research in previous studies

Building On The Past: How To Write Previous Studies In Research

Crafting an effective previous study is a foundation for your research. Learn how to write previous studies in research through this guide.

Have you ever wondered how research builds upon itself, creating a foundation for discoveries and insights? Is it wrong if you indulge in working on previous studies in research and get a new idea out of it?

The significance of previous studies in research cannot be underestimated. Every piece of scholarly work, from groundbreaking research to humble literature reviews , contributes to the ever-expanding area of knowledge. 

In this article, we explore the importance of delving into the archives of research, identifying opportunities for further investigation, and ultimately advancing our understanding of the world around us. Let’s get started and understand how to write previous studies in research . 

Purpose And Scope Of Previous Study In Research

The purpose of previous studies in research is to provide a foundation for new investigations. It helps researchers understand what has already been studied, what knowledge gaps exist, and what questions need further exploration. By looking at what others have done, researchers can build on existing knowledge, avoid repeating the same work, and ensure their study contributes something valuable to the field. It also helps validate their research design and methods, making their findings more credible.

The scope of previous studies in research refers to the range of literature and sources that researchers consider relevant to their own study. It involves selecting and reviewing studies that directly relate to their research topic and objectives. Researchers should focus on recent and up-to-date works, including both influential studies and the latest advancements in the field. By being selective and inclusive, they can gain a well-rounded understanding of what has been done before, guiding them to ask meaningful research questions and making their study more impactful.

How To Write Previous Studies In Research

To write the previous studies, you first need to understand the steps in crafting a literature review and the limitations involved. So firstly, let’s understand what is a literature review:

What Is Literature Review?

A literature review is a critical and comprehensive evaluation of existing published research, scholarly articles, books, and other sources relevant to a particular topic or research question. It serves as a crucial component of academic research and helps to establish the context, identify gaps in knowledge, and provide the theoretical framework for the new study. A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature and provides the basis for formulating research objectives and hypotheses.

Also read: What Is A Literature Review? Get The Concept And Start Using It

Literature Review Process

The literature review process typically involves the following steps:

Defining The Research Question

The process starts by clearly defining the research question or topic that the literature review aims to address. A well-defined question helps in narrowing down the search for relevant literature.

Conducting A Comprehensive Search

Researchers then conduct a systematic search for existing literature using academic databases, libraries, online journals, and other reputable sources. Keywords and search terms related to the research question are used to identify relevant studies.

Evaluating The Quality Of Sources

The selected sources are critically evaluated for their quality, credibility, and relevance to the research topic. Researchers consider factors such as the reputation of the authors, the rigor of the research methodology, and the publication venue.

Summarizing And Synthesizing

Researchers summarize the key findings and main points from each selected source. They also identify common themes, trends, and conflicting viewpoints across the literature.

Organizing The Literature

The information gathered from the literature review is organized in a structured manner. Researchers may use themes, categories, or chronological order to present the findings effectively.

Writing The Literature Review

The literature review is then written, incorporating the synthesized information into a coherent narrative. The review should highlight the significance of previous studies, their limitations, and their implications for the new research.

Citing And Referencing

Proper citations and references are provided for all the sources included in the literature review. This ensures academic integrity and acknowledges the work of other researchers.

Also read: Literature Mapping in Scientific Research: A Comprehensive Review

How To Organize And Evaluate Your Literature Review?

Organizing and evaluating sources for your literature review is a crucial process that involves systematically gathering relevant academic materials and assessing their credibility and relevance to your research topic. 

Begin by clearly defining your research question or focus, which will guide your search for appropriate sources. Utilize academic databases, journals, books, and reputable online platforms to gather a diverse range of scholarly materials. 

As you collect sources, categorize them based on their themes, methodologies, or key arguments to facilitate a coherent and logical structure for your literature review. Additionally, critically evaluate each source’s authority, currency, objectivity, and reliability to ensure you include high-quality and trustworthy information in your review. 

By employing a rigorous approach to organizing and evaluating your sources, you will enhance the academic rigor and impact of your literature review.

Limitations Of Previous Studies In Research

The limitations of previous studies are common aspects that researchers should consider while conducting a literature review or developing their own research. These limitations may include:

Sample Size And Representativeness

Some studies may have small sample sizes, which can limit the generalizability of their findings to larger populations or diverse groups. Non-representative samples may also introduce bias into the results .

Research Design And Methodology

Previous studies may have used different research designs or methodologies that could impact the reliability and validity of their results. Flaws in the study design or data collection methods may affect the accuracy of the findings.

Data Quality And Availability

Studies may rely on secondary data sources or data with inherent limitations, potentially affecting the accuracy and completeness of the information used for analysis.

Scope And Generalizability

The scope of a study might be narrow, focusing on a specific population, region, or time period, making it challenging to apply the findings to broader contexts.

Publication Bias

Studies that show statistically significant or positive results may be more likely to get published, while studies with null or non-significant results might go unpublished, leading to a biased representation of the literature.

Ethical Considerations

Ethical issues in data collection or research conduct, such as inadequate informed consent or potential harm to participants, could limit the usefulness or ethical soundness of previous studies.

Related article: What Are The Limitations In Research And How To Write Them?

Identifying Opportunities For Future Research Based On Previous Studies

Identifying opportunities for future research based on previous studies is an essential aspect of conducting a literature review and advancing knowledge in a particular field. Here are some strategies to identify such opportunities:

Unanswered Questions

Look for gaps in the existing literature where important questions remain unanswered or areas where conflicting or inconclusive results have been reported. These gaps represent opportunities for future research to delve deeper into the topic and provide more comprehensive insights.

Emerging Trends

Identify emerging trends or new developments within the field. These can indicate areas that are gaining significance but may not yet have been extensively studied. Exploring these emerging trends can contribute to the cutting edge of research.

Limitations Of Previous Studies

As mentioned earlier, assess the limitations of previous studies. These limitations can point to areas that need further investigation, using improved methodologies or data sources to overcome the shortcomings of earlier research.

Replication Studies

Consider replicating studies that have produced significant findings but have not been replicated by other researchers. Replication studies help validate and strengthen the robustness of existing findings.

Cross-Disciplinary Research

Look for opportunities to integrate knowledge and methodologies from different disciplines. Combining insights from diverse fields can lead to innovative research and fresh perspectives on existing problems.

The Bottom Line

The role of previous studies in research and literature review is crucial in shaping knowledge within any field. Through a comprehensive and critical examination of existing literature, researchers can identify gaps, trends, limitations, and unanswered questions that provide valuable opportunities for future investigation. 

Previous studies serve as a foundation upon which new research can build, validate, and extend existing findings, or challenge established paradigms. By acknowledging and understanding the contributions and limitations of past research, scholars can design more robust studies, explore emerging trends, and engage in cross-disciplinary collaborations to further enrich our understanding of complex phenomena.

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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing how your work contributes to the ongoing conversation in the field. Learning how to write a literature review is a critical tool for successful research. Your ability to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic demonstrates your grasp on the topic of study, and assists in the learning process. 

Table of Contents

• What is the purpose of literature review? 
• a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction: 
• b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes: 
• c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs: 
• d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts: 

How to write a good literature review 

• Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question: 
• Decide on the Scope of Your Review: 
• Select Databases for Searches: 
• Conduct Searches and Keep Track: 
• Review the Literature: 
• Organize and Write Your Literature Review: 
• How to write a literature review faster with Paperpal? 
• Frequently asked questions 

What is a literature review?

A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature, establishes the context for their own research, and contributes to scholarly conversations on the topic. One of the purposes of a literature review is also to help researchers avoid duplicating previous work and ensure that their research is informed by and builds upon the existing body of knowledge.

What is the purpose of literature review?

A literature review serves several important purposes within academic and research contexts. Here are some key objectives and functions of a literature review: 2  

1. Contextualizing the Research Problem: The literature review provides a background and context for the research problem under investigation. It helps to situate the study within the existing body of knowledge. 

2. Identifying Gaps in Knowledge: By identifying gaps, contradictions, or areas requiring further research, the researcher can shape the research question and justify the significance of the study. This is crucial for ensuring that the new research contributes something novel to the field. 

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3. Understanding Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks: Literature reviews help researchers gain an understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in previous studies. This aids in the development of a theoretical framework for the current research. 

4. Providing Methodological Insights: Another purpose of literature reviews is that it allows researchers to learn about the methodologies employed in previous studies. This can help in choosing appropriate research methods for the current study and avoiding pitfalls that others may have encountered. 

5. Establishing Credibility: A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with existing scholarship, establishing their credibility and expertise in the field. It also helps in building a solid foundation for the new research. 

6. Informing Hypotheses or Research Questions: The literature review guides the formulation of hypotheses or research questions by highlighting relevant findings and areas of uncertainty in existing literature. 

Literature review example

Let’s delve deeper with a literature review example: Let’s say your literature review is about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. You might format your literature review into sections such as the effects of climate change on habitat loss and species extinction, phenological changes, and marine biodiversity. Each section would then summarize and analyze relevant studies in those areas, highlighting key findings and identifying gaps in the research. The review would conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on specific aspects of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity. The following literature review template provides a glimpse into the recommended literature review structure and content, demonstrating how research findings are organized around specific themes within a broader topic. 

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

Climate change is a global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences, including significant impacts on biodiversity. This literature review synthesizes key findings from various studies: 

a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction:

Climate change-induced alterations in temperature and precipitation patterns contribute to habitat loss, affecting numerous species (Thomas et al., 2004). The review discusses how these changes increase the risk of extinction, particularly for species with specific habitat requirements. 

b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes:

Observations of range shifts and changes in the timing of biological events (phenology) are documented in response to changing climatic conditions (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003). These shifts affect ecosystems and may lead to mismatches between species and their resources. 

c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs:

The review explores the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, emphasizing ocean acidification’s threat to coral reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Changes in pH levels negatively affect coral calcification, disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. 

d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts:

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the literature review discusses various adaptive strategies adopted by species and conservation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Hannah et al., 2007). It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for effective conservation planning. 

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Writing a literature review involves summarizing and synthesizing existing research on a particular topic. A good literature review format should include the following elements. 

Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your literature review, providing context and introducing the main focus of your review. 

• Opening Statement: Begin with a general statement about the broader topic and its significance in the field. 
• Scope and Purpose: Clearly define the scope of your literature review. Explain the specific research question or objective you aim to address. 
• Organizational Framework: Briefly outline the structure of your literature review, indicating how you will categorize and discuss the existing research. 
• Significance of the Study: Highlight why your literature review is important and how it contributes to the understanding of the chosen topic. 
• Thesis Statement: Conclude the introduction with a concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or perspective you will develop in the body of the literature review. 

Body: The body of the literature review is where you provide a comprehensive analysis of existing literature, grouping studies based on themes, methodologies, or other relevant criteria. 

• Organize by Theme or Concept: Group studies that share common themes, concepts, or methodologies. Discuss each theme or concept in detail, summarizing key findings and identifying gaps or areas of disagreement. 
• Critical Analysis: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Discuss the methodologies used, the quality of evidence, and the overall contribution of each work to the understanding of the topic. 
• Synthesis of Findings: Synthesize the information from different studies to highlight trends, patterns, or areas of consensus in the literature. 
• Identification of Gaps: Discuss any gaps or limitations in the existing research and explain how your review contributes to filling these gaps. 
• Transition between Sections: Provide smooth transitions between different themes or concepts to maintain the flow of your literature review. 

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Conclusion: The conclusion of your literature review should summarize the main findings, highlight the contributions of the review, and suggest avenues for future research. 

• Summary of Key Findings: Recap the main findings from the literature and restate how they contribute to your research question or objective. 
• Contributions to the Field: Discuss the overall contribution of your literature review to the existing knowledge in the field. 
• Implications and Applications: Explore the practical implications of the findings and suggest how they might impact future research or practice. 
• Recommendations for Future Research: Identify areas that require further investigation and propose potential directions for future research in the field. 
• Final Thoughts: Conclude with a final reflection on the importance of your literature review and its relevance to the broader academic community. 

Conducting a literature review

Conducting a literature review is an essential step in research that involves reviewing and analyzing existing literature on a specific topic. It’s important to know how to do a literature review effectively, so here are the steps to follow: 1  

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

• Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study. 
• Clearly define your research question or objective. Determine what specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore? 

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

• Determine the timeframe for your literature review. Are you focusing on recent developments, or do you want a historical overview? 
• Consider the geographical scope. Is your review global, or are you focusing on a specific region? 
• Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria. What types of sources will you include? Are there specific types of studies or publications you will exclude? 

Select Databases for Searches:

• Identify relevant databases for your field. Examples include PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. 
• Consider searching in library catalogs, institutional repositories, and specialized databases related to your topic. 

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

• Develop a systematic search strategy using keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and other search techniques. 
• Record and document your search strategy for transparency and replicability. 
• Keep track of the articles, including publication details, abstracts, and links. Use citation management tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley to organize your references. 

Review the Literature:

• Evaluate the relevance and quality of each source. Consider the methodology, sample size, and results of studies. 
• Organize the literature by themes or key concepts. Identify patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing research. 
• Summarize key findings and arguments from each source. Compare and contrast different perspectives. 
• Identify areas where there is a consensus in the literature and where there are conflicting opinions. 
• Provide critical analysis and synthesis of the literature. What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing research? 

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

• Literature review outline should be based on themes, chronological order, or methodological approaches. 
• Write a clear and coherent narrative that synthesizes the information gathered. 
• Use proper citations for each source and ensure consistency in your citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). 
• Conclude your literature review by summarizing key findings, identifying gaps, and suggesting areas for future research. 

Whether you’re exploring a new research field or finding new angles to develop an existing topic, sifting through hundreds of papers can take more time than you have to spare. But what if you could find science-backed insights with verified citations in seconds? That’s the power of Paperpal’s new Research feature!  

How to write a literature review faster with Paperpal?

Paperpal, an AI writing assistant, integrates powerful academic search capabilities within its writing platform. With the Research feature, you get 100% factual insights, with citations backed by 250M+ verified research articles, directly within your writing interface with the option to save relevant references in your Citation Library. By eliminating the need to switch tabs to find answers to all your research questions, Paperpal saves time and helps you stay focused on your writing.   

Here’s how to use the Research feature:  

• Ask a question: Get started with a new document on paperpal.com. Click on the “Research” feature and type your question in plain English. Paperpal will scour over 250 million research articles, including conference papers and preprints, to provide you with accurate insights and citations. 
• Review and Save: Paperpal summarizes the information, while citing sources and listing relevant reads. You can quickly scan the results to identify relevant references and save these directly to your built-in citations library for later access. 
• Cite with Confidence: Paperpal makes it easy to incorporate relevant citations and references into your writing, ensuring your arguments are well-supported by credible sources. This translates to a polished, well-researched literature review. 

