Research Guides: Sociology: Literature Review

“A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study…” Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.
"A literature review is an assessment of a body of research that addresses a research question. It identifies what is already known about an area of study. It may also: Identify questions a body of research does not answer; Make a case for why further study of research questions is important to a field... It is a research journey with several steps: Framing a research question; Searching relevant bodies of literature; Managing search results; Synthesizing the research literature; Writing an assessment of the literature. The process is iterative—as you gain understanding, you’ll return to earlier steps to rethink, refine, and rework your literature review..." The Literature Review: A Research Journey. Overview. Harvard Graduate School of Education, Gutman Library. http://guides.library.harvard.edu/literaturereview

Researching college students alone is over broad.
Researching college students’ drug use is more manageable.
Researching college students’ drug use and the impact of that drug use on their academic success is getting focused.

The process of identifying and selecting your research search terms through a creative, critical thinking based, iterative practice.

AND

AND

“academic performance" OR "academic achievement" OR gpa OR "academic engagement" OR grades OR "academic success"

Searching for articles on college students' drug use in the database Academic Search Complete
("college students" OR "university students" OR undergraduates) AND ("drug use" OR "drug abuse" OR "substance abuse" OR "substance use"). Search Limits: SCHOLARLY (PEER REVIEW ARTICLES) ONLY; DATE (2015-Present)
A subsequent search with the same limits but adding the notion of academic success shrinks the search result (narrowing):
AND “academic performance" or "academic achievement" or gpa or "academic engagement" or grades or "academic success"
The same search as above but instead of searching only Academic Search Complete, we search all EBSCOhost databases (expanding)
Some research platforms like EBSCOhost contain more than one database. In this case, EBSCOhost has over 30 search databases. [To see the 30+ databases on this EBSCOhost platform, click on the search hyperlink above. Once you get to the search result in EBSCOhost, at the top of the screen just above the search template box, click "show all" ...]

Most UCI Library databases use “Boolean” connectors. You can see examples of Boolean search strategies and connectors in the sections above. It's basically a very simple way to search a large template style database. These databases are often referred to as "template” or “field” search databases because of the search page design and use of search connectors in those search boxes or fields ...

AND searches for results with all of your search terms
- “college students” AND "drug use"
- articles that use both of those terms

OR searches for results with any of your search terms
- “capital punishment” OR “death penalty”
- articles that use either of those terms or both of those terms

NOT excludes a search term
- “Climate change” NOT “global warming”
- articles that say “climate change” but don’t use the words “global warming” at all

Asterisk (*) searches for anything that starts with the letters before the * mark
- teen*
- retrieves teen teens teenager teenagers

Quotation Marks (“”) searches for a phrase with words in an exact order (Note that the "and" part of the phrase "cruel and unusual" is not interpreted by the database as an "AND" connector when surrounded by quotation marks)
- "cruel and unusual punishment" AND "solitary confinement"

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Subjects:Social Sciences