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Can the two approaches influence each other?
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Can the two approaches influence each other?
There is no doubt that the systematic review has a wider influence. Within the UK Home Office, for example, an increasing proportion of the literature reviews pub- lished online are systematic reviews. Those that are not badged as such nonetheless now incorporate distinct methodology sections, outlining the search methods used, the bodies of literature consulted and the approaches to synthesis that have been employed. While the formulaic approach of systematic reviews can militate against the richness of language and creativity of style often found in narrative reviews, this does not have to be so. There is scope to bring some of these linguistic techniques into the systematic review. The debate within the social sciences over which method is ‘best’ has seen a proliferation of papers, coming particularly from the natural sci- ences, encouraging researchers to implement more systematic approaches to reviewing the literature. The most biting critiques of this approach point to the broader limitations of the policy context into which research findings are received, such as the fact that no policy ‘happens from scratch’ since other provisions will always be present and that ‘synthetic recommendations cannot match the complexity of the policy systems that will host them’ (Pawson, 2006: 12–13). They also point out the danger of political preference for ‘evidence-based’ research which legitimates a targeting of government research questions on narrowly focused and short-termist studies that support partisan objectives (Hope and Walters, 2008; Morgan and Hough, 2008). Further, Pawson has criticized the meta-analytic orientation of the Campbell Collaboration systematic reviews, questioning the assumption that past studies are directly relevant to future interventions and arguing that ‘a more adaptive mode of knowledge management is required to cope with the vicissitudes of complex systems’ (Pawson, 2006: 171). He provides an alternative model of ‘realist review’, incorporating analyses of the contexts in which interventions take place, including the staffing and implementation arrangements, institutional culture and political climate.
A summary of the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches is presented in
Box 3. 5.
HOW DO I GO ABOUT DOING A LITERATURE REVIEW?
The process of reviewing the literature begins as soon as you have a provi- sional research topic, and before you finally decide on the precise scope of your research. At this stage, you need to establish how much has already been written on your topic, what has been said – and not said – and the sorts of questions others have asked. Such an approach will help you determine the feasibility of your own ideas, identify knowledge gaps and decide the scope and parameters of your research, research question and sub-questions and research methods.
There are several social science research texts that devote a chapter to doing effec- tive literature reviews (see, for example, Gray, 2017; Punch, 2014; Thomas, 2017) and others that discuss how to prepare your review (Pan, 2016), how to ensure your review is comprehensive (Onwuegbuzie and Frels, 2016) and traditional and system- atic techniques for doing your literature review (Jesson, 2011). As a preliminary measure, it is best to skim the surface of the literature rather than undertake a full- scale literature search. Online facilities – library catalogues, databases and the internet – offer the best starting point.
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Searching the literature
A literature strategy can be broken down into a series of steps, as follows.
Deciding what you are looking for
List your subject keywords, thinking about your topic and the key concepts associ- ated with it.
What alternative terms are used to describe it?
Are there alternative spellings, such as British and American variants of a term? A search on the word paedophile (English UK spelling) will exclude resources that employ the English US spelling – pedophile – of the same term and vice versa.
Are common acronyms used?
Can a word be truncated to incorporate different words with the same stem (e. g.
rehabilit* to find rehabilitate, rehabilitation or rehabilitative)?
Are there any specific themes, cases or examples you are interested in? Are there any terms that you should exclude?
Group these keywords using Boolean operators:
1. OR to group alternative terms (e. g. police OR policing)
2. AND to link words together (e. g. crime AND prevention)
3. Brackets to clarify a combination of terms (e. g. (police OR policing) AND (crime AND prevention))
4. NOT to exclude terms (e. g. police AND violence NOT domestic).
Boolean operators should be expressed in capital letters because this is required by some search tools.
Deciding where to look
A number of different electronic sources are available to help you search the literature:
· Many university libraries have subject-specific guides which provide a helpful starting point for literature searches in a given discipline. You may also have access to a subject librarian at your university who can help you.
· You can use library catalogues to find books and journals held within those librar- ies, but not their content. Use keywords to identify books and journals relevant to your topic.
· Bibliographic databases allow you to search the academic literature in more detail, some covering a wide range of disciplines and others being more focused. You can search these not only by subject but also by author, publica- tion date and other features. Often, the search results will include short sum- maries or abstracts of the articles identified to help you assess their relevance, and some services are ‘full text’, providing you with the full document. Databases relevant to criminology include ASSIA, Criminal Justice Abstracts and SocINDEX.
· Google Scholar functions in a similar way to bibliographic databases, its main advantage being its accessibility to all internet users. It is important to note that some resources discovered via Google Scholar are behind paywalls. If using Google Scholar on campus, you should find direct links in the results to resources held in your university library.
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· You can also supplement the information provided in this chapter with study skills guides on literature reviews. These may introduce you to new tools, as information resources are constantly evolving. At Northumbria University, for example, infor- mation on conducting a literature review is provided via their Skills Plus platform. Here, there are printable help guides and an online tutorial, which can be found at http: //nuweb2. northumbria. ac. uk/library/skillsplus/.
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