The literature review sample and detailed advice on writing and conducting a review will help you produce a well-structured report. But remember that a good literature review is an ongoing process, and it may be necessary to revisit and update it as your research progresses. By combining effortless research with an easy citation process, Paperpal Research streamlines the literature review process and empowers you to write faster and with more confidence. Try Paperpal Research now and see for yourself.  

Frequently asked questions

A literature review is a critical and comprehensive analysis of existing literature (published and unpublished works) on a specific topic or research question and provides a synthesis of the current state of knowledge in a particular field. A well-conducted literature review is crucial for researchers to build upon existing knowledge, avoid duplication of efforts, and contribute to the advancement of their field. It also helps researchers situate their work within a broader context and facilitates the development of a sound theoretical and conceptual framework for their studies.

Literature review is a crucial component of research writing, providing a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. The aim is to keep professionals up to date by providing an understanding of ongoing developments within a specific field, including research methods, and experimental techniques used in that field, and present that knowledge in the form of a written report. Also, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the scholar in his or her field.  

Before writing a literature review, it’s essential to undertake several preparatory steps to ensure that your review is well-researched, organized, and focused. This includes choosing a topic of general interest to you and doing exploratory research on that topic, writing an annotated bibliography, and noting major points, especially those that relate to the position you have taken on the topic. 

Literature reviews and academic research papers are essential components of scholarly work but serve different purposes within the academic realm. 3 A literature review aims to provide a foundation for understanding the current state of research on a particular topic, identify gaps or controversies, and lay the groundwork for future research. Therefore, it draws heavily from existing academic sources, including books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. In contrast, an academic research paper aims to present new knowledge, contribute to the academic discourse, and advance the understanding of a specific research question. Therefore, it involves a mix of existing literature (in the introduction and literature review sections) and original data or findings obtained through research methods. 

Literature reviews are essential components of academic and research papers, and various strategies can be employed to conduct them effectively. If you want to know how to write a literature review for a research paper, here are four common approaches that are often used by researchers.  Chronological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the chronological order of publication. It helps to trace the development of a topic over time, showing how ideas, theories, and research have evolved.  Thematic Review: Thematic reviews focus on identifying and analyzing themes or topics that cut across different studies. Instead of organizing the literature chronologically, it is grouped by key themes or concepts, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of various aspects of the topic.  Methodological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the research methods employed in different studies. It helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the research findings.  Theoretical Review: A theoretical review examines the literature based on the theoretical frameworks used in different studies. This approach helps to identify the key theories that have been applied to the topic and assess their contributions to the understanding of the subject.  It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and a literature review may combine elements of more than one approach. The choice of strategy depends on the research question, the nature of the literature available, and the goals of the review. Additionally, other strategies, such as integrative reviews or systematic reviews, may be employed depending on the specific requirements of the research.

The literature review format can vary depending on the specific publication guidelines. However, there are some common elements and structures that are often followed. Here is a general guideline for the format of a literature review:  Introduction:   Provide an overview of the topic.  Define the scope and purpose of the literature review.  State the research question or objective.  Body:   Organize the literature by themes, concepts, or chronology.  Critically analyze and evaluate each source.  Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the studies.  Highlight any methodological limitations or biases.  Identify patterns, connections, or contradictions in the existing research.  Conclusion:   Summarize the key points discussed in the literature review.  Highlight the research gap.  Address the research question or objective stated in the introduction.  Highlight the contributions of the review and suggest directions for future research.

Both annotated bibliographies and literature reviews involve the examination of scholarly sources. While annotated bibliographies focus on individual sources with brief annotations, literature reviews provide a more in-depth, integrated, and comprehensive analysis of existing literature on a specific topic. The key differences are as follows: 

References 

• Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review.  Journal of criminal justice education ,  24 (2), 218-234. 
• Pan, M. L. (2016).  Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Taylor & Francis. 
• Cantero, C. (2019). How to write a literature review.  San José State University Writing Center . 

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How to refer to other studies or literature in the different sections of a research paper

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• 07 October, 2021

There are many articles which discuss how you can include and discuss existing studies and research in the literature review section of a paper. However, in addition to the literature review , there are many other opportunities to discuss or engage with prior studies in your research. This article offers guidance on how to include other studies or literature in different sections in a research paper.

Engaging with literature in the Introduction

Prior studies are often mentioned in the Introduction , generally as high-level summaries without much detail. Although some people may choose not to use existing literature or research to motivate a study, this is not an uncommon practice. Researchers sometimes rely on prior studies to emphasise the importance of the current study – for example, in challenging a standing argument or addressing an outstanding gap . Prior studies are also often discussed to build the foundation of the arguments of the research paper in question. 

Working with previous studies in the Methodology

It is also common practice to refer to prior literature in the Methodology. You may refer to prior studies as you design the study, collect and/or select data and perform the analysis. If this is the case, it is important to explain clearly why you are using and drawing from previous studies and how these are relevant to your own research paper. 

It is also possible to refer to prior studies to highlight the different methodological choices you have taken in your research. For example, there may be a comparison of the data sources, the sample or subject selections. Or, you might offer a comparison in the decisions made for different parameters, constructs, factors, model selection preferences and so on. Highlighting these differences can help you to clearly present new perspectives and why your study provides value to the field.

If you are offering a comparison between your current and previous studies, try to avoid solely comparing and contrasting, or simply stating what you have performed. What is more important is to explain why you have made these different decisions so that readers can understand the rationale behind your methodological decisions and your project design .

Referring to the literature in the Discussion and Conclusion

It is always a good idea to refer to prior studies and existing literature in the Discussion or Conclusion sections. This is a good time to reiterate the arguments, research questions/hypotheses and objectives that you introduced in the earlier sections of the paper and to discuss your results and findings .

Integrating other relevant literature into your Discussion serves two key purposes . First, it outlines what has already been achieved in prior studies. Second, you can explain how your study builds on this existing work to advance the knowledge in the field . 

Sometimes, through this discussion, you can also demonstrate why or how your findings are the same as or different from prior studies. 

Three common mistakes to avoid

When forging connections between prior studies and your own research paper, it is important to be aware of three common mistakes that authors make.

• Some researchers sometimes focus too much on the existing literature , so that their research paper does not, ultimately, seem to provide many new insights. 
• Because of the way authors might present and discuss prior studies in the Introduction, readers may become distracted or be led to raise more questions that are not relevant to the present research paper. [ Tip : In this and the above instances, it is advisable that you ensure your discussion of the literature is relevant at all times to the specific issues that you are discussing in each section and does not overshadow the main idea(s) in the research paper.]
• Although you can critique prior studies to highlight the unique approach or key message of your study, it is a good practice to avoid subjective assessments, so as not to introduce any personal biases into your discussion of either the literature or your own research. 

In conclusion

Remember that engagement with the literature serves primarily to set the scene and contextualise your own research . It should provide enough information for your reader to understand the relevance and significance of your study, but not take over the main focus of the paper.

Read next (fifth/final) in series: Difference between a literature review and a critical review

Read previous (third) in series: Deciding what to include and exclude as you begin to write your literature review

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What is a literature review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment.  Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
• Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

APA7 Style resources

APA Style Blog - for those harder to find answers

1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

Your literature review should be guided by your central research question.  The literature represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

• Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow.  Is it manageable?
• Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
• If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor and your class mates.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

• This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search. 

Where to find databases:

• use the tabs on this guide
• Find other databases in the Nursing Information Resources web page
• More on the Medical Library web page
• ... and more on the Yale University Library web page

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

• Use the key words in your question, as well as synonyms for those words, as terms in your search. Use the database tutorials for help.
• Save the searches in the databases. This saves time when you want to redo, or modify, the searches. It is also helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results.
• Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
• Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
• Check with your professor, or a subject expert in the field, if you are missing any key works in the field.
• Ask your librarian for help at any time.
• Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help.

Review the literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions.
• Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited? If so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

• Review the abstracts carefully.  
• Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.
• Create a matrix of the studies for easy analysis, and synthesis, across all of the studies.
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2.3 Reviewing the Research Literature

Learning objectives.

• Define the research literature in psychology and give examples of sources that are part of the research literature and sources that are not.
• Describe and use several methods for finding previous research on a particular research idea or question.

Reviewing the research literature means finding, reading, and summarizing the published research relevant to your question. An empirical research report written in American Psychological Association (APA) style always includes a written literature review, but it is important to review the literature early in the research process for several reasons.

• It can help you turn a research idea into an interesting research question.
• It can tell you if a research question has already been answered.
• It can help you evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
• It can give you ideas for how to conduct your own study.
• It can tell you how your study fits into the research literature.

What Is the Research Literature?

The research literature in any field is all the published research in that field. The research literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the beginning of the field—and it continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does not include self-help and other pop psychology books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries, websites, and similar sources that are intended mainly for the general public. These are considered unreliable because they are not reviewed by other researchers and are often based on little more than common sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable information, but the fact that its authors are anonymous and its content continually changes makes it unsuitable as a basis of sound scientific research. For our purposes, it helps to define the research literature as consisting almost entirely of two types of sources: articles in professional journals, and scholarly books in psychology and related fields.

Professional Journals

Professional journals are periodicals that publish original research articles. There are thousands of professional journals that publish research in psychology and related fields. They are usually published monthly or quarterly in individual issues, each of which contains several articles. The issues are organized into volumes, which usually consist of all the issues for a calendar year. Some journals are published in hard copy only, others in both hard copy and electronic form, and still others in electronic form only.

Most articles in professional journals are one of two basic types: empirical research reports and review articles. Empirical research reports describe one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors. They introduce a research question, explain why it is interesting, review previous research, describe their method and results, and draw their conclusions. Review articles summarize previously published research on a topic and usually present new ways to organize or explain the results. When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory, it is often referred to as a theoretical article .

Figure 2.6 Small Sample of the Thousands of Professional Journals That Publish Research in Psychology and Related Fields

Most professional journals in psychology undergo a process of peer review . Researchers who want to publish their work in the journal submit a manuscript to the editor—who is generally an established researcher too—who in turn sends it to two or three experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a critical review, and sends the review back to the editor along with his or her recommendations. The editor then decides whether to accept the article for publication, ask the authors to make changes and resubmit it for further consideration, or reject it outright. In any case, the editor forwards the reviewers’ written comments to the researchers so that they can revise their manuscript accordingly. Peer review is important because it ensures that the work meets basic standards of the field before it can enter the research literature.

Scholarly Books

Scholarly books are books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for use by other researchers and practitioners. A monograph is written by a single author or a small group of authors and usually gives a coherent presentation of a topic much like an extended review article. Edited volumes have an editor or a small group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic. Although edited volumes can also give a coherent presentation of the topic, it is not unusual for each chapter to take a different perspective or even for the authors of different chapters to openly disagree with each other. In general, scholarly books undergo a peer review process similar to that used by professional journals.

Literature Search Strategies

Using psycinfo and other databases.

The primary method used to search the research literature involves using one or more electronic databases. These include Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and ProQuest for all academic disciplines, ERIC for education, and PubMed for medicine and related fields. The most important for our purposes, however, is PsycINFO , which is produced by the APA. PsycINFO is so comprehensive—covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books going back more than 100 years—that for most purposes its content is synonymous with the research literature in psychology. Like most such databases, PsycINFO is usually available through your college or university library.

PsycINFO consists of individual records for each article, book chapter, or book in the database. Each record includes basic publication information, an abstract or summary of the work, and a list of other works cited by that work. A computer interface allows entering one or more search terms and returns any records that contain those search terms. (These interfaces are provided by different vendors and therefore can look somewhat different depending on the library you use.) Each record also contains lists of keywords that describe the content of the work and also a list of index terms. The index terms are especially helpful because they are standardized. Research on differences between women and men, for example, is always indexed under “Human Sex Differences.” Research on touching is always indexed under the term “Physical Contact.” If you do not know the appropriate index terms, PsycINFO includes a thesaurus that can help you find them.

Given that there are nearly three million records in PsycINFO, you may have to try a variety of search terms in different combinations and at different levels of specificity before you find what you are looking for. Imagine, for example, that you are interested in the question of whether women and men differ in terms of their ability to recall experiences from when they were very young. If you were to enter “memory for early experiences” as your search term, PsycINFO would return only six records, most of which are not particularly relevant to your question. However, if you were to enter the search term “memory,” it would return 149,777 records—far too many to look through individually. This is where the thesaurus helps. Entering “memory” into the thesaurus provides several more specific index terms—one of which is “early memories.” While searching for “early memories” among the index terms returns 1,446 records—still too many too look through individually—combining it with “human sex differences” as a second search term returns 37 articles, many of which are highly relevant to the topic.

Depending on the vendor that provides the interface to PsycINFO, you may be able to save, print, or e-mail the relevant PsycINFO records. The records might even contain links to full-text copies of the works themselves. (PsycARTICLES is a database that provides full-text access to articles in all journals published by the APA.) If not, and you want a copy of the work, you will have to find out if your library carries the journal or has the book and the hard copy on the library shelves. Be sure to ask a librarian if you need help.

Using Other Search Techniques

In addition to entering search terms into PsycINFO and other databases, there are several other techniques you can use to search the research literature. First, if you have one good article or book chapter on your topic—a recent review article is best—you can look through the reference list of that article for other relevant articles, books, and book chapters. In fact, you should do this with any relevant article or book chapter you find. You can also start with a classic article or book chapter on your topic, find its record in PsycINFO (by entering the author’s name or article’s title as a search term), and link from there to a list of other works in PsycINFO that cite that classic article. This works because other researchers working on your topic are likely to be aware of the classic article and cite it in their own work. You can also do a general Internet search using search terms related to your topic or the name of a researcher who conducts research on your topic. This might lead you directly to works that are part of the research literature (e.g., articles in open-access journals or posted on researchers’ own websites). The search engine Google Scholar is especially useful for this purpose. A general Internet search might also lead you to websites that are not part of the research literature but might provide references to works that are. Finally, you can talk to people (e.g., your instructor or other faculty members in psychology) who know something about your topic and can suggest relevant articles and book chapters.

What to Search For

When you do a literature review, you need to be selective. Not every article, book chapter, and book that relates to your research idea or question will be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, you want to focus on sources that help you do four basic things: (a) refine your research question, (b) identify appropriate research methods, (c) place your research in the context of previous research, and (d) write an effective research report. Several basic principles can help you find the most useful sources.

First, it is best to focus on recent research, keeping in mind that what counts as recent depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively being studied, “recent” might mean published in the past year or two. For older topics that are receiving less attention right now, “recent” might mean within the past 10 years. You will get a feel for what counts as recent for your topic when you start your literature search. A good general rule, however, is to start with sources published in the past five years. The main exception to this rule would be classic articles that turn up in the reference list of nearly every other source. If other researchers think that this work is important, even though it is old, then by all means you should include it in your review.

