DeLong_Overview_Systematic_Reviews This slide set is from a lecture that Dr. DeLong gave in another course of mine. She very kindly filled in the basic content of her presentation with comments on many of the slides. This is an excellent presentation. Look at this first -- it opens the door to understanding contemporary approaches to assessing what we know -- the body of knowledge.

Aveyard, Helen & Bradbury-Jones, Caroline. (2019) An analysis of current practices in undertaking literature reviews in nursing: Findings from a focusing mapping review and synthesis. BMC Medical Rsearch Methodolog 19:105 DOI: /10.1186/s12874-019-0751-7 This article gives us a good discussion of the weaknesses in some of the contemporary use of scientometric literature reviews and meta-analyses. Ignore the topic, the same issues regarding literature reviews discussed in this article occur in many other disciplinary areas.

DeLong, A. Scientometric Literature Review Procedures This document explains each step in conducting an scientometric literature review. Makes it all relatively simple. Again, thanks to Dr. DeLong.

DeLong, A. Scientometric Literature Reviews - Analysis of Results This is an excel spreadsheet that defines and shows an example of each step in the analytic process.

The PRISMA Statement The objectives of scientometric literature reviews are (1) to provide a thorough review of the entire body of literature (not just your favorite authors or focused on your favorite ideas); (2) to include a thoroughly transparent description of the procedures used in the review process with enough detail to permit the reader to recreate the proesss; (3) and to describe thorougly the steps taken to eliminate bias in the selection of literature reviewed. Most publishers require the full PRISMA statement and also require that the the data extracted from the literature incorporated in the review, the data used for all analyses conducted as part of the review, the codes used in the analysis, and any other materials used in the review.

Lockwood, Craig & Oh, Eui Geum. (2017) Systematic Reviews: Guidelines, tools and checklists for authors. Nursing & Health Sciences 19:273-277. doi: 10.1111/nhs.12353 This is a bit dated now, but includes several useful items.

Additional Readings This list contains the full reference for some additional materials that I think may be of interest to some of you.

Alderton, Amanda; Henry, Nicola; Foster, Sarah; Badland, Hannah. (2020) Examining the relationship between urban liveability and gender-based violence: A systematic review. Health and Place 64:102385. DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2020.102365

Bektas, Murat; Demir, Dilek; Demir, Senay; Bektas, Ilknur. (2021) The effect of food addiction in children on obesity: A systematic review and meta-analysis study. Journal of Pediatric Research. 8(4):414-423. DOI: 10.4274/jpr.galenos.2021.29963

Chen, C. & Song, M. (2019) Visualizing a field of research: A methodology of systematic scientometric reviews. PLoS ONE 13(10):e0223994 DOI: e0223994. 10.1371/journal.pone.0223994

Contreras-Barraza, Nicolas; Espinosa-Cristia, Juan Felipe; Salazar-Sepulveda, Guido et al. (2021) A scientometric systematic review of entrepreneurial wellbeing knowledge production. Frontiers in Psychology 12:641465. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.641465

Gurevitch, J., Koricheva, J., Nakagawa, S. & Stewart, G. (2018). Meta-analysis and the science of research synthesis. Nature 555:175-182. DOI: 10.1038/nature25753

Ives, Jillian & Castillo-Montoya, Milagros. (2020) First-generation college students as academic learners: A systematic review. Review of Educational Research. 90(2):139-178. DOI:https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654319899707

Lee, Ju Suk; Jin, Mi Hyeon; Lee, Hae Jeong. (2022) Global relationship between parent and child obesity: A systematic review and meta-analysis. (2022) Global relationship between parent and child obesity: A systematic review and mega-analysis. Clinical Experimentataion and Pediatrics 65(1):35-46. DOI: 10.3345/cep.2020.01620

Parida, Jayashree; Samanta, Lopamudra Jena; Badamali, Jagatdarshi; Soingh, Prasant Kumar et al. (2022) Prevalence and determinants of undernutrition among adolescents in India: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS ONE 17(1): e0263032. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263032

Qasim, Mubashir. (2016) Sustainability and wellbeing: A scientometric and bibliometric review of the literature. Journal of Economic Surveys 00:0, pp. 1-27.

Risi, Alixandra; Pickard, Judy A.; Bird, Amy L. 2021) The implications of parent mental health and wellbeing for parent-child attachment: A systematic review. PLoS ONE 16(12): e0260891. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260891

Serenko, Alexander. (2021) A structured literature review of scientometric research of the knowledge management discipline: a 2021 update. Journal of Knowledge Management 25(8):1889-1925. DOI 10.1108/JKM-09-2020-0730

Stutterheim, Sarah E.; van Dijk, Mart; Wang, Haoyi; Jonas, Kai U. (2021) The worldwide burden of HIV in transgender individuals: An updated systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS ONE 16(12): e0260063. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260063

Thoma, Achilleas & Eaves, Felmont F. III. (2016) What is wrong wth systematic reviews and meta-analyses: If you want the right answer, ask the right question! Aesthetic Surgry Journal Vol 36(10) 1198–1201. DOI: 10.1093/asj/sjw172

Zavale, Nelson Casimiro & Schneijderberg, Christian. (2022) Mapping the field of research on African higher education: a review of 6483 publications from 1980 to 2019. Higher Education. 83:199-233. DOI: 10.1007/s10734-020-00649-5