1

ICS-1 Research
Deciding the Topic of Research and Literature Review
Steps in Formulating a Research Topic 2

1. Select a topic you are interested in - You want to be fascinated throughout the process and less likely to lose
motivation
 Sleep

2. Choose a topic that is feasible and clearly define it.

 https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search
 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition

3. Get Help - get help/assistance early and often – see your supervisors at least once every 2 weeks. Report to
them what you have done so far and take notes and agree on next steps.
 Immediately following these sessions, your supervisor will report to us about your individual as well as group performance !

4. Start out with a general topic or two, to decide which one to pursue review the literature, and then refine
you’re the topic based on what you have found.
 Started with ‘sleep’ now I am thinking about ‘sleep deprivation’ or even ‘Insufficient Sleep Syndrome in students’

5. Now I need to do a ‘literature review’… but what is a literature review???????

 Literature Review 3

A literature review;

1. surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources (e.g. dissertations, conference proceedings)
relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory.

2. provides a short description and critical evaluation of work critical to the topic.

3. offers an overview of significant literature published on a topic.

(Lyons, 2005)
Literature reviews are conducted for various reasons… 4

1. For a writing a review paper

2. For the introduction (and discussion) of a research paper, masters thesis or

dissertation

3. To embark on a new area of research

4. For turning a research topic into a research proposal

(Burge, 2005)
Conducting a literature review will help you: 5

1. Determine if proposed research is actually needed…

 Even if similar research published, researchers might suggest a need for similar studies or
replication. You learn lessons from thousands of medical scientists before you who have
worked on your topic of interest…

2. Narrow down a problem…

 Turning a research topic into a research proposal can be overwhelming. A literature
review can help you understand where you need to focus your efforts.

3. Generate hypotheses or research questions for your research…

(Mauch & Birch, 2003)
Conducting a literature review will give you: 6

• Background knowledge of the field of inquiry

 Facts
 Eminent scholars
 Parameters of the field
 The most important ideas, theories, questions, methods, hypotheses and analyses

• Knowledge of the methodologies and approaches common and acceptable in

the field of study and a feeling for their usefulness and appropriateness.
(Mauch & Birch, 2003)
Steps of the Literature Review Process 7

1. Formulate a topic - which topic or field do you want to examine and what are the main issues that
your group want to look at?

2. Search the literature for materials relevant to the subject being explored. Searching the
literature involves reading and refining your problem

3. Evaluate your findings - determine which literature makes a significant contribution to the
understanding of the topic

4. Analyze and summarize - discuss the findings and conclusions of the literature

5. Format and create bibliography

(Lyons, 2005)
Reviewing the Literature 8

• The literature included can be any format appropriate to your topic.

• Don’t restrict yourself to journal articles.

• Look in books (e-books!!!) – you’ll need to know and cite the work of major contributors to the field.

• Important Information can be found in reports, conference proceedings, and other non-journal sources
(Example: http://www.who.int/en/).

• Search government websites and associations (Example: https://www.sleepassociation.org ) related to

your topic .

• Look at EMU library website to find the key databases additional resources: http://library.emu.edu.tr
Demo… 9

Medline database:
• Almost all of the medical articles are indexed in this huge database
• Universally found in medical and science libraries
• It is compiled by the National Library of Medicine of the USA
• Indexes over 4000 journals published over 70 countries
• Three versions available are:
• Printed (Index Medicus)
• On-line from 1966 to date (different commercial companies sell membership to
it e.g. Ovid Technologies (OVID), Silver Platter Information Ltd (WinSPIRS) and
PubMed
• CD-ROM
Demo… 10

All the articles can be traced in two ways:

1. By any word listed in the title, abstract, author’s names and the institution where the
research was done
2. By restricted thesaurus of medical titles known as medical subject heading (MeSH)
terms – keywords!

Note: All of the articles are organized using Boolean logic! Particular words such as
‘hypertension’, ‘therapy’ are linked with operators such as ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’…etc
 Demo… 11

Exercise 1: Finding a paper you know that exists

The paper’s title is something like “Sleep and use of electronic devices in adolescence: results from a
large population-based study” and you read it in BMJ (British Medical Journal)

1. Go to: http://library.emu.edu.tr/
2. Under ‘Electronic Resources’ click on ‘Online Full Text Databases (subscribed)’
3. Accept the terms and continue
4. Select ‘OVID Lippincott Williams and Wilkins (LWW) Total Access’
Search:
Sleep in title (.ti)
Electronic devices in title (.ti)
Adolescence in title (.ti)
BMJ in journal (.jn)
Search using Boelian operators: (sleep AND electronic devices AND adolescence).ti and BMJ.jn
Demo… 12
Exercise 2: You want to answer a very specific research question or get general information about a
well defined topic:

sleep deprivation in undergraduate students

I. Formulate keywords:
• Go to: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/
• Look up definitions of words
II. Connect to Medline database:
• Go to: http://library.emu.edu.tr/ →Under ‘Electronic Resources’ →‘Online Full
Text Databases (subscribed)’ → Accept the terms and continue → Select ‘OVID
Lippincott Williams and Wilkins (LWW) Total Access’
III. Search:
• Keywords
• Narrow (limit) or Expand research (broader keywords)
Literature Search 13

• Search across multiple databases and information resources (google scholar, pubmed
…etc.).