Second, you should look for review articles on your topic because they will provide a useful overview of it—often discussing important definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving you a good sense of where your own research fits into the literature. You should also look for empirical research reports addressing your question or similar questions, which can give you ideas about how to operationally define your variables and collect your data. As a general rule, it is good to use methods that others have already used successfully unless you have good reasons not to. Finally, you should look for sources that provide information that can help you argue for the interestingness of your research question. For a study on the effects of cell phone use on driving ability, for example, you might look for information about how widespread cell phone use is, how frequent and costly motor vehicle crashes are, and so on.

How many sources are enough for your literature review? This is a difficult question because it depends on how extensively your topic has been studied and also on your own goals. One study found that across a variety of professional journals in psychology, the average number of sources cited per article was about 50 (Adair & Vohra, 2003). This gives a rough idea of what professional researchers consider to be adequate. As a student, you might be assigned a much lower minimum number of references to use, but the principles for selecting the most useful ones remain the same.

Key Takeaways

• The research literature in psychology is all the published research in psychology, consisting primarily of articles in professional journals and scholarly books.
• Early in the research process, it is important to conduct a review of the research literature on your topic to refine your research question, identify appropriate research methods, place your question in the context of other research, and prepare to write an effective research report.
• There are several strategies for finding previous research on your topic. Among the best is using PsycINFO, a computer database that catalogs millions of articles, books, and book chapters in psychology and related fields.
• Practice: Use the techniques discussed in this section to find 10 journal articles and book chapters on one of the following research ideas: memory for smells, aggressive driving, the causes of narcissistic personality disorder, the functions of the intraparietal sulcus, or prejudice against the physically handicapped.

Adair, J. G., & Vohra, N. (2003). The explosion of knowledge, references, and citations: Psychology’s unique response to a crisis. American Psychologist, 58 , 15–23.

Research Methods in Psychology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Research Methods

• Getting Started
• Literature Review Research
• Research Design
• Research Design By Discipline
• SAGE Research Methods
• Teaching with SAGE Research Methods

Literature Review

• What is a Literature Review?
• What is NOT a Literature Review?
• Purposes of a Literature Review
• Types of Literature Reviews
• Literature Reviews vs. Systematic Reviews
• Systematic vs. Meta-Analysis

Literature Review  is a comprehensive survey of the works published in a particular field of study or line of research, usually over a specific period of time, in the form of an in-depth, critical bibliographic essay or annotated list in which attention is drawn to the most significant works.

Also, we can define a literature review as the collected body of scholarly works related to a topic:

• Summarizes and analyzes previous research relevant to a topic
• Includes scholarly books and articles published in academic journals
• Can be an specific scholarly paper or a section in a research paper

The objective of a Literature Review is to find previous published scholarly works relevant to an specific topic

• Help gather ideas or information
• Keep up to date in current trends and findings
• Help develop new questions

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Helps focus your own research questions or problems
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Suggests unexplored ideas or populations
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias.
• Identifies critical gaps, points of disagreement, or potentially flawed methodology or theoretical approaches.
• Indicates potential directions for future research.

All content in this section is from Literature Review Research from Old Dominion University 

Keep in mind the following, a literature review is NOT:

Not an essay 

Not an annotated bibliography  in which you summarize each article that you have reviewed.  A literature review goes beyond basic summarizing to focus on the critical analysis of the reviewed works and their relationship to your research question.

Not a research paper   where you select resources to support one side of an issue versus another.  A lit review should explain and consider all sides of an argument in order to avoid bias, and areas of agreement and disagreement should be highlighted.

A literature review serves several purposes. For example, it

• provides thorough knowledge of previous studies; introduces seminal works.
• helps focus one’s own research topic.
• identifies a conceptual framework for one’s own research questions or problems; indicates potential directions for future research.
• suggests previously unused or underused methodologies, designs, quantitative and qualitative strategies.
• identifies gaps in previous studies; identifies flawed methodologies and/or theoretical approaches; avoids replication of mistakes.
• helps the researcher avoid repetition of earlier research.
• suggests unexplored populations.
• determines whether past studies agree or disagree; identifies controversy in the literature.
• tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias.

As Kennedy (2007) notes*, it is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the original studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally that become part of the lore of field. In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews.

Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are several approaches to how they can be done, depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study. Listed below are definitions of types of literature reviews:

Argumentative Review      This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply imbedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews.

Integrative Review      Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication.

Historical Review      Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical reviews are focused on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review      A review does not always focus on what someone said [content], but how they said it [method of analysis]. This approach provides a framework of understanding at different levels (i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches and data collection and analysis techniques), enables researchers to draw on a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection and data analysis, and helps highlight many ethical issues which we should be aware of and consider as we go through our study.

Systematic Review      This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyse data from the studies that are included in the review. Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?"

Theoretical Review      The purpose of this form is to concretely examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review help establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

* Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature."  Educational Researcher  36 (April 2007): 139-147.

All content in this section is from The Literature Review created by Dr. Robert Larabee USC

Robinson, P. and Lowe, J. (2015),  Literature reviews vs systematic reviews.  Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 39: 103-103. doi: 10.1111/1753-6405.12393

What's in the name? The difference between a Systematic Review and a Literature Review, and why it matters . By Lynn Kysh from University of Southern California

Systematic review or meta-analysis?

A  systematic review  answers a defined research question by collecting and summarizing all empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria.

A  meta-analysis  is the use of statistical methods to summarize the results of these studies.

Systematic reviews, just like other research articles, can be of varying quality. They are a significant piece of work (the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at York estimates that a team will take 9-24 months), and to be useful to other researchers and practitioners they should have:

• clearly stated objectives with pre-defined eligibility criteria for studies
• explicit, reproducible methodology
• a systematic search that attempts to identify all studies
• assessment of the validity of the findings of the included studies (e.g. risk of bias)
• systematic presentation, and synthesis, of the characteristics and findings of the included studies

Not all systematic reviews contain meta-analysis. 

Meta-analysis is the use of statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analysis can provide more precise estimates of the effects of health care than those derived from the individual studies included within a review.  More information on meta-analyses can be found in  Cochrane Handbook, Chapter 9 .

A meta-analysis goes beyond critique and integration and conducts secondary statistical analysis on the outcomes of similar studies.  It is a systematic review that uses quantitative methods to synthesize and summarize the results.

An advantage of a meta-analysis is the ability to be completely objective in evaluating research findings.  Not all topics, however, have sufficient research evidence to allow a meta-analysis to be conducted.  In that case, an integrative review is an appropriate strategy. 

Some of the content in this section is from Systematic reviews and meta-analyses: step by step guide created by Kate McAllister.

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Literature Review: Purpose of a Literature Review

• Literature Review
• Purpose of a Literature Review
• Work in Progress
• Compiling & Writing
• Books, Articles, & Web Pages
• Types of Literature Reviews
• Departmental Differences
• Citation Styles & Plagiarism
• Know the Difference! Systematic Review vs. Literature Review

The purpose of a literature review is to:

• Provide a foundation of knowledge on a topic
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication and give credit to other researchers
• Identify inconstancies: gaps in research, conflicts in previous studies, open questions left from other research
• Identify the need for additional research (justifying your research)
• Identify the relationship of works in the context of their contribution to the topic and other works
• Place your own research within the context of existing literature, making a case for why further study is needed.

Videos & Tutorials

VIDEO: What is the role of a literature review in research? What's it mean to "review" the literature? Get the big picture of what to expect as part of the process. This video is published under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA US license. License, credits, and contact information can be found here: https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/litreview/

Elements in a Literature Review

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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• 8. The Discussion
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Applying Critical Thinking
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Research Process Video Series
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Generative AI and Writing
• USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
• Bibliography

The purpose of the discussion section is to interpret and describe the significance of your findings in relation to what was already known about the research problem being investigated and to explain any new understanding or insights that emerged as a result of your research. The discussion will always connect to the introduction by way of the research questions or hypotheses you posed and the literature you reviewed, but the discussion does not simply repeat or rearrange the first parts of your paper; the discussion clearly explains how your study advanced the reader's understanding of the research problem from where you left them at the end of your review of prior research.

Annesley, Thomas M. “The Discussion Section: Your Closing Argument.” Clinical Chemistry 56 (November 2010): 1671-1674; Peacock, Matthew. “Communicative Moves in the Discussion Section of Research Articles.” System 30 (December 2002): 479-497.

Importance of a Good Discussion

The discussion section is often considered the most important part of your research paper because it:

• Most effectively demonstrates your ability as a researcher to think critically about an issue, to develop creative solutions to problems based upon a logical synthesis of the findings, and to formulate a deeper, more profound understanding of the research problem under investigation;
• Presents the underlying meaning of your research, notes possible implications in other areas of study, and explores possible improvements that can be made in order to further develop the concerns of your research;
• Highlights the importance of your study and how it can contribute to understanding the research problem within the field of study;
• Presents how the findings from your study revealed and helped fill gaps in the literature that had not been previously exposed or adequately described; and,
• Engages the reader in thinking critically about issues based on an evidence-based interpretation of findings; it is not governed strictly by objective reporting of information.

Annesley Thomas M. “The Discussion Section: Your Closing Argument.” Clinical Chemistry 56 (November 2010): 1671-1674; Bitchener, John and Helen Basturkmen. “Perceptions of the Difficulties of Postgraduate L2 Thesis Students Writing the Discussion Section.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 5 (January 2006): 4-18; Kretchmer, Paul. Fourteen Steps to Writing an Effective Discussion Section. San Francisco Edit, 2003-2008.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  General Rules

These are the general rules you should adopt when composing your discussion of the results :

• Do not be verbose or repetitive; be concise and make your points clearly
• Avoid the use of jargon or undefined technical language
• Follow a logical stream of thought; in general, interpret and discuss the significance of your findings in the same sequence you described them in your results section [a notable exception is to begin by highlighting an unexpected result or a finding that can grab the reader's attention]
• Use the present verb tense, especially for established facts; however, refer to specific works or prior studies in the past tense
• If needed, use subheadings to help organize your discussion or to categorize your interpretations into themes

II.  The Content

The content of the discussion section of your paper most often includes :

• Explanation of results : Comment on whether or not the results were expected for each set of findings; go into greater depth to explain findings that were unexpected or especially profound. If appropriate, note any unusual or unanticipated patterns or trends that emerged from your results and explain their meaning in relation to the research problem.
• References to previous research : Either compare your results with the findings from other studies or use the studies to support a claim. This can include re-visiting key sources already cited in your literature review section, or, save them to cite later in the discussion section if they are more important to compare with your results instead of being a part of the general literature review of prior research used to provide context and background information. Note that you can make this decision to highlight specific studies after you have begun writing the discussion section.
• Deduction : A claim for how the results can be applied more generally. For example, describing lessons learned, proposing recommendations that can help improve a situation, or highlighting best practices.
• Hypothesis : A more general claim or possible conclusion arising from the results [which may be proved or disproved in subsequent research]. This can be framed as new research questions that emerged as a consequence of your analysis.

III.  Organization and Structure

Keep the following sequential points in mind as you organize and write the discussion section of your paper:

• Think of your discussion as an inverted pyramid. Organize the discussion from the general to the specific, linking your findings to the literature, then to theory, then to practice [if appropriate].
• Use the same key terms, narrative style, and verb tense [present] that you used when describing the research problem in your introduction.
• Begin by briefly re-stating the research problem you were investigating and answer all of the research questions underpinning the problem that you posed in the introduction.
• Describe the patterns, principles, and relationships shown by each major findings and place them in proper perspective. The sequence of this information is important; first state the answer, then the relevant results, then cite the work of others. If appropriate, refer the reader to a figure or table to help enhance the interpretation of the data [either within the text or as an appendix].
• Regardless of where it's mentioned, a good discussion section includes analysis of any unexpected findings. This part of the discussion should begin with a description of the unanticipated finding, followed by a brief interpretation as to why you believe it appeared and, if necessary, its possible significance in relation to the overall study. If more than one unexpected finding emerged during the study, describe each of them in the order they appeared as you gathered or analyzed the data. As noted, the exception to discussing findings in the same order you described them in the results section would be to begin by highlighting the implications of a particularly unexpected or significant finding that emerged from the study, followed by a discussion of the remaining findings.
• Before concluding the discussion, identify potential limitations and weaknesses if you do not plan to do so in the conclusion of the paper. Comment on their relative importance in relation to your overall interpretation of the results and, if necessary, note how they may affect the validity of your findings. Avoid using an apologetic tone; however, be honest and self-critical [e.g., in retrospect, had you included a particular question in a survey instrument, additional data could have been revealed].
• The discussion section should end with a concise summary of the principal implications of the findings regardless of their significance. Give a brief explanation about why you believe the findings and conclusions of your study are important and how they support broader knowledge or understanding of the research problem. This can be followed by any recommendations for further research. However, do not offer recommendations which could have been easily addressed within the study. This would demonstrate to the reader that you have inadequately examined and interpreted the data.

IV.  Overall Objectives

The objectives of your discussion section should include the following: I.  Reiterate the Research Problem/State the Major Findings

Briefly reiterate the research problem or problems you are investigating and the methods you used to investigate them, then move quickly to describe the major findings of the study. You should write a direct, declarative, and succinct proclamation of the study results, usually in one paragraph.

II.  Explain the Meaning of the Findings and Why They are Important

No one has thought as long and hard about your study as you have. Systematically explain the underlying meaning of your findings and state why you believe they are significant. After reading the discussion section, you want the reader to think critically about the results and why they are important. You don’t want to force the reader to go through the paper multiple times to figure out what it all means. If applicable, begin this part of the section by repeating what you consider to be your most significant or unanticipated finding first, then systematically review each finding. Otherwise, follow the general order you reported the findings presented in the results section.

III.  Relate the Findings to Similar Studies

No study in the social sciences is so novel or possesses such a restricted focus that it has absolutely no relation to previously published research. The discussion section should relate your results to those found in other studies, particularly if questions raised from prior studies served as the motivation for your research. This is important because comparing and contrasting the findings of other studies helps to support the overall importance of your results and it highlights how and in what ways your study differs from other research about the topic. Note that any significant or unanticipated finding is often because there was no prior research to indicate the finding could occur. If there is prior research to indicate this, you need to explain why it was significant or unanticipated. IV.  Consider Alternative Explanations of the Findings

It is important to remember that the purpose of research in the social sciences is to discover and not to prove . When writing the discussion section, you should carefully consider all possible explanations for the study results, rather than just those that fit your hypothesis or prior assumptions and biases. This is especially important when describing the discovery of significant or unanticipated findings.

