I’ll start a master thesis with the following research subject: the relation between business performance (sales) and planned hours (employees). I’ve the possibility to collect sales data of 100+ stores. Unfortunately, it’s quite a job to find useful articles in the existing literature (which lead to the research gap). Anyone some tips/recommendations about how to find these kind of articles?

Hi Etienne7,

it depends very much if you want to do a systematic review of the literature. In this case there is a methodology that you need to follow. Try finding previous reviews that used this approach. It is not very complicated and it helps make the review transparent and reproducible.

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000097

Hope this helps.

Hi Dr Jeckyll, Thanks for your response. Unfortunately the link isn't working at my computer. I'm still searching for literature, so tips are very welcome.

Doing mine the other way around....identified some interests, constructed a research question based off of that (without knowing the answer before hand), used the key words in my research question to identify the topics covered in my lit review, collect and code literature, write review.

As you go through literature, you will be able to see the gaps, conclusions, claims, findings, disagreements, calls for more research etc. Thats when you are able to put the different parts of your review in conversation with one another in order to steer the reader to your research and how it fits into, extends or takes a different view of the current debate.

As a rule if you are having problems with your research question, alter the key terms or alter the data analysis. I cannot tell you how priceless this book is:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Destination-Dissertation-Travelers-Guide-Done/dp/0742554406/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405778482&sr=1-1&keywords=destination+dissertation

go to amazon US for more user reviews.

If you want a quick and fast description of their lit review method (which I am using) check out this blog post (the site is excellent too)

http://getalifephd.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/six-steps-to-writing-literature-review.html

Cheers