• It’s not adequate to use Medline as your one and only resource

• What you read will guide your subsequent searches and help you refine your topic

• Your literature search should help refine your research questions and methods …
Selecting literature 14

• Read widely

• When you read for your literature review, you are actually doing
two things at the same time:
1. Trying to define your research problem: finding a gap, asking a question,
continuing previous research, counter-claiming

2. Trying to read every source relevant to your research problem

 Narrow your focus…you are allowed to
change your mind about your topic 15

• Start from new material to old, general to specific - starting with general topic will provide leads to specific
areas of interest and help develop understanding for the interrelationships of research

• Note quality of journal, output of author

• As you read and become more informed on the topic, you will probably need to go back and do more
focused searches

• Think, analyze, and weed out

• Arrange to spend some review time with an experienced researcher in the field of study to get feedback and
to talk through any problems encountered

(Mauch & Birch, 1993)

Getting the most out of the literature you
locate 16
Step 1: read the abstract and then decide whether to read the article in detail

Step 2: If interested continue onto reading the introduction - it explains why the study is important and
provides review and evaluation of relevant literature

Step 3: read Materials and Methods section with a close, critical eye – here you will find information on
participants, recruitment process, measures, data collection and analysis procedures

Step 4: Evaluate results to see whether the conclusions seem logical, if you can detect any bias

Step 5: Read the discussion critically – to understand how the researchers go about reporting the limitations
of the study

Step 6: Check out the References section of the papers you most like!

(Carroll, 2006)
Data Evaluation: Selecting Literature 17

• As you define your problem you will more easily be able to decide what to read and
what to ignore.

• Before you define your problem, hundreds of sources will seem relevant.

• However, you cannot define your problem until you read around your research area.

• This seems a vicious circle, but what should happen is that as you read you define
your problem, and as you define your problem you will more easily be able to
decide what to read and what to ignore.
Save the references of literature you find! 18

• Keep a record of the literature you collect

• Record where and when you retrieved the information

• Use a citation manager program like RefWorks or EndNote

• Always record the literature that you have located

Final tips about reviewing literature… 19

• Read to understand the big picture, don’t get tied down into the details…

• Read the easier works first…

• Skim the document and identify major concepts…

• After you have a broad understanding of the 10 to 15 papers, you can start to see
patterns:
For example: Groups of scientists argue or disagree with other groups. Some researchers think x
causes y, others that x is only a moderating variable …

(Carroll, 2006)
Final note on reviewing the literature… 20

It is important that your review is:

1. Accurate: Someone can track down the article from the details (citation)
that you have provided

2. Complete: includes all important papers not every paper written on the
topic
For our next ICS Research class bring… 21

On an A4 paper a short report (do not exceed this) listing:

1. Members of the group (names and surnames)

2. The topic of your study
3. Three to five keywords that you have chosen with the help of
MeSH, dictionaries or other literature that helped you locate
relevant literature
4. Summary of two papers (literature) related to your groups’
research topic (what is its title, who are the participants, what
tools are they using to collect the data)
References 22

1. Burge, C., 7.16 Experimental Molecular Biology: Biotechnology II, Spring 2005. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT
OpenCouseWare), Retrieved 12/15/2008, from http://ocw.mit.edu. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
2. Carrol, J., 15.301 Managerial Psychology, Fall 2006. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCouseWare). Retrieved
12/15/2008, from http://ocw.mit.edu. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
3. Golden-Biddle, K, & Locke, K (1997). Composing Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
4. Green, B. N., Johnson, C. D., & Adams, A. (2006). Writing narrative literature reviews for peer-reviewed journals: Secrets of the
trade. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 5(3), 101-117.
5. Lyons, K. (2005). UCSC library - how to write a literature review. Retrieved 1/22/2009, 2009, from
http://library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/literaturereview.html
6. Mauch, J. E., & Birch, J. W. (1993). Guide to the successful thesis and dissertation : A handbook for students and faculty (3rd ,
rev. and expand ed.). New York: Marcel Dekker.
7. University of Wisconsin. (2006). UW-madison writing center writer's handbook. Retrieved 1/22/2009, 2009, from
http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html