V.  Acknowledge the Study’s Limitations

It is far better for you to identify and acknowledge your study’s limitations than to have them pointed out by your professor! Note any unanswered questions or issues your study could not address and describe the generalizability of your results to other situations. If a limitation is applicable to the method chosen to gather information, then describe in detail the problems you encountered and why. VI.  Make Suggestions for Further Research

You may choose to conclude the discussion section by making suggestions for further research [as opposed to offering suggestions in the conclusion of your paper]. Although your study can offer important insights about the research problem, this is where you can address other questions related to the problem that remain unanswered or highlight hidden issues that were revealed as a result of conducting your research. You should frame your suggestions by linking the need for further research to the limitations of your study [e.g., in future studies, the survey instrument should include more questions that ask..."] or linking to critical issues revealed from the data that were not considered initially in your research.

NOTE: Besides the literature review section, the preponderance of references to sources is usually found in the discussion section . A few historical references may be helpful for perspective, but most of the references should be relatively recent and included to aid in the interpretation of your results, to support the significance of a finding, and/or to place a finding within a particular context. If a study that you cited does not support your findings, don't ignore it--clearly explain why your research findings differ from theirs.

V.  Problems to Avoid

• Do not waste time restating your results . Should you need to remind the reader of a finding to be discussed, use "bridge sentences" that relate the result to the interpretation. An example would be: “In the case of determining available housing to single women with children in rural areas of Texas, the findings suggest that access to good schools is important...," then move on to further explaining this finding and its implications.
• As noted, recommendations for further research can be included in either the discussion or conclusion of your paper, but do not repeat your recommendations in the both sections. Think about the overall narrative flow of your paper to determine where best to locate this information. However, if your findings raise a lot of new questions or issues, consider including suggestions for further research in the discussion section.
• Do not introduce new results in the discussion section. Be wary of mistaking the reiteration of a specific finding for an interpretation because it may confuse the reader. The description of findings [results section] and the interpretation of their significance [discussion section] should be distinct parts of your paper. If you choose to combine the results section and the discussion section into a single narrative, you must be clear in how you report the information discovered and your own interpretation of each finding. This approach is not recommended if you lack experience writing college-level research papers.
• Use of the first person pronoun is generally acceptable. Using first person singular pronouns can help emphasize a point or illustrate a contrasting finding. However, keep in mind that too much use of the first person can actually distract the reader from the main points [i.e., I know you're telling me this--just tell me!].

Analyzing vs. Summarizing. Department of English Writing Guide. George Mason University; Discussion. The Structure, Format, Content, and Style of a Journal-Style Scientific Paper. Department of Biology. Bates College; Hess, Dean R. "How to Write an Effective Discussion." Respiratory Care 49 (October 2004); Kretchmer, Paul. Fourteen Steps to Writing to Writing an Effective Discussion Section. San Francisco Edit, 2003-2008; The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Sauaia, A. et al. "The Anatomy of an Article: The Discussion Section: "How Does the Article I Read Today Change What I Will Recommend to my Patients Tomorrow?” The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery 74 (June 2013): 1599-1602; Research Limitations & Future Research . Lund Research Ltd., 2012; Summary: Using it Wisely. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Schafer, Mickey S. Writing the Discussion. Writing in Psychology course syllabus. University of Florida; Yellin, Linda L. A Sociology Writer's Guide . Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2009.

Writing Tip

Don’t Over-Interpret the Results!

Interpretation is a subjective exercise. As such, you should always approach the selection and interpretation of your findings introspectively and to think critically about the possibility of judgmental biases unintentionally entering into discussions about the significance of your work. With this in mind, be careful that you do not read more into the findings than can be supported by the evidence you have gathered. Remember that the data are the data: nothing more, nothing less.

MacCoun, Robert J. "Biases in the Interpretation and Use of Research Results." Annual Review of Psychology 49 (February 1998): 259-287; Ward, Paulet al, editors. The Oxford Handbook of Expertise . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Write Two Results Sections!

One of the most common mistakes that you can make when discussing the results of your study is to present a superficial interpretation of the findings that more or less re-states the results section of your paper. Obviously, you must refer to your results when discussing them, but focus on the interpretation of those results and their significance in relation to the research problem, not the data itself.

Azar, Beth. "Discussing Your Findings."  American Psychological Association gradPSYCH Magazine (January 2006).

Yet Another Writing Tip

Avoid Unwarranted Speculation!

The discussion section should remain focused on the findings of your study. For example, if the purpose of your research was to measure the impact of foreign aid on increasing access to education among disadvantaged children in Bangladesh, it would not be appropriate to speculate about how your findings might apply to populations in other countries without drawing from existing studies to support your claim or if analysis of other countries was not a part of your original research design. If you feel compelled to speculate, do so in the form of describing possible implications or explaining possible impacts. Be certain that you clearly identify your comments as speculation or as a suggestion for where further research is needed. Sometimes your professor will encourage you to expand your discussion of the results in this way, while others don’t care what your opinion is beyond your effort to interpret the data in relation to the research problem.

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Educational resources and simple solutions for your research journey

Interpreting Research Results with Previous Studies

Effective literature search is important for several reasons. Before you conduct your study, you need to identify other previous studies that addressed research questions or hypotheses that are comparable to yours. Interpreting research results can help in designing appropriate methodological approaches for your study.

However, after your study is completed—when you are interpreting your research results or drafting your research paper—you need to compare the findings in your research with those of previous studies in your research field. The “discussion” section of your manuscript is where you will need to present the interpretations of your results and the conclusions you draw.

This section is critical because peer reviewers will use it to evaluate how relevant your research results are in the current context. In this section, you should summarize the key findings in your research—whether they support or contradict your research hypothesis.

If your literature search and review are robust, you will be able to confidently write about how well your approaches to analyzing the research results were, how useful/reliable your research methodology was, and how well your research filled existing knowledge gaps.

Even when your research results are different from those of previous studies, interpreting research results from previous studies will allow you to explain why this may be so and thus showcase your in-depth understanding of the research topic. A thorough comparison of your research results with existing literature may also give you new insights into the research topic, potentially giving direction to any future studies on that topic.

While comparing data with previous studies in research, organize the interpretations of the results around your research question and ask these questions:

• Are your research results consistent with previously published results on this topic?
• If yes, do your research results confirm or further support your existing knowledge/conclusions from previous studies in research?
• If not, do the research methodologies used in these studies differ from what you used in yours? Could the differences be attributed to differences in factors such as the sample size, animal models, patient characteristics, geographic location of the study, time or length of study, experimental conditions, and outcome measures?
• Irrespective of whether your research results are consistent or inconsistent with those of previous studies in your research field, are your interpretations aligned with those presented by the authors of these studies?
• How relevant or significant are your research results in the context of existing literature?

Comparing your research results with previously published ones can be tedious as one would need to find all research papers from different databases and then spend time interpreting research results to ascertain their relevance. What can make this challenging task easy is using smart apps, such as  R Discovery , a free to download app for researchers developed by Researcher.Life.

R Discovery is powered by AI and designed specially to help researchers and students find previous studies in research and existing literature in their field of study with ease. It helps find the latest and most relevant research papers from a comprehensive database of published academic literature from all disciplines. It also provides you a clear summary of open access papers that helps in easily interpreting research results before you decide whether to ready the entire paper, making R Discovery a  perfect tool for your literature search . Moreover, users of R Discovery can create their own personalized library of previous studies in research topics of your interest.

Going beyond literature search to comparing your research results with existing studies, the free app can also help you stay updated on trending research. R Discovery is designed to understand a user’s interests based on the preferences they indicate and their search activity on the app. Based on this, it delivers to you top 3 articles in your field of interest.

We hope that the tips and advice provided in this article enable you to compare your research results with previous studies in research in a more thorough, yet simpler and stress-free way.

R Discovery is a literature search and research reading platform that accelerates your research discovery journey by keeping you updated on the latest, most relevant scholarly content. With 250M+ research articles sourced from trusted aggregators like CrossRef, Unpaywall, PubMed, PubMed Central, Open Alex and top publishing houses like Springer Nature, JAMA, IOP, Taylor & Francis, NEJM, BMJ, Karger, SAGE, Emerald Publishing and more, R Discovery puts a world of research at your fingertips.  

Try R Discovery Prime FREE for 1 week or upgrade at just US$72 a year to access premium features that let you listen to research on the go, read in your language, collaborate with peers, auto sync with reference managers, and much more. Choose a simpler, smarter way to find and read research – Download the app and start your free 7-day trial today !  

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The best ways to review a previous research study

• Literature Review

Reviewing a previous research study is an important part of the scientific process. It allows researchers to build upon existing knowledge and to identify gaps in the literature. By critically evaluating the methods and results of a study, researchers can gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the study and can use this information to inform their own research. This article will discuss the best way to review a previous research study, including the importance of understanding the research question, critically evaluating the methods and results, and considering the implications of the study.

How to Use a Systematic Approach to Review a Previous Research Study

A systematic approach to reviewing a previous research study is an effective way to ensure that all aspects of the study are thoroughly examined. This approach involves breaking down the study into its component parts and assessing each part in turn. The following steps provide a guide to using a systematic approach to review a previous research study.

1. Read the study in its entirety. It is important to read the entire study in order to gain an understanding of the overall research question and the methods used to answer it.

2. Identify the research question. Once the study has been read, the research question should be identified. This will provide a focus for the review.

3. Examine the methods used. The methods used to answer the research question should be examined in detail. This includes assessing the appropriateness of the research design, the sampling methods used, the data collection methods, and the data analysis techniques.

4. Assess the results. The results of the study should be assessed to determine if they are valid and reliable. This includes examining the statistical tests used and the interpretation of the results.

5. Evaluate the conclusions. The conclusions of the study should be evaluated to determine if they are supported by the data.

6. Identify any limitations. Any limitations of the study should be identified and discussed. This includes any potential sources of bias or errors in the data.

7. Make recommendations. Finally, recommendations should be made for future research based on the findings of the review.

By following this systematic approach, it is possible to ensure that all aspects of the study are thoroughly examined and that any potential weaknesses are identified. This approach can be used to review any type of research study and is an effective way to ensure that the review is comprehensive and accurate.

What Qualities Make a Good Review of a Previous Research Study?

1. Accuracy: A good review of a previous research study should accurately summarize the study’s findings and conclusions.

2. Objectivity: A good review should be unbiased and not influenced by the reviewer’s personal opinions or beliefs.

3. Clarity: A good review should be written in a clear and concise manner, avoiding jargon and technical language.

4. Depth: A good review should provide a comprehensive overview of the study, including its methodology, results, and implications.

5. Critical Analysis: A good review should provide a critical analysis of the study, including an evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses.

6. Relevance: A good review should be relevant to the current research context and provide insight into the implications of the study for future research.

How to Identify and Analyze the Strengths and Weaknesses of a Previous Research Study

Identifying and analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of a previous research study is an important step in the research process. It helps to ensure that the research is conducted in a rigorous and systematic manner, and that the results are reliable and valid. In order to identify and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a previous research study, it is important to consider the following criteria:

1. Research Design: The research design should be appropriate for the research question and should be clearly articulated. It should also be well-structured and organized, and should include a clear description of the methods used.

2. Data Collection: The data collection process should be clearly described, and the data should be collected in a systematic and reliable manner. The data should also be of high quality and should be relevant to the research question.

3. Data Analysis: The data analysis should be appropriate for the research question and should be clearly described. The analysis should be conducted in a systematic and rigorous manner, and should include appropriate statistical tests.

4. Results: The results should be clearly presented and should be relevant to the research question. The results should also be interpreted in a meaningful way.

5. Discussion: The discussion should be comprehensive and should include an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the study. It should also include an assessment of the implications of the results and any recommendations for future research.

By considering these criteria, it is possible to identify and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a previous research study. This can help to ensure that the research is conducted in a rigorous and systematic manner, and that the results are reliable and valid.

What Are the Benefits of Conducting a Comprehensive Review of a Previous Research Study?

Conducting a comprehensive review of a previous research study can provide a number of benefits. Firstly, it can help to identify any gaps in the existing research, allowing for further investigation into the topic. Secondly, it can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the research topic, as the review can draw on multiple sources of information. Thirdly, it can help to identify any methodological issues with the previous research, allowing for the development of more robust research designs in the future. Finally, it can help to identify any potential areas of further research, allowing for the development of new research questions and hypotheses. In summary, conducting a comprehensive review of a previous research study can provide a number of benefits, including the identification of gaps in existing research, a more comprehensive understanding of the research topic, the identification of methodological issues, and the identification of potential areas of further research.

How to Use Technology to Enhance the Review of a Previous Research Study

Technology can be used to enhance the review of a previous research study in a variety of ways. One of the most effective ways to use technology is to utilize digital databases and search engines to locate relevant studies. By using keywords related to the research topic, researchers can quickly and easily locate studies that are related to the topic of interest. Additionally, technology can be used to access and analyze data from previous studies. For example, researchers can use software programs to analyze data from previous studies and compare it to their own data. This can help researchers identify patterns and trends in the data that may not have been previously identified.

Technology can also be used to create visual representations of data from previous studies. For example, researchers can use software programs to create graphs and charts that illustrate the data in an easy-to-understand format. This can help researchers quickly identify patterns and trends in the data that may not have been previously identified. Additionally, technology can be used to create interactive models that allow researchers to explore the data in more depth. This can help researchers gain a better understanding of the data and draw more meaningful conclusions from the research.

Finally, technology can be used to share the results of the review of a previous research study with other researchers. For example, researchers can use online platforms to share their findings with other researchers in their field. This can help to facilitate collaboration and the sharing of ideas, which can lead to further research and discoveries.

Overall, technology can be used to enhance the review of a previous research study in a variety of ways. By utilizing digital databases and search engines, analyzing data, creating visual representations of data, and sharing results with other researchers, technology can help researchers gain a better understanding of the data and draw more meaningful conclusions from the research.

The best way to review a previous research study is to read the study carefully, take notes, and analyze the data. It is also important to consider the study’s methodology, results, and conclusions. Finally, it is important to consider the implications of the study and how it can be used to inform future research. By taking these steps, one can gain a better understanding of the study and its findings.

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Chapter: 2 examples of previous research.

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2 Examples of Previous Research R esearchers have examined the processes involved in deci- sions to study science in college, enter graduate school in the sciences, and become a scientist. These research programs originate in a variety of disciplines and can have quite different perspectives, but they also complement each other in explaining the complex processes involved in making educational and career choices. Because many of those interested in these questions are biomedical researchers who may not be steeped in social science viewpoints on these issues, the planning committee constructed an early session in the workshop to provide a varied set of lenses for participants to think more broadly about this kind of work—and to help consider themes for future study. The perspectives offered at the workshop—and in this summary—do not provide an exhaus- tive set, but they help to provide a broader set of questions and approaches for thinking about these issues. Social Cognitive Career Theory Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) is an integrative theoreti- cal framework that explores the psychological and social factors that produce personal interests and lead to choices related to education and careers. The theory is also concerned with the network of factors that affect performance and persistence in a person’s educational and career paths and those that are responsible for an individual’s satisfaction in a particular job.  

