Main stepsMain steps 1.Find relevant literature 2.Read and while reading, write down the main concepts, variables, relationships, methods, and other important aspects of each of the article/studies 3.Synthesize the relevant information from the papers: make connections between all concepts/findings; evaluate critically all information (compare and contrast the information); draw conclusions Literature review will help you to 1.Formulate your final research question and the specific hypotheses 2.Also important: after your literature review, you should be also able to formulate your research method

Step 1: Find relevant literature – what to search for?  Start from a broad idea/question: what do you want to know?  A general idea/question that you are interested in (NOT a final research question/hypotheses) and that will be narrowed to a specific research question and the hypotheses while reading  I wanted to know more about emotion regulation (how we deal with our emotions) and wellbeing in ethnic groups in the Netherlands.  Therefore, I searched for scientific (journal) articles in order to find out previous studies on this topic.  I also searched for the books and the relevant book chapters, as you can usually find a good summary of the literature and you can also find original sources (research papers ) in the Reference list.

How can you recognize a scientific paper/article?

Step 1: Find a relevant literature – what to search for?  What is a scientific paper?

Step 1: Find a relevant literature – what to search for?  What is a scientific paper?

Step 1: Find relevant literature – where and how to search for?  Use key words while searching; take time to formulate the key words that are related to your global question  Use adequate search machines in order to access “real” journal articles  Mediatheek (NHTV), Google scholar, and Google as first steps  Data bases or journals that are specific to your research field (Mediatheek contains the list of data bases); media? Search for good journals related to the topic of your interest

There are many search machines and sources… niscentrum-arbeid/kennisbank/Paginas/Default.aspx ….

Yet, not all information on internet is reliable…  Information from nonauthorized sources on the World Wide Web cannot be considered useful as it is not subjected to peer review and editorial supervision.  Some sources at first hand seem to be reliable sources of information (e.g., Google Scholar, you tube) but cannot be considered as such.  Many websites provide information that cannot be considered independent and representative due to conflicts of interest.

Step 1: Find relevant literature – where and how to search for?  Using different search machines, Google, library website of my university, I found many research papers that were related to interethnic differences in emotion regulation and wellbeing.  My starting key words were: emotion regulation, immigrants, ethnicity, wellbeing, and their combination: emotion regulation and wellbeing, emotion regulation and immigrants etc.  While reading, I ‘discovered’ many new key words such as suppression, reappraisal, emotional suppression, ethnic minority etc. Then, I simply continued my search…

Step 2: Read and, while reading, write or even draw!  Make a selection of the articles that are closely related to your global idea/question  Describe each article very briefly  If necessary, make a table – THE SYNTHESIS MATRIX – where you write down at least the following: -Research theories/questions/hypotheses tested -Research designed used -Research population -Variables selected (independent/dependent) -Measures used to assess the variables -Main findings and conclusions -Limitations and recommendations etc.

Step 2: Read and, while reading, write or even draw!  While reading, I made a table with the main characteristics of the studies, including the names of the authors, year of publication, and the main characteristics of the study (e.g., research population, variables/measures, main findings).  I also drew the concept maps where I literally brought up together all variables that I possibly wanted to investigate. This served me as a first version of my hypothesized model that I later/finally wanted to test.

Step 3: SynthesizeStep 3: Synthesize  First, compare the articles: what do you compare? – THE SYNTHESIS MATRIX – -Research assumptions -Research theories/hypotheses tested -Research designed used -Research population -Variables selected (independent/dependent) -Measures used to assess the variables -Main findings and conclusions -Limitations and recommendations etc  You will usually compare the papers already during the reading…

Step 3: SynthesizeStep 3: Synthesize  What is the relationship between the main concepts and themes?  What are the agreements in the papers?  Also important: what are the disagreements?  What is missing in previous literature and how can your study possibly contribute to it?

Step 3: SynthesizeStep 3: Synthesize  While reading and comparing the studies, I progressively narrowed my general question, a topic of interest, to more specific question and even hypotheses.  Now I discovered that it is relevant to investigate interethnic differences in emotion regulation in distinct immigrant groups but also to focus on emotional suppression (one of the emotion regulation strategies) as this strategy was mostly associated with poor wellbeing.  So, I narrowed my original question to one regulation strategy: suppression and only on three aspects of wellbeing: satisfaction with life, mood disturbance, and depressive and bodily complaints.  And, I didn’t ‘made up’ my final research question and the hypotheses! Each of the hypotheses was grounded in previous theory or research, even when I could not find many studies on my topic.

Synthesizing is not a simple summarizing; Synthesizing is “discovering something new” Synthesizing helps you to formulate your research question(s) and the hypotheses

I finished the literature review and I had to write down my Introduction chapter…the most important is that, I finished the literature review and I had to write down my Introduction chapter…the most important is that,

in Introduction, I presented only the ‘synthesis’ or the ‘story’ of my literature

So, avoid the “laundry list”So, avoid the “laundry list” Introduction Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 … Summary of all papers and main conclusions Etc.

Correctly citing a literature source - APA  You should always have taken direct knowledge of the literature source that you cite. That is, you should have read the source himself/herself and should not rely on what others say about the content of the publication.  According to APA style, reference citations in the text consist of the name of the author(s), followed by the year of publication: Matsumoto et al. (2008) demonstrated that…Cross-cultural research confirms this relationship (Consedine, Magai, Cohen, & Gillespie, 2002; Ehring,Tuschen-Caffier, Schnulle, Fischer, & Gross, 2010).

References: APAReferences: APA

More info on APA style ce/560/01/ ce/560/01/ Or, simply, Google the APA manual… ????