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pink fairy Apr 2014 10:00am, 22 Apr 2014 65 posts	Quote Pin pink fairy That is frustrating. Is it a systematic review? It took me ages to get my head round them. The most helpful thing I found was to google for systematic reviews on a similar topic to mine and look at their structure, search terms, databases they used etc. Then I googled how to work the databases. Took a while to fully figure it out though, but there are some good online guides.
jangles Apr 2014 10:03am, 22 Apr 2014 2,202 posts	Quote Pin jangles I'll be honest.. I have no idea what type of review it is. I've never been asked to do one before and I'm totally mystified.
pink fairy Apr 2014 10:20am, 22 Apr 2014 67 posts	Quote Pin pink fairy Ah ok. This has got a bit of a summary and some links csu.edu.au Basically your lit review is similar to how you'd write an introduction to an essay/ research paper- but just in more depth. It's just a summary of the literature on a certain topic with the view of answering a question. So for example, if someone wanted to explore the relationship between smoking and cancer they'd find all the papers on the subject and pool their results to answer the question. So you need to think about a research question that hasn't been reviewed recently (you can always update previous reviews if there is lots of new research published since the last review) A systematic review is just when you do it in a very structured way- so you say what your search terms are, what databases (groups of journals) you are looking for, what dates you are considering (e.g. all papers ever, or just last 10 years?) and you write a method that shows the reader very clearly how you found all your papers (so they can replicate it). You then evaluate your papers in some way- if they all have lots of statistics you can do a 'meta-analysis', if they are all qualitative you can do a 'meta-synthesis'. My papers for my review were all a bit of a muddle so I did a 'narrative review' which basically just meant I discussed them/ evaluated them individually without doing any further analysis/statistics. It's hard to explain without examples, but I just googled and I think examples from a subject other than your own are terrifying! I'd recommend going to google scholar and searching 'systematic review' and whatever your subject is. So I do psychology, so I started off just by google scholar-ing 'systematic review psychology' just to get a sense of what they look like. This may have just mystified you more... sorry if it's information overload!
LindsD Apr 2014 10:24am, 22 Apr 2014 1,272 posts	Quote Pin LindsD Hi all did nothing over Easter but did not expect to. Am now trying to catch up on admin whilst the kids are trying to stop me. I was supposed to submit a completed chapter by tomorrow but it still needs revision and I have other stuff to do all week. My old work (who I still work for a bit) want me to do a load of stuff I don't want to do but need the money. Am not feeling great today. Hope everyone else is doing better than me.
pink fairy Apr 2014 10:28am, 22 Apr 2014 68 posts	Quote Pin pink fairy I'm not Linds It's 10.25 and I don't even have word open. Am waiting to hear back from a job interview on Thursday (for when I finish my course in September) and the anxiety is getting to me. Have pretty much convinced myself I didn't get it but need the closure. I would really like to get one of my introduction sections finished today, but who knows.
fleecy Apr 2014 10:31am, 22 Apr 2014 15,169 posts	Quote Pin fleecy jangles: when I was studying with the OU I found the online forums absolutely invaluable, have you tried looking on the forums? A literature review is not too scary, it's just finding a bunch of papers (have you been given some? The OU don't usually make you do much literature searching) and then talking about them. Hugs, Linds, the only way is up! I did some reading on holiday, I feel recharged and ready to go now! I better go do some reading so I can let myself go for a run later
FreshStart Apr 2014 10:35am, 22 Apr 2014 1,938 posts	Quote Pin FreshStart I opened my chapter, saw how little I've actually completed and closed word. I'm now going to have to fanny about playing "find the reference" so that I can (hopefully) complete a few more sections today. I've learnt a valuable lesson this weekend, not to compare myself with other students. I am friends with a PhD student from Brum and follow her on twitter. All weekend she has been updating us all with tales of how much work she has completed. Last night she sent around the link to the second paper she has had published. I'm yet to even have one published... My supervisor keeps telling me that it's fine not have papers published during your PhD. I'm not convinced. One chapter was accepted last year and should be appearing at some point. I guess I should be proud of my book review
jangles Apr 2014 10:48am, 22 Apr 2014 2,203 posts	Quote Pin jangles Thank you for all your responses.. In a previous assignment I was asked to submit a title to research, something which has had plenty written about it already, and to find a few sources from which to work.. since then I've found some much better and more reliable sources of information. I feel I am being asked to review my list of references and evaluate their relevance to my study.. does this sound right?
pink fairy Apr 2014 10:52am, 22 Apr 2014 70 posts	Quote Pin pink fairy Sounds like a good place to start jangles. It's a shame your tutors aren't being helpful about what they are looking for. Is there a marking guide you could use as a bit of a checklist?
jangles Apr 2014 11:00am, 22 Apr 2014 2,204 posts	Quote Pin jangles Fleecy.. our tutor group forum is dead..nobody posts there except for me and one other guy. Neither of us ever gets a tutor answer to any questions. PLK.. there is supposed to be an example paper but the link is broken which is pretty typical of this yrs OU experience, and there's a scheduled online tutorial but that's not until the 14th May.