 UNDERSTANDING INTERVENTIONS Personal interests are not the only factors that drive educa- tional and career choices and can be trumped by family expectations or other external influences. But interests are “strong motivational drivers of the choices that students make in their educational and career lives,” said Robert W. Lent, professor of counseling and per- sonnel services at the University of Maryland, College Park. Lent described his work on applying SCCT to the issue of expanding the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline, noting that it serves as a template with which to view and develop interventions designed to encourage minorities to enter research careers. SCCT draws heavily from the more gen- eral social cognitive theory of the Stanford University psychologist Albert Bandura. The key construct in Bandura’s work is the concept of self-efficacy—people’s beliefs about their ability to perform specific behaviors or actions. In particular, it refers to domain-specific con- fidence in particular situations, not to self-confidence as a general trait. In the context of science and mathematics, said Lent, self-effi- cacy addresses “the fundamental question: Can I do this thing? Can I, for example, do well in math and science courses in middle or high school? Can I do well in a science or engineering-related major in college?” Self-efficacy beliefs, in turn, derive largely from four sources, according to Bandura’s theory. The first and most important is prior performance—the levels of mastery or failure that people have expe- rienced. “If I have done well in the past at a particular academic subject, for example, I am likely to expect in the future that I can do well in it as well,” said Lent. “Conversely, if I’ve not done so well, my self-efficacy beliefs are going to drop.” The three other sources of self-efficacy beliefs are also important. One is observations of others’ learning or the experience of models, especially models that one perceives as being similar to oneself. “For example, in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and so forth, viewing our models as being efficacious at things we want to do is a good way of raising self-efficacy—or lowering it, depending on the nature of the model,” Lent said. Another source of self-efficacy beliefs is the social messages that encourage or discourage participation in an activity. Students receive many messages from others and from the mass media that can influence their confidence about a particular activity. “But talk is cheap,” Lent reminded the workshop participants. “Sometimes, if we try to convince people that they are good at things that we are not so sure they are—or that their own performance experiences 

EXAMPLES OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH  disconfirm—then the source of that support may not be credible for very long, and people may not persist.” A final source of self-efficacy beliefs is physiological and affec- tive reactions. For example, if a person is so anxious in taking every math test that he or she does poorly, that person is likely to infer that math is a personal weakness. “So test anxiety can be, in that example, a negative influence on self-efficacy,” said Lent. This is one way in which gender can influence self-efficacy beliefs in science and mathematics, Lent noted. In a general popula- tion of college students, women at the college level and below tend to report significantly lower self-efficacy beliefs at math compared with men. However, the same tendency is not exhibited in more spe- cialized populations, such as engineering students. Also, if women have had similar experiences to men in terms of the four sources of self-efficacy beliefs, they tend to have the same self-efficacy beliefs as men. Interest in Bandura’s theory follows from a number of other factors, including the expectations surrounding particular outcomes. As Lent said, these beliefs “address the question: ‘If I do this, then what will happen? If I major, for example, in science or engineering, or if I choose to pursue a research career, what will be the outcomes? What will be the payoffs for me, and what will be the negative con- sequences? What will the salary be like? What will my co-workers be like? Prestige? Autonomy?’ These refer basically to career values that people want to fulfill.” Another factor is the goals that motivate people to engage in a particular activity or produce a particular outcome, such as trying to get an A grade in a particular math or science course. According to Lent, “Goals address the fundamental question of ‘how much do I want to do this course of action?’” Finally, within the theory, there are various kinds of social, financial, emotional, and other contextual supports and barriers that people encounter while pursuing their goals. These supports and barriers address the question of “‘how will the environment treat me if I try this particular course of action,’” Lent said. For example, “the phrase ‘chilly climate,’ which oftentimes refers to the experience of women and certain minority groups in science and engineering fields, refers to the perception of environmental barriers.” The importance of self-efficacy beliefs is often obvious among students studying science and engineering, Lent noted. For example, he has seen many students who did extremely well in high school lose confidence when they got poor grades on their first college mid- term examination. “All of a sudden their confidence levels plum- 

10 UNDERSTANDING INTERVENTIONS meted, and they were convinced they were in the wrong field,” Lent said. “They had never gotten Bs, or worse, before, and all of a sudden it was time to change majors and career paths.” The ongoing experience of success or failure subsequently modi- fies or stabilizes self-efficacy and outcome beliefs “in a never-ending loop,” said Lent. Changes to these beliefs also can occur through outside influences like “technological advances, parenting, and other life experiences that may formulate changes in interest patterns because of their impact on self-efficacy and outcome expectations.” Each person has what SCCT theorists call “person inputs”— factors like personality, ability, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, and health status. These factors interact with background factors such as social class and the quality of early educational experiences. “Depending on who one is, and what one looks like, the environ- ment may selectively provide or withhold certain opportunities,” said Lent. Lent and others have applied this framework in several major research projects. In a study of students at a predominantly white university, Lent and his colleagues found “that SCCT variables were well predictive of goals and actual persistence in engineering over a three-semester sequence.” This model was equally good at predicting choice and persistence goals in engineering majors when extended to two historically black universities. Lent and his coworkers are now conducting a large-scale longitudinal study of computer science and computer engineering students at multiple predominantly white and historically black colleges and universities around the country. This theoretical work has suggested particular intervention points and approaches, according to Lent. One possibility is to work at expanding vocational interests, especially in high-aptitude areas, and “getting people to rethink areas they might be able to do well at but have prematurely foreclosed upon because they don’t believe they have the ability to do well or don’t know enough about the field to want to pursue it.” Other options are clarifying career goals, sup- porting career goals, strengthening self-efficacy, instilling realistic   R.W. Lent, S.D. Brown, J. Schmidt, B. Brenner, H. Lyons, and D. Treistman. 2003. Relation of contextual supports and barriers to choice behavior in engineering ma- jors: Test of alternative social cognitive models. Journal of Counseling Psychology 50: 458-465.   R.W. Lent, S.D. Brown, H. Sheu, J. Schmidt, B.R. Brenner, C.S. Gloster, G. Wilkins, L. Schmidt, H. Lyons, and D. Treistman. 2005. Social cognitive predictors of academic interests and goals in engineering: Utility for women and students at historically Black universities. Journal of Counseling Psychology 52: 84-92. 

EXAMPLES OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH 11 outcome expectations, and helping people to manage environmental barriers and build effective support systems. Past work has also emphasized how much more could be learned through further research that applies this model. A particular need, said Lent, is for more longitudinal, multiyear, and multisite research. Also, according to Lent, the basic theory needs to be studied in rela- tion to women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields, and more theory-based interventions and experimental studies are needed. “There has been some of this and I think it holds much promise for the future, but we need much more of it,” said Lent. Lent noted, by the way, that many individuals and groups out- side of academia are interested in applying this approach to the issues they face. In addition to his university position, Lent is a visiting scholar at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and he said that the department views this issue as important to national security as well as economic prosperity. “There are some things that we probably don’t want to outsource to other countries,” Lent said. Human Capital Theory Another theoretical perspective, this one rooted in economics, is known as human capital theory. As described by Anne Preston, asso- ciate professor of economics at Haverford College, each individual has a stock of skills, knowledge, abilities, and other characteristics that determine his or her wage-earning potential. Individuals can invest in increases in their own human capital through education, on-the-job training, and other activities. “Human capital theory basi- cally allows us to understand under what circumstances an indi- vidual will decide to invest in further acquisition of human capital and [in] what types,” said Preston. “So you can think of it as a pure cost-benefit calculation made by what we in economics always talk about—the rational and perfectly informed actor.” Of course, as Preston noted, “we do understand that not every individual is totally rational or perfectly informed.” Costs, which Preston said are relatively easy to estimate, are for tangible expenses— such as tuition, room, board, books, and foregone earnings—and they occur at the time of the investment. Benefits, which can include future wages and future income streams, in contrast, can be much harder to predict. In addition, these cost-benefit calculations often require dis- counting future income versus current costs. “Some people value future income differently than others,” said Preston. “It depends on 

12 UNDERSTANDING INTERVENTIONS your current family income, maybe your family structure, the sorts of needs that your family has in terms of income now versus in the future, and the expected duration of the work life.” Some of these factors can differ for different populations. Finally, economists know that people do not always act in per- fectly rational and perfectly informed ways. Methods exist to take a lack of information or irrational decision-making into account, but these methods may introduce additional levels of uncertainty. Human capital theory can be used to provide insights into how interventions might lead to different decisions, Preston said. For example, mentoring programs can increase knowledge and change expectations. Better job placement programs might lead to better returns on an investment in human capital. Fellowships, research assistantships, teaching assistantships, and other forms of financial support can reduce the costs of the investment. Better information about the opportunities that investments give an individual can make a difference. Methodologically, human capital theory is a strategy in which economists quantify variables and seek to determine the relation- ships among those variables. Some of these variables have discrete values, such as whether a person stays in a field or leaves it, or a per- son’s race, sex, or type of school; others are continuous, like wages. Some variables are measured by proxies, as when the number of publications or number of citations are used as measures of research productivity. Preston explained that economists add variables to an analysis with the goal of explaining away the effect. If all vari- ables that can be identified—except for the one under study—fail to explain away the effect, researchers have an indication that the variable under investigation plays an important role. Economists also try to measure the quantitative effects of inter- ventions. If mentoring programs are thought to make a difference, for example, economists will try to analyze whether being men- tored influences the probability of investment in human capital. This could be done for majority and for minority students to see if there are differences in the effects of mentoring. Studies such as this introduce what economists call “selectiv- ity.” If the individuals being mentored differ from those who are not mentored in some important way, the effect ascribed to mentoring may actually arise from personal characteristics, not the mentoring program. Economists can try to reduce these effects using various complex mathematical techniques, but Preston said that “person- ally, I find them not very reliable or satisfying.” An alternative, she said, is “to move from these big national data sets [to create] indi- 

EXAMPLES OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH 13 vidualized data sets.” Approaches such as randomized trials, where individuals are selected to receive or not receive an intervention and the effects of the intervention measured, diminish issues of selectiv- ity; however, they are seldom feasible and may even be unethical in such a setting, where some individuals are prevented from engaging in what is believed to be a positive intervention. Another possibility is to collect data from natural experiments, using existing variation in the population of study. For example, student outcomes could be measured from different schools, some of which have an institutionalized mentoring system and others that do not. Such experiments require thought, time, creativity, and fund- ing, said Preston, but “economists can really make some interesting inroads if they take up this challenge.” Social Identity and Stereotype Threat Claude Steele, director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, professor of psychology and Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences at Stanford University, and his col- leagues have focused their research on two main themes. The first is underperformance in school by groups whose abilities are nega- tively stereotyped in the broader society—an issue closely related to the persistence of members of these groups in pursuing research careers. The second is the set of broader issues posed by diversity. “It is one thing to integrate a school setting or work place,” Steele said. “It is another thing to make that setting a place where everybody seems to flourish—where they feel like they belong.” Unlike many psychologists, Steele stresses the importance of context. “When we talk about schools and other environments of that sort, we tend to think of them as homogeneous environments— environments that are essentially the same for everybody. If there is one thing I hope you get from my remarks today, it is that they are different for people with different identities. The very same rooms with the same pictures on the wall, the same test items, the same teachers, can be very different as a function of social identities that a person has.” Each individual has many different social identities. These iden- tities can be based on age, sex, race, religion, ethnicity, and so on. Different identities generate what Steele calls “contingencies”— reactions by others to a particular identity. “You have to deal with certain things because you have certain identities,” he said. An individual’s social identities can change. During the great migration of African Americans from the southern to the north- 

14 UNDERSTANDING INTERVENTIONS ern United States, an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 African Ameri- cans “passed” from being “black” to being “white,” asserted Steele. “[That’s] what I mean by contingencies,” he said. “They were avoiding the things that went with that identity.” Another example includes changing a foreign-sounding name to one that sounds more American. Some contingencies are threatening. An example might be an African American seeking to excel in an endeavor where members of that group are stereotyped as underperforming. When someone is threatened by the contingencies of a social identity, that person might seek to conceal or disguise that identity. But threats to an identity tend to make it central to your functioning, said Steele. Stereotype threat is a good example of a contingency. Stereo- type threat arises when a person is in a situation where a negative stereotype applies. A good example is women in mathematics. In a series of experiments done by Steele and his colleagues, women and men who were equally skilled in math were given a very difficult math test one at a time in a testing room. Women in this situation tended to underperform. When they experienced the frustration of a difficult test, the stereotype that women have weaker mathematical abilities suggested to women that they may lack ability. Men who are frustrated by the test may also believe that they don’t have the necessary ability, but it’s because of factors other than their male- ness. “So for a woman in that situation, there is extra pressure— especially if that woman cares about math, has high expectations for her performance, or is committed to it,” said Steele. In one recent study, simply mentioning the word “genetics” in the preamble to a math test worsened women’s performance in math. However, when the researchers told the women before they took the test that “for this particular test, women always do as well as men,” the women’s performance was higher than when they were experiencing stereotype threat. Interestingly, the performance of men tends to drop somewhat under these circumstances. “We can be advantaged by stereotypes,” said Steele, describing stereotype   C.M. Steele, S.J. Spencer, and J. Aronson. 2002. Contending with group image: The psychology of stereotype and social identity threat. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 24: 379-440. C.M. Steele and J. Aronson. 1995. Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69(5): 797-811.   S.J. Spencer, C.M. Steele, and D.M. Quinn. 1999. Stereotype threat and women’s math performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 35(1): 4-28.   Dar-Nimrod and S.J. Heine. 2006. Exposure to scientific theories affects women’s I. math performance. Science 314(5798): 435. 

EXAMPLES OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH 15 lift, in which one group can be “on the upside of somebody else’s negative stereotype.” Men may do worse on the test because “it isn’t plausible to them that they lack the ability to do the work. It doesn’t make sense. So the experience of frustration is less. If you take that advantage away from them, . . . then you may see some decrements in performance.” The effects of stereotype threat also were observed among Afri- can Americans taking a test using Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a type of IQ test. When told that the test was to measure IQ, African American students dramatically underperformed compared with white students. But when African American students were told that the test was simply a puzzle, their performance rose dramatically. One remarkable finding from studies such as these is that the strongest students are often more susceptible to stereotype threat. “You have to care about [the domain] to experience stereotype threat,” Steele said. “One protection against stereotype threat is not to care about it. [If you] dis-identify with the domain, then you don’t care that much that your group is negatively stereotyped in that domain because you don’t care that much about the domain.” These studies also emphasize the importance of cues in the environment that accentuate or lessen threats, Steele pointed out. “Cues that signal threatening contingencies foster vigilance,” he said. “They hamper a sense of belonging in the setting, and this in turn impairs learning.” One such cue is the number of other people in a setting with whom you share a social identity. For example, when women are greatly outnumbered by men in taking a math test, they tend to perform worse than if men are absent. This kind of marginalization through small numbers can have a powerful effect on identity threat. The profound segregation that exists on many college campuses can heighten a sense of difference. The effects of cues on attitudes were tested in an experiment performed by Steele in collaboration with Mary Murphy, using stu- dents who were waiting to be interviewed for admission to a sum- mer workshop on science and engineering. While waiting for the interview, they watched a videotape about the summer workshop that showed students working together. In one videotape, men and women were balanced one to one. In the other, men outnumbered the women three to one. The women who watched the video with the unbalanced genders had a much better memory of the inciden-   R.P. Brown and E.A. Day. 2006. The difference isn’t black and white: Stereotype threat and the race gap on Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices. Journal of Applied Psychology 91(4): 979-985. 

