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Literature Review and Research Design

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Designing a research project is possibly the most difficult task a dissertation writer faces. It is fraught with uncertainty: what is the best subject? What is the best method? For every answer found, there are often multiple subsequent questions, so it’s easy to get lost in theoretical debates and buried under a mountain of literature.

This book looks at literature review in the process of research design, and how to develop a research practice that will build skills in reading and writing about research literature—skills that remain valuable in both academic and professional careers. Literature review is approached as a process of engaging with the discourse of scholarly communities that will help graduate researchers refine, define, and express their own scholarly vision and voice. This orientation on research as an exploratory practice, rather than merely a series of predetermined steps in a systematic method, allows the researcher to deal with the uncertainties and changes that come with learning new ideas and new perspectives.

The focus on the practical elements of research design makes this book an invaluable resource for graduate students writing dissertations. Practicing research allows room for experiment, error, and learning, ultimately helping graduate researchers use the literature effectively to build a solid scholarly foundation for their dissertation research project.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part i | 2  pages, on research, chapter 1 | 15  pages, research philosophy, chapter 2 | 23  pages, research practice, part ii | 4  pages, reading literature, chapter 3 | 23  pages, chapter 4 | 26  pages, managing the literature, chapter 5 | 17  pages, deep reading, part iii | 4  pages, writing about literature, chapter 6 | 22  pages, writing with literature, chapter 7 | 19  pages, writing a literature review, chapter | 2  pages.

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• Volume 21, Issue 2
• Reviewing the literature: choosing a review design
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• Helen Noble 1 ,
• Joanna Smith 2
• 1 School of Nursing and Midwifery , Queen’s University Belfast , Belfast , UK
• 2 School of Healthcare , University of Leeds , Leeds , UK
• Correspondence to Dr Helen Noble, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT9 7BL, UK; helen.noble{at}qub.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/eb-2018-102895

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Many health professionals, students and academics including health researchers will have grappled with the challenges of undertaking a review of the literature and choosing a suitable design or framework to structure the review. For many undergraduate and master’s healthcare students their final year dissertation involves undertaking a review of the literature as a way of assessing their understanding and ability to critique and apply research findings to practice. For PhD and Master’s by Research students, a rigorous summary of research is usually expected to identify the state of knowledge and gaps in the evidence related to their topic focus and to provide justification for the empirical work they subsequently undertake. From discussions with students and colleagues, there appears to be much confusion about review designs and in particular the use and perhaps misuse of the term ‘systematic review’. For example, some quantitatively focused researchers subscribe to a ‘Cochrane’ approach as the only method to undertake a ‘systematic review’, with other researchers having a more pragmatic view, recognising the different purposes of a review and ways of applying systematic methods to undertake a review of the literature. Traditionally, systematic reviews have included only quantitative, experimental studies, usually randomised controlled trials. 1 More recently, systematic reviews of qualitative studies have emerged, 2 and integrative reviews which include both quantitative and qualitative studies. 3

In this article, we will build on a previous Research Made Simple article that outlined the key principles of undertaking a review of the literature in a structured and systemic way 4 by further exploring review designs and their key features to assist you in choosing an appropriate design. A reference to an example of each review outlined will be provided.

What is the purpose of undertaking a review of the evidence?

The purpose of a review of healthcare literature is primarily to summarise the knowledge around a specific question or topic, or to make recommendations that can support health professionals and organisations make decisions about a specific intervention or care issue. 5 In addition, reviews can highlight gaps in knowledge to guide future research. The most common approach to summarising, interpreting and making recommendations from synthesising the evidence in healthcare is a traditional systematic review of the literature to answer a specific clinical question. These reviews follow explicit, prespecified and reproducible methods in order to identify, evaluate and summarise the findings of all relevant individual studies. 6 Systematic reviews are typically associated with evaluating interventions, and therefore where appropriate, combine the results of several empirical studies to give a more reliable estimate of an intervention’s effectiveness than a single study. 6 However, over the past decade the range of approaches to reviewing the literature has expanded to reflect broader types of evidence/research designs and questions reflecting the increased complexity of healthcare. While this should be welcomed, this adds to the challenges in choosing the best review approach/design that meets the purpose of the review.

What approaches can be adopted to review the evidence?

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Key features of the common types of healthcare review

In summary, we have identified and described a variety of review designs and offered reasons for choosing a specific approach. Reviews are vital research methodology and help make sense of a body of research. They offer a succinct analysis which avoids the need for accessing individual research reports included in the review, increasingly vital for health professionals in light of the increasing vast amount of literature available. The field of reviews of the literature continues to change and while new approaches are emerging, ensuring methods are robust and remain paramount. This paper offers guidance to help direct choices when deciding on a review and provides an example of each approach.

• 5. ↵ Canadian Institutes of Health Research . Knowledge translation. Canadian Institutes of Health Research . 2008 . http://www.cihr.ca/e/29418.html ( accessed Jan 2018 ).
• 6. ↵ Centre for Reviews and Dissemination . Guidance for undertaking reviews in heathcare . 3rd ed . York University, York : CRD , 2009 .
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Competing interests None declared.

Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

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• Exploring usability in exercise interventions: from conceptualisation to measurement and application (PhD Academy Award)
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• http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5179-9057 Anne Inger Mørtvedt
• Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences , Michigan Technological University , Houghton , Michigan , USA
• Correspondence to Anne Inger Mørtvedt, Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, USA; aim_{at}hotmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2024-108426

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• Exercise Therapy
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What did I do?

A literature review and three consecutive studies were developed to offer insights into usability testing and construct clarity within the realm of exercise interventions. The overarching goal was to accurately characterise and quantify the multidimensional concept of exercise programme usability, laying a robust foundation for measurement and subsequent improvement. Through the development and rigorous psychometric assessment of the Intervention Usability Scale for Exercise (IUSE), subconstructs contributing to intervention usability and their impact on the intention to use an exercise intervention were proposed.

Why did I do it?

How did i do it.

A critical literature review on usability and its application in exercise medicine laid the groundwork. This review justified further investigations, encompassing quantitative, qualitative and psychometric research methodologies. The purpose …

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Contributors AIM completed this work as part of her PhD. The PhD was supervised by Dr Erich Petushek, Dr Eva Ageberg, Dr Steve Elmer and Dr Kevin Trewartha constituted the committee. Other researchers collaborated and contributed substantially in the studies involved, for which they are rightfully credited as coauthors in the respective article submissions. ChatGPT version 3.5 from OpenAI was used to check for grammar, clarity and conciseness (including suggestions for rephrasing/formatting).

Funding This dissertation has been funded through a finishing fellowship by the Graduate School and a grant from the Health Research Institute, both affiliated with Michigan Technological University.

Competing interests None declared.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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Literature Review Research Design

• First Online: 10 November 2021

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• Stefan Hunziker 3 &
• Michael Blankenagel 3  

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This chapter addresses the peculiarities, characteristics, and major fallacies of literature review research design. Conducting and writing poor literature reviews is one of many ways to lower the value of an academic work. State-of-the-art literature reviews are valuable and publishable scholarly documents. Too many new scholars think that empirical research is the only proper research. In this chapter, researchers find relevant information on how to write a literature review research design paper and learn about typical methodologies used for this research design. The chapter closes with referring to related research designs.

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Hunziker, S., Blankenagel, M. (2021). Literature Review Research Design. In: Research Design in Business and Management. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34357-6_13

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