16 UNDERSTANDING INTERVENTIONS tal details of that videotape. Steele hypothesized that the cues in the videotape were making female viewers aware of their gender identity, which made them more aware of the situation than they would be otherwise. “Think of any time any of you have ever been in a situation where you are one of a kind,” Steele said. “You pay attention.” This awareness has effects not only on memory, but also on physiology. In fact, when the students were hooked up to physi- ological recording equipment (under the pretense that they would need it for a different experiment they would soon undertake), the women who watched the unbalanced videotape had much higher cardiovascular activity than the men. Steele takes several messages away from this research. One is that these kinds of cues and reactions are virtually unavoidable in a diverse society such as ours. “Any diverse setting holds these iden- tity threats,” he said. “This is sort of an American challenge. I think at one level we should be proud of it because we are a society that publicly holds on to the idea that all of society should be integrated. . . . But one of the challenges behind that commitment . . . is making integration work. It is making these settings, these schools, these programs work for a truly diverse population.” Also, these cues do not arise solely from discrimination. On the contrary, he said, they can exist in the absence of discrimination. “These are contextual factors that make identities function in certain ways,” he said. The importance of cues also suggests ways to promote learning. If the cues change, performance can change. The most important change that has to happen, according to Steele, is for women and minorities to have a sense that they belong in a particular setting. “For instruction to work—and for the decisions we want them to make to be made—they have to have a sense of belonging. As a soci- ety, [we have to] understand that that has to come first.” In fact, said Steele, without changing this sense of belonging, other interventions can be counterproductive: “If you push other things, like try to motivate [students], expose them to strong skill-focused programs, without at the same time addressing the sense of belonging, you can really get a backfire effect. Things may not work at all.” One cue is what people say. “What do the university president, the department chair, [and other] people say about the ‘belong- ingness’ of groups? Do they avoid the issue and see it as a minor issue and not something of importance? Or do they really own it and make the proclamation that everybody belongs intellectually in these settings?” he asked. Making the presence of particular groups 

EXAMPLES OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH 17 the norm can relieve the tension in a setting and enable students to feel that they belong. Similarly, a critical mass of people with a particular social iden- tity is also pivotal, claimed Steele. Individuals are always looking around and counting how many other people share their social identities in a particular setting. “People do respond to numbers,” he said. Particular interventions can dramatically shape how students respond to cues. In a study done by Gregory Walton and Geoffrey Cohen at Yale University, African American and white students watched and then discussed a videotape of an African American student talking about how alienated and out of place he had felt at Yale. But the student went on to recount how, during a trip home, his father reminded him what a superb opportunity it was to be attend- ing Yale and that he needed to take advantage of it. The student described becoming active in a singing group and in academics, and he concluded that he was now very happy at Yale and that he was enjoying and learning from Yale’s rich environment. Just watching the videotape and talking about it raised the grade point average of African American students by two-thirds of a letter grade in the subsequent semester. “Why does that work?” asked Steele. “Because it gives [the students] an interpretation of the cues in the environment that [is] hopeful. . . . Everybody has those feel- ings [of not belonging], but if you’re a group that the whole society negatively stereotypes in this way, those feelings are really a weight. So you need an interpretation that makes your sense of not belong- ing normal. This guy in the videotape makes it normal, and then he offers light at the end of the tunnel. Wow.” In another intervention, having African Americans talk with members of other minority and majority groups in informal settings greatly improved their grade point average. “They found out that things that were happening to them were not things that were just happening to black kids. They were happening to every kid. They got the data, the evidence that their experience was not racially based, and then when their experience was not racially based in this environment, the whole environment changed. It wasn’t nearly as threatening. All those cues that might otherwise suggest threat were seen as much less threat.” Steele recounted from his own personal experiences that having an advisor during graduate school who believed in him was enough for him to overcome the many negative   G.M. Walton and G.L. Cohen. 2007. A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92(1): 82-96. 

18 UNDERSTANDING INTERVENTIONS cues he encountered. “With this one big cue that said I did belong in that setting, the significance of the other cues tended to wane away,” he recalled. An especially powerful way to undercut stereotype threat is to attack and undermine people’s theories of intelligence, Steele said, citing the work of Carol Dweck and Joshua Aronson. Many Americans tend to think that each individual has a particular level of intelligence and that one cannot perform beyond that level. But others, such as those from Asian and Eastern European cultures, see intelligence much differently. Students in those countries are more often taught that abilities are incremental and can be expanded through learning. They do not see math ability, for example, as something that is fixed and genetically determined but as something that people can improve. “I think this has huge effects on people’s choices of majors and persistence in graduate school,” said Steele. He felt that intervention on this topic would be especially valuable in entry-level, technical, and quantitatively based courses where stu- dents may receive their first sub-par grades, especially with faculty members who discourage students by telling them that many will drop out of or fail their courses. Survey Research Carefully conducted surveys can explore the attitudes, expe- riences, and thought processes that underlie the theoretical per- spectives described above. With his colleague Catherine M. Millett, Michael T. Nettles, senior vice president and Edmund W. Gordon Chair of the Policy Evaluation and Research Center at Educational Testing Service, conducted a 28-page survey of about 9,000 doctoral students at 21 U.S. universities. (The research team used a variety of incentives to achieve a 72 percent response rate, Nettles noted, including a raffle for cash payments.) The survey asked students about their background, undergraduate and doctoral program expe- riences, finances, aspirations, and expectations for graduate study. Conclusions drawn from the survey were published in the book Three Magic Letters: Getting to Ph.D. One critical factor Nettles and Millett examined was how stu- dents are supported during their doctoral education. In particular, they contrasted fellowships (money, tuition, or fee waivers given to students with no expectation of repayment or of services to be rendered), research assistantships (tuition, fee waivers, or a stipend   M.T. Nettles and C.M. Millett. 2006. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 

EXAMPLES OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH 19 given to students with the expectation of research services to be ren- dered), and teaching assistantships (tuition, fee waivers, or a stipend given to students with the expectation of teaching services to be rendered). Nettles and Millett found that in the sciences, mathemat- ics, and engineering, African American students were less likely than white students to be research assistants during their doctoral programs, even when background characteristics and student expe- riences are taken into account. Yet being a research assistant can have a profound effect on a student’s experiences in graduate school. For students with a research assistantship, Nettles pointed out, “we observe an increase in students’ social interactions with peers, their academic interac- tions with faculty, their interactions with their faculty advisers, their presenting papers and publishing articles, and their overall research productivity.” Somewhat surprisingly, a research assistantship did not influence students’ time to degree, their overall satisfaction with their doctoral programs, or social interactions with faculty. Nettles noted that universities often use fellowships to attract students to their institutions. While fellowships can be attractive to prospective students, they can have other consequences once students arrive on campus. Because students on fellowship are not always engaged in research or teaching activities from the beginning of graduate work, Nettles said, fellowships “can lead to the social isolation or the neglect on the part of faculty of students who are not actually engaged in the production of [that teaching and research]. . . . This is not to suggest that fellowships are not a good idea, but I think that what universities are experiencing is trying to figure out the right balance.” Another critical factor identified in the surveys is whether stu- dents have a mentor. Nettles distinguished sharply between an advisor—who acts in an official capacity to give a student advice about academic programs or coursework—and a mentor—who is a faculty member to whom a student turns for advice about intellectual and academic processes as well as general support and encourage- ment. One of the good messages to emerge from the survey, Nettles said, was that race was not a major factor in whether a doctoral stu- dent had a mentor (possibly the same person as a faculty advisor). Furthermore, of the students who had mentors, three-quarters were able to find them within the first year of their doctoral experiences. Having a mentor influences social interactions between students and faculty, unlike having a research assistantship. Having a mentor also influences the rate of scholarly publishing, degree completion, 

20 UNDERSTANDING INTERVENTIONS and even time to degree. However, it did not influence satisfaction with doctoral programs or whether students left the program. A third key finding that emerged from their study was the importance of research productivity. Publishing in a refereed journal is a strong measure of this productivity, but the study showed that many other measures of research productivity are also important, such as presenting a paper at a research conference, publishing a book chapter, or being a member of a roundtable discussion at a professional meeting. As Nettles said, “many students pursuing research careers get on the train in different places.” Over half of the students surveyed had presented a paper at a conference, published an article in a refereed journal, published a chapter in an edited vol- ume, or published a book. Publishing in a journal “has become an extremely important endeavor for students,” Nettles said. “In fact, many people feel that they can’t complete [their degrees] without doing this because their first entry into the academic profession is going to be enhanced by their performance in conducting this activity.” However, the percentage of African American students publish- ing refereed journal articles in science and mathematics was signifi- cantly lower than for other groups (although that was not the case in engineering). Again, this was true even after controlling for factors such as student backgrounds and experiences. Before doing the study, Nettles thought that research productiv- ity might compete with time to degree because students would be devoting time and attention to producing articles and publishing. However, “we found just the opposite,” he said. Publishing articles actually was associated with an increased rate of progress in their doctoral programs and reduced the time to degree. Research on Existing Interventions Existing intervention programs can have research components that produce broadly applicable information. An example is the Alli- ance for Graduate Education in the Professoriate (AGEP), funded by the National Science Foundation. Yolanda S. George, deputy director for education and human resources at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which has provided evalua- tion capacity-building activities and research resources for the AGEP program, explained that the goal of AGEP is to increase the number of underrepresented minority students pursuing advanced studies, obtaining doctorate degrees, and entering the professoriate in STEM fields, including the social sciences. 

EXAMPLES OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH 21 AGEP has identified several factors that facilitate progression of minorities into STEM post-secondary studies: • Taking high-intensity and high-quality advanced high school STEM courses • STEM pre-college programs • Post-secondary support programs in core STEM courses • Financial aid packages that reduce debt burden • STEM pre-graduate-school bridging programs. The institutions that participate in AGEP “are expected to engage in comprehensive institutional cultural changes that will lead to sustained increases in the conferral of STEM doctoral degrees, significantly exceeding historical levels of performance,” George explained. She discussed several of the important lessons AGEP has demonstrated in seeking to achieve this goal. One lesson, accord- ing to George, is that admission and selection committees need to be conscious of diversity issues. The AGEP program tries to have a diversity coordinator or diversity-conscious faculty member sit in on admissions and selection. “You will get a behavior change if you get an advocate there,” said George. AGEP programs have also found that following up with applicants and linking financial aid to admissions helps with recruitment. At the same time, AGEP has found that it is important to work closely with university administrators on what can and cannot be done with recruitment and retention programs. George said, “You have to start talking to counsel about diversity-conscious and legally defensible student admission selection criteria, financial aid, and programs before you get that letter from that group that is threaten- ing to shut you down.” Furthermore, these discussions need to be ongoing, said George, since challenges will continue to arise. AGEP has conducted meetings and workshops to explore par- ticular topics. For example, a 2003 meeting on mentoring found that relatively little was known about mentoring specifically for STEM students. “We know that STEM core mentoring appears to be more prevalent in the after-school programs at the middle and high school level, but the level of systematic STEM career and workforce mentoring is not high in undergraduate research programs,” George said. However, support networks for women, including students, in STEM areas in academia, industry, and government are useful in   AAAS created a Science Mentoring Research website that followed on the 2003 meeting: <http://ehrweb.aaas.org/sciMentoring/>. 

22 UNDERSTANDING INTERVENTIONS helping to balance family and career, negotiating organizational or departmental challenges, and advancing in a career. George also observed that, through its program evaluation capacity-building project, AAAS has helped AGEP awardees build comprehensive evaluation and assessment infrastructures to exam- ine their graduate education enterprises. The framework for mak- ing change includes collecting and using disaggregated data for decision-making and leadership development within the faculty and administration. The goal of AAAS’s AGEP program is “to help the leaders in these projects, [who] are the deans and provosts in some cases, faculty members, and people who run the program, to figure out how to evaluate and assess the infrastructure in order to get the types of effects that they want,” George said. A particularly important task is to help faculty and administrators understand the research that has been conducted so that they can engage faculty members in the process of institutional change. Other Research Initiatives Several other important lines of research were mentioned more briefly by presenters and attendees at the workshop. Two described here are conducted by current grantees of the Efficacy of Interven- tions program; additional interventions and research studies are discussed elsewhere in this summary.10 For example, Reba Page, professor of education at the University of California, Riverside, conducts ethnographic studies of mentor- ing, journal clubs, research in labs, and so forth to understand how those components of intervention programs play out in practice. She wants to know “not what do people tell us they are, not what does the brochure tell us they are, but what do they actually look like in real time, as people, students and teachers together, enact the com- ponents.” By studying these situations and the processes they entail, Page is able to examine “the assumptions that undergird those pro- cesses and what holds them in place, and what we might want to target if we wanted to change them.” A prominent question in her work is why outcomes seem so resistant to change. The conclusion she has drawn is that outcomes depend not only on the culture of science but on the culture of the broader society. To understand sci- ence, including science education, “we have to see that science is embedded in our society,” Page said. Another line of research focuses specifically on the attitudes 10  See, in particular, Chapter 4 for discussion of initiatives by educational stage. 

EXAMPLES OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH 23 and preferences of students. Merna Villarejo, professor emerita at the University of California, Davis, has asked students in interviews about the motivating factors that caused them to make particular career decisions. Students who went to medical school tended to say that they want to give back to the community. But “that is not what researchers say,” Villarejo observed. “The most frequent answer for researchers for ‘why did you choose your profession’ is ‘because I really love science; it just turns me on; it is exciting; it is great.’” According to Rick McGee, associate dean for faculty affairs at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, another distinguishing characteristic was between students who wanted a fairly predictable future and those who were willing to live with more uncertainty. The students most likely to go into research were the ones who said, when asked about their future, “‘I don’t know, I might be doing this, I might be doing that, I might do this for awhile, I might do that for awhile.’ . . . They really are quite different people,” McGee said. As Daryl E. Chubin, planning committee member and director of the AAAS Center for Advancing Science and Engineering Capacity, said, many kinds of investigations can produce information needed to advance minorities in research careers. “Where does knowledge come from? We know it comes from data and we know it comes from research. But it also comes from evaluation and it comes from technical assistance and it comes from first-person reports. . . . The challenge here is to learn from all of these interventions and then try to apply that in our own context.” 

Minority groups are severely underrepresented in the scientific workforce. To encourage minorities to pursue careers in research, a variety of "intervention programs" have been created at the pre-college, college, and graduate school levels. While there is a belief that these programs often achieve their goals, there is relatively little understanding of the factors that contribute to that success. The Division of Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE) at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health has established a grant program to support research to better understand the factors that contribute to the success of intervention programs. The MORE Division asked the National Academies to organize a workshop focusing on issues addressed by the grant program. This workshop summary presents examples of previous research on intervention programs, describes ways to formulate effective research questions and conduct research to identify the key elements that lead to successful intervention programs, and outlines ways to foster a community of researchers in this area.

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Academic Phrases for Writing Literature Review Section of a Research Paper

Overview |   Abstract   | Introduction | Literature Review | Materials & Methods | Results & Discussion | Conclusion & Future Work | Acknowledgements & Appendix

The literature review should clearly demonstrate that the author has a good knowledge of the research area. Literature review typically occupies one or two passages in the introduction section. A well-written literature review should provide a critical appraisal of previous studies related to the current research area rather than a simple summary of prior works. The author shouldn’t shy away from pointing out the shortcomings of previous works. However, criticising other’s work without any basis can weaken your paper. This is a perfect place to coin your research question and justify the need for such a study. It is also worth pointing out towards the end of the review that your study is unique and there is no direct literature addressing this issue. Add a few sentences about the significance of your research and how this will add value to the body of knowledge.

The literature review section of your research paper should include the following:

• Previous literature
• Limitations of previous research
• Research questions
• Research to be explored

1. Previous literature

The literature review shows that __ Previous research showed __ Seminal contributions have been made by __ A series of recent studies has indicated that __ Several theories have been proposed to __, some focusing on __, others on __ There has been numerous studies to investigate __ This has been used in several studies to assess __ Previous studies have shown __ Several studies suggest that __ This has also been explored in prior studies by __ Prior research suggests that __ Previous studies have emphasized __ The majority of prior research has applied __ Most early studies as well as current work focus on __ For instance, the following studies were conducted on __ Studies of __are well documented, it is also well acknowledged that __ A number of authors have recognized __ Some authors have also suggested that  __ Some authors have driven the further development of __ This has been discussed by a great number of authors in literature. For example, research has provided evidence for __ The authors bring some information about the background of the problem, __ As has been previously reported in the literature, __ A large number of existing studies in the broader literature have examined __ The literature review shows that __ There exists a considerable body of literature on  __ In short, the literature pertaining to __ strongly suggests that __ Over time, an extensive literature has developed on __ This section presents a review of recent literature on __ This paper begins with a short review of the literature regarding the __ Several methods are reported in the literature to address this issue. There is a wide choice of __ available in the literature. This section reviews the literature related to __ It was reported in literature that __ A recent study by __ concluded that __ In the light of reported __ it is conceivable that __ The method introduced by __ has the advantage that __ One method employed by __ is __ A more comprehensive description can be found in __ For example, recent research suggests that __ This was successfully established as described by __ The author employed a __ methodology which prescribes the use of __

2. Limitations of previous research

A number of questions regarding __ remain to be addressed. A closer look to the literature on __, however, reveals a number of gaps and shortcomings. This question has previously never been addressed because__ Most studies have relied on __ Previous studies by __ cannot be considered as conclusive because __ Previous studies have almost exclusively focused on __ This has been previously assessed only to a very limited extent because __ In the present studies __ were constrained to __ In previous studies were limited to __ Although results appear consistent with prior research, they appear inconsistent with __ These are previously unstudied because __ As far as we know, no previous research has investigated __ Moreover, although research has illuminated __ no study to date has examined __ Despite decades of research, this continues to be debated among __ This section points out some of the problems encountered in the extant research. Although there are many studies, the research in __ remains limited. However, the existing research has many problems in representing __ The literature on __ is less consistent Historically, there has been a great deal of confusion in the literature regarding __ This approach remains briefly addressed in the literature. These are rarely analyzed in the literature as __ There are key questions and notions that are still not discussed in the literature __ This is not clearly presented in the literature because __ This paper addresses the need for __, so far lacking in the scientific literature. To fill this literature gap, this paper identifies __ Only a few works in literature demonstrate __ Although studies have been conducted by many authors, this problem is still insufficiently explored. To our knowledge, no prior studies have examined __ However, the existing research has many problems in __ Therefore, important issue in the literature is __ However, we argue that previous literature suffers from certain weaknesses: __ Previous research can only be considered a first step towards a more profound understanding of __ The previous studies reveal that __ are usually the most problematic to __

3. Research questions

More specific research questions will be introduced and investigated in __ A further question is whether __ Finally, another promising line of research would be __ The study addresses several further questions on __ Some of the interesting questions in this context are __ In order to address the questions outlined above, we report here __ These questions are of central interest as much recent research in __ Furthermore, __ is arguably an important question to be addressed. The question now is how __ can be used to explain __ Study addresses the research question __ In order to properly address this question, we __ An important question associated with __ is __ A critical open question is whether __ A still unsolved question is whether __ This remains an open question as __ This question has previously never been addressed because __ This study offers a test of __ research question Study addresses the research question __ Even in general __ research strategies is needed to explain __ The researcher should be interested here in __ Many questions remain unanswered __ There are some potentially open questions about the validity of __ The question that then naturally arises is __ The question then becomes how best to define__ This was an important question to study as __

4. Research to be explored

A more systematic and theoretical analysis is required for __ As the authors note earlier, more work is necessary to__ Additional studies to understand more completely the key tenets of __ are required. The unexpected findings signal the need for additional studies to understand more about __ This paper addresses __, so far lacking in the scientific literature. A new approach is therefore needed for __ One of the tough challenges for all researchers in this domain is __

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How to use previous studies in a scientific research

When writing a scientific research article, it is important to use previous studies to support your findings. Previous studies can provide evidence for the validity of your research and help you draw conclusions from your data. This article will discuss how to use previous studies in a scientific research article of 1500 words.

First, it is important to understand the purpose of citing previous studies in a scientific research article. Citing previous studies allows you to demonstrate that your research is based on established knowledge and that you are aware of the current literature in your field. It also allows you to compare and contrast your results with those of other researchers, which can help strengthen the validity of your findings. Additionally, citing previous studies can help you identify gaps in existing knowledge and provide an opportunity for further exploration.

When citing previous studies in a scientific research article, it is important to be selective about which ones you include. You should only cite studies that are relevant to your topic and that have been conducted using reliable methods. Additionally, it is important to ensure that the information presented in the study is accurate and up-to-date. If possible, try to cite recent studies as they are more likely to reflect current trends and practices in the field.

When citing a study, make sure to include all relevant information such as the author’s name, year of publication, title of the study, journal or book where it was published, and any other pertinent details. Additionally, make sure that you accurately summarize the results of the study without misrepresenting them or making assumptions about them. Finally, be sure to explain how this study relates to your own research by discussing how it supports or contradicts your findings.

In addition to citing previous studies in your text, you should also include a reference list at the end of your article which lists all sources cited within the text in alphabetical order according to author’s last name. This list should include all relevant information such as author’s name, year of publication, title of work cited, publisher or journal where it was published (if applicable), page numbers (if applicable), URL (if applicable), and DOI (if applicable).

By following these guidelines for citing previous studies in a scientific research article of 1500 words or less, you can ensure that your work is well-supported by established knowledge and that readers can easily access additional information if needed. Doing so will help strengthen the credibility of your work and demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about current trends in your field.

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Home » Research Gap – Types, Examples and How to Identify

Research Gap – Types, Examples and How to Identify

Table of Contents

Research Gap

Definition:

Research gap refers to an area or topic within a field of study that has not yet been extensively researched or is yet to be explored. It is a question, problem or issue that has not been addressed or resolved by previous research.

How to Identify Research Gap

Identifying a research gap is an essential step in conducting research that adds value and contributes to the existing body of knowledge. Research gap requires critical thinking, creativity, and a thorough understanding of the existing literature . It is an iterative process that may require revisiting and refining your research questions and ideas multiple times.

Here are some steps that can help you identify a research gap:

• Review existing literature: Conduct a thorough review of the existing literature in your research area. This will help you identify what has already been studied and what gaps still exist.
• Identify a research problem: Identify a specific research problem or question that you want to address.
• Analyze existing research: Analyze the existing research related to your research problem. This will help you identify areas that have not been studied, inconsistencies in the findings, or limitations of the previous research.
• Brainstorm potential research ideas : Based on your analysis, brainstorm potential research ideas that address the identified gaps.
• Consult with experts: Consult with experts in your research area to get their opinions on potential research ideas and to identify any additional gaps that you may have missed.
• Refine research questions: Refine your research questions and hypotheses based on the identified gaps and potential research ideas.
• Develop a research proposal: Develop a research proposal that outlines your research questions, objectives, and methods to address the identified research gap.

Types of Research Gap

There are different types of research gaps that can be identified, and each type is associated with a specific situation or problem. Here are the main types of research gaps and their explanations:

Theoretical Gap

This type of research gap refers to a lack of theoretical understanding or knowledge in a particular area. It can occur when there is a discrepancy between existing theories and empirical evidence or when there is no theory that can explain a particular phenomenon. Identifying theoretical gaps can lead to the development of new theories or the refinement of existing ones.

Empirical Gap

An empirical gap occurs when there is a lack of empirical evidence or data in a particular area. It can happen when there is a lack of research on a specific topic or when existing research is inadequate or inconclusive. Identifying empirical gaps can lead to the development of new research studies to collect data or the refinement of existing research methods to improve the quality of data collected.

Methodological Gap

This type of research gap refers to a lack of appropriate research methods or techniques to answer a research question. It can occur when existing methods are inadequate, outdated, or inappropriate for the research question. Identifying methodological gaps can lead to the development of new research methods or the modification of existing ones to better address the research question.

Practical Gap

A practical gap occurs when there is a lack of practical applications or implementation of research findings. It can occur when research findings are not implemented due to financial, political, or social constraints. Identifying practical gaps can lead to the development of strategies for the effective implementation of research findings in practice.

Knowledge Gap

This type of research gap occurs when there is a lack of knowledge or information on a particular topic. It can happen when a new area of research is emerging, or when research is conducted in a different context or population. Identifying knowledge gaps can lead to the development of new research studies or the extension of existing research to fill the gap.

Examples of Research Gap

Here are some examples of research gaps that researchers might identify:

• Theoretical Gap Example : In the field of psychology, there might be a theoretical gap related to the lack of understanding of the relationship between social media use and mental health. Although there is existing research on the topic, there might be a lack of consensus on the mechanisms that link social media use to mental health outcomes.
• Empirical Gap Example : In the field of environmental science, there might be an empirical gap related to the lack of data on the long-term effects of climate change on biodiversity in specific regions. Although there might be some studies on the topic, there might be a lack of data on the long-term effects of climate change on specific species or ecosystems.
• Methodological Gap Example : In the field of education, there might be a methodological gap related to the lack of appropriate research methods to assess the impact of online learning on student outcomes. Although there might be some studies on the topic, existing research methods might not be appropriate to assess the complex relationships between online learning and student outcomes.
• Practical Gap Example: In the field of healthcare, there might be a practical gap related to the lack of effective strategies to implement evidence-based practices in clinical settings. Although there might be existing research on the effectiveness of certain practices, they might not be implemented in practice due to various barriers, such as financial constraints or lack of resources.
• Knowledge Gap Example: In the field of anthropology, there might be a knowledge gap related to the lack of understanding of the cultural practices of indigenous communities in certain regions. Although there might be some research on the topic, there might be a lack of knowledge about specific cultural practices or beliefs that are unique to those communities.

Examples of Research Gap In Literature Review, Thesis, and Research Paper might be:

• Literature review : A literature review on the topic of machine learning and healthcare might identify a research gap in the lack of studies that investigate the use of machine learning for early detection of rare diseases.
• Thesis : A thesis on the topic of cybersecurity might identify a research gap in the lack of studies that investigate the effectiveness of artificial intelligence in detecting and preventing cyber attacks.
• Research paper : A research paper on the topic of natural language processing might identify a research gap in the lack of studies that investigate the use of natural language processing techniques for sentiment analysis in non-English languages.

How to Write Research Gap

By following these steps, you can effectively write about research gaps in your paper and clearly articulate the contribution that your study will make to the existing body of knowledge.

Here are some steps to follow when writing about research gaps in your paper:

• Identify the research question : Before writing about research gaps, you need to identify your research question or problem. This will help you to understand the scope of your research and identify areas where additional research is needed.
• Review the literature: Conduct a thorough review of the literature related to your research question. This will help you to identify the current state of knowledge in the field and the gaps that exist.
• Identify the research gap: Based on your review of the literature, identify the specific research gap that your study will address. This could be a theoretical, empirical, methodological, practical, or knowledge gap.
• Provide evidence: Provide evidence to support your claim that the research gap exists. This could include a summary of the existing literature, a discussion of the limitations of previous studies, or an analysis of the current state of knowledge in the field.
• Explain the importance: Explain why it is important to fill the research gap. This could include a discussion of the potential implications of filling the gap, the significance of the research for the field, or the potential benefits to society.
• State your research objectives: State your research objectives, which should be aligned with the research gap you have identified. This will help you to clearly articulate the purpose of your study and how it will address the research gap.

Importance of Research Gap

The importance of research gaps can be summarized as follows:

• Advancing knowledge: Identifying research gaps is crucial for advancing knowledge in a particular field. By identifying areas where additional research is needed, researchers can fill gaps in the existing body of knowledge and contribute to the development of new theories and practices.
• Guiding research: Research gaps can guide researchers in designing studies that fill those gaps. By identifying research gaps, researchers can develop research questions and objectives that are aligned with the needs of the field and contribute to the development of new knowledge.
• Enhancing research quality: By identifying research gaps, researchers can avoid duplicating previous research and instead focus on developing innovative research that fills gaps in the existing body of knowledge. This can lead to more impactful research and higher-quality research outputs.
• Informing policy and practice: Research gaps can inform policy and practice by highlighting areas where additional research is needed to inform decision-making. By filling research gaps, researchers can provide evidence-based recommendations that have the potential to improve policy and practice in a particular field.

Applications of Research Gap

Here are some potential applications of research gap:

• Informing research priorities: Research gaps can help guide research funding agencies and researchers to prioritize research areas that require more attention and resources.
• Identifying practical implications: Identifying gaps in knowledge can help identify practical applications of research that are still unexplored or underdeveloped.
• Stimulating innovation: Research gaps can encourage innovation and the development of new approaches or methodologies to address unexplored areas.
• Improving policy-making: Research gaps can inform policy-making decisions by highlighting areas where more research is needed to make informed policy decisions.
• Enhancing academic discourse: Research gaps can lead to new and constructive debates and discussions within academic communities, leading to more robust and comprehensive research.

Advantages of Research Gap

Here are some of the advantages of research gap:

• Identifies new research opportunities: Identifying research gaps can help researchers identify areas that require further exploration, which can lead to new research opportunities.
• Improves the quality of research: By identifying gaps in current research, researchers can focus their efforts on addressing unanswered questions, which can improve the overall quality of research.
• Enhances the relevance of research: Research that addresses existing gaps can have significant implications for the development of theories, policies, and practices, and can therefore increase the relevance and impact of research.
• Helps avoid duplication of effort: Identifying existing research can help researchers avoid duplicating efforts, saving time and resources.
• Helps to refine research questions: Research gaps can help researchers refine their research questions, making them more focused and relevant to the needs of the field.
• Promotes collaboration: By identifying areas of research that require further investigation, researchers can collaborate with others to conduct research that addresses these gaps, which can lead to more comprehensive and impactful research outcomes.

Disadvantages of Research Gap

While research gaps can be advantageous, there are also some potential disadvantages that should be considered:

• Difficulty in identifying gaps: Identifying gaps in existing research can be challenging, particularly in fields where there is a large volume of research or where research findings are scattered across different disciplines.
• Lack of funding: Addressing research gaps may require significant resources, and researchers may struggle to secure funding for their work if it is perceived as too risky or uncertain.
• Time-consuming: Conducting research to address gaps can be time-consuming, particularly if the research involves collecting new data or developing new methods.
• Risk of oversimplification: Addressing research gaps may require researchers to simplify complex problems, which can lead to oversimplification and a failure to capture the complexity of the issues.
• Bias : Identifying research gaps can be influenced by researchers’ personal biases or perspectives, which can lead to a skewed understanding of the field.
• Potential for disagreement: Identifying research gaps can be subjective, and different researchers may have different views on what constitutes a gap in the field, leading to disagreements and debate.

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Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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Children With Autism Carry Unique Gut Flora, Study Finds

The research, which builds on previous work, eventually may lead to a more objective diagnostic tool, scientists said.

By Teddy Rosenbluth

The process for diagnosing a child with autism heavily relies on a parent's description of their child’s behavior and a professional’s observations. It leaves plenty of room for human error.

Parents’ concerns may skew how they answer questionnaires. Providers may hold biases, leading them to underdiagnose certain groups . Children may show widely varying symptoms, depending on factors like culture and gender.

A study published Monday in Nature Microbiology bolsters a growing body of research that suggests an unlikely path to more objective autism diagnoses: the gut microbiome.

After analyzing more than 1,600 stool samples from children ages 1 to 13, researchers found several distinct biological “markers” in the samples of autistic children. Unique traces of gut bacteria, fungi, viruses and more could one day be the basis of a diagnostic tool, said Qi Su, a researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a lead author of the study.

A tool based on biomarkers could help professionals diagnose autism sooner, giving children access to treatments that are more effective at a younger age, he said.

“Too much is left to questionnaires,” said Sarkis Mazmanian, a microbiome researcher at the California Institute of Technology. “If we can get to something we can measure — whatever it is — that’s a huge improvement.”

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Zepbound outperforms Ozempic and Wegovy in head-to-head weight loss study

Tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound , leads to more weight loss than semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy , new research suggests. 

The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine , is thought to be the first head-to-head comparison of the two blockbuster weight loss drugs. 

Since Zepbound was approved for weight loss in late 2023, it appeared to have an advantage over Wegovy. Patients taking the highest dose of Zepbound lost around 21% of their body weight over 72 weeks, compared to around 15% for patients on Wegovy after 68 weeks. 

But it was difficult to make a direct comparison without a study that looked at both drugs, which are part of a new class of medications called GLP-1s.

“We’ve tracked GLP-1 use over the last year and we’ve seen really dramatic increases, and yet, there’s not a ton of information available on head to head comparisons,” said lead study author Tricia Rodriguez, a principal applied scientist at Truveta Research, a health care data and analytics company.  

In the new study, Rodriguez and colleagues analyzed electronic health records from more than 41,000 adults who were overweight or had obesity and had been prescribed one of the two drugs for the first time. Participants weren't excluded if they had Type 2 diabetes. More than 9,100 were prescribed tirzepatide, and more than 32,000 were prescribed semaglutide.  

The researchers looked at how much weight the patients lost after 3, 6 and 12 months.

People who took semaglutide lost, on average, 3.6% of their body weight after 3 months; 5.8% after 6 months; and 8.3% after 12 months.

Those who took tirzepatide lost a greater percentage of body weight each month, compared to semaglutide: an average of 5.9% of their body weight after 3 months; 10.1% after 6 months; and 15.3% after 12 months. 

“The majority of patients on both medications experienced clinically meaningful weight loss, but those patients that took tirzepatide experienced significantly more,” Rodriguez said. 

The researchers noticed no significant difference in the risk of serious side effects, such as gastroparesis, also known as stomach paralysis, between the two drugs, Rodriguez said. 

Semaglutide and tirzepatide work in similar ways. The GLP-1 drugs mimic a hormone that helps reduce food intake and appetite. However, tirzepatide also imitates a second hormone , called GIP, which along with reducing appetite, is thought to improve how the body breaks down sugar and fat.

Researchers will still need to do a randomized, controlled clinical trial to see which medication truly comes out on top. Last year, Lilly began a phase 3 trial of 700 patients comparing the two medications. The trial is expected to be completed in November, according to ClinicalTrials.gov.

A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk said the new study had some "key limitations," including the inclusion of patients with Type 2 diabetes, who often have a more difficult time losing weight than people without the condition. In addition, the study did not provide sufficient information about the doses patients started with and progressed to.

“While lowering body weight is an important goal of obesity management, it is important to also consider other needs when choosing a treatment,” the spokesperson said. 

Eli Lilly did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dr. Susan Spratt, an endocrinologist and senior medical director for the Population Health Management Office at Duke Health in North Carolina, said that while it’s clear from the study that tirzepatide is more effective, both medications are still good options for patients because they provide more weight loss than other drugs on the market right now. 

She also noted that more studies are needed comparing the effects on other health outcomes beyond weight loss.

Semaglutide, for example, has been shown in trials to cut the risk of cardiovascular problems — such as heart attack and stroke — in people who are overweight or have obesity, and to cut the risk of complications from kidney disease in people with Type 2 diabetes ; tirzepatide has been shown to be a possible treatment for obstructive sleep apnea . 

“That being said, if someone’s main goal is weight loss, I’d probably go with tirzepatide,” Spratt said. 

Dr. Daniel Maselli, an obesity medicine physician at True You Weight Loss, a weight loss clinic in Atlanta, said the study supports previous research that has indicated tirzepatide provides more weight loss than semaglutide.

While important information for physicians, he noted that weight loss alone isn’t the only factor that he considers when prescribing weight loss drugs to patients.

He also takes into account the patient’s personal goals, medical needs, such as improving heart health, and how well they tolerate certain medications. Some patients, for example, may not do well on tirzepatide but may lose weight on semaglutide.

“This study helped address the weight loss component but, as the authors point out, was limited in discerning differences in tolerance, safety, or improvements in complications of obesity,” he wrote in an email.

Berkeley Lovelace Jr. is a health and medical reporter for NBC News. He covers the Food and Drug Administration, with a special focus on Covid vaccines, prescription drug pricing and health care. He previously covered the biotech and pharmaceutical industry with CNBC.

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Study: Weaker ocean circulation could enhance CO2 buildup in the atmosphere

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As climate change advances, the ocean’s overturning circulation is predicted to weaken substantially. With such a slowdown, scientists estimate the ocean will pull down less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, a slower circulation should also dredge up less carbon from the deep ocean that would otherwise be released back into the atmosphere. On balance, the ocean should maintain its role in reducing carbon emissions from the atmosphere, if at a slower pace.

However, a new study by an MIT researcher finds that scientists may have to rethink the relationship between the ocean’s circulation and its long-term capacity to store carbon. As the ocean gets weaker, it could release more carbon from the deep ocean into the atmosphere instead.

The reason has to do with a previously uncharacterized feedback between the ocean’s available iron, upwelling carbon and nutrients, surface microorganisms, and a little-known class of molecules known generally as “ligands.” When the ocean circulates more slowly, all these players interact in a self-perpetuating cycle that ultimately increases the amount of carbon that the ocean outgases back to the atmosphere.

“By isolating the impact of this feedback, we see a fundamentally different relationship between ocean circulation and atmospheric carbon levels, with implications for the climate,” says study author Jonathan Lauderdale, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. “What we thought is going on in the ocean is completely overturned.”

Lauderdale says the findings show that “we can’t count on the ocean to store carbon in the deep ocean in response to future changes in circulation. We must be proactive in cutting emissions now, rather than relying on these natural processes to buy us time to mitigate climate change.”

His study appears today in the journal Nature Communications .

In 2020, Lauderdale led a  study that explored ocean nutrients, marine organisms, and iron, and how their interactions influence the growth of phytoplankton around the world. Phytoplankton are microscopic, plant-like organisms that live on the ocean surface and consume a diet of carbon and nutrients that upwell from the deep ocean and iron that drifts in from desert dust.

The more phytoplankton that can grow, the more carbon dioxide they can absorb from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, and this plays a large role in the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon.

For the 2020 study, the team developed a simple “box” model, representing conditions in different parts of the ocean as general boxes, each with a different balance of nutrients, iron, and ligands — organic molecules that are thought to be byproducts of phytoplankton. The team modeled a general flow between the boxes to represent the ocean’s larger circulation — the way seawater sinks, then is buoyed back up to the surface in different parts of the world.

This modeling revealed that, even if scientists were to “seed” the oceans with extra iron, that iron wouldn’t have much of an effect on global phytoplankton growth. The reason was due to a limit set by ligands. It turns out that, if left on its own, iron is insoluble in the ocean and therefore unavailable to phytoplankton. Iron only becomes soluble at “useful” levels when linked with ligands, which keep iron in a form that plankton can consume. Lauderdale found that adding iron to one ocean region to consume additional nutrients robs other regions of nutrients that phytoplankton there need to grow. This lowers the production of ligands and the supply of iron back to the original ocean region, limiting the amount of extra carbon that would be taken up from the atmosphere.

Unexpected switch

Once the team published their study, Lauderdale worked the box model into a form that he could make publicly accessible, including ocean and atmosphere carbon exchange and extending the boxes to represent more diverse environments, such as conditions similar to the Pacific, the North Atlantic, and the Southern Ocean. In the process, he tested other interactions within the model, including the effect of varying ocean circulation.

He ran the model with different circulation strengths, expecting to see less atmospheric carbon dioxide with weaker ocean overturning — a relationship that previous studies have supported, dating back to the 1980s. But what he found instead was a clear and opposite trend: The weaker the ocean’s circulation, the more CO 2 built up in the atmosphere.

“I thought there was some mistake,” Lauderdale recalls. “Why were atmospheric carbon levels trending the wrong way?”

When he checked the model, he found that the parameter describing ocean ligands had been left “on” as a variable. In other words, the model was calculating ligand concentrations as changing from one ocean region to another.

On a hunch, Lauderdale turned this parameter “off,” which set ligand concentrations as constant in every modeled ocean environment, an assumption that many ocean models typically make. That one change reversed the trend, back to the assumed relationship: A weaker circulation led to reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide. But which trend was closer to the truth?

Lauderdale looked to the scant available data on ocean ligands to see whether their concentrations were more constant or variable in the actual ocean. He found confirmation in GEOTRACES, an international study that coordinates measurements of trace elements and isotopes across the world’s oceans, that scientists can use to compare concentrations from region to region. Indeed, the molecules’ concentrations varied. If ligand concentrations do change from one region to another, then his surprise new result was likely representative of the real ocean: A weaker circulation leads to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“It’s this one weird trick that changed everything,” Lauderdale says. “The ligand switch has revealed this completely different relationship between ocean circulation and atmospheric CO 2 that we thought we understood pretty well.”

To see what might explain the overturned trend, Lauderdale analyzed biological activity and carbon, nutrient, iron, and ligand concentrations from the ocean model under different circulation strengths, comparing scenarios where ligands were variable or constant across the various boxes.

This revealed a new feedback: The weaker the ocean’s circulation, the less carbon and nutrients the ocean pulls up from the deep. Any phytoplankton at the surface would then have fewer resources to grow and would produce fewer byproducts (including ligands) as a result. With fewer ligands available, less iron at the surface would be usable, further reducing the phytoplankton population. There would then be fewer phytoplankton available to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and consume upwelled carbon from the deep ocean.

“My work shows that we need to look more carefully at how ocean biology can affect the climate,” Lauderdale points out. “Some climate models predict a 30 percent slowdown in the ocean circulation due to melting ice sheets, particularly around Antarctica. This huge slowdown in overturning circulation could actually be a big problem: In addition to a host of other climate issues, not only would the ocean take up less anthropogenic CO 2 from the atmosphere, but that could be amplified by a net outgassing of deep ocean carbon, leading to an unanticipated increase in atmospheric CO 2 and unexpected further climate warming.” 

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Research: How Family Motivates People to Do Their Best Work

• Lauren C. Howe
• Jochen I. Menges

Work and family are often seen as competing for an employee’s time and energy — but that’s the wrong way to think about it.

Family is one of the most important things in most people’s lives, across cultures and geographies. Yet, the idea that family can be motivational at work has been overlooked. Instead, in the past, family has been mostly seen as competing with work for an employee’s finite resources, like their time and energy. A large body of research on work-family conflict drew on this notion and illustrated how work and family domains create conflicting demands and interfere with one another. And yet, there’s another growing body of research that finds that family can play a role in motivation at work, boosting employees’ performance and inspiring them to do their best. This article focuses on that body of research, and discusses how organizations that embrace family at work stand to benefit from attracting and retaining employees who are highly motivated and engaged.

Tennis star Serena Williams recently unveiled her next endeavor after leaving the courts behind: her new brand, Wyn Beauty. Like the decision to retire from tennis to focus on family, Williams’ choice to focus on beauty is a family affair. As Williams put it: “Motherhood has allowed me to look at beauty through the eyes of my daughter, Olympia. We’re always experimenting with makeup together, and I think about how these moments will be part of both of our beauty journeys… I also hope my daughters see how many different passions I have — from tennis to beauty — and learn that they can lead dynamic careers and lives across their many interests.”

• Lauren C. Howe is an Associate Professor in Management at the University of Zurich. As a member of the Center for Leadership in the Future of Work , she focuses on how human aspects, such as mindsets, socioemotional skills, and social relationships play a role in the changing world of work.
• Jochen I. Menges is a Professor of Leadership and Human Resource Management at the University of Zurich, the Director of the Center for Leadership in the Future of Work, and a co-founder of the Global HR Valley®, a growing people innovation ecosystem. He studies how people can feel and do their best at work, today and tomorrow. Jochen is also a faculty member at Cambridge Judge Business School.

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