Hi Guys, especially those in their last/later laps of the Phd,

For those of you in the the social sciences, especially those who need to have a separate chapter for conceptual framework and review of literature (naturally with overlaps), here are a few questions:

1. For a 10,000 word lit review, roughly how many sources did you have? Not that this is a norm, its highly subjective I know, but I was wondering for an idea.

2. When did you first do a ful chapter length version of it? And when you did, did you know how you wanted to thematically organize it?

3. Finally, all of you from your different home disciplines, if you had to show one instance of good practice as it were, for a great literature review, one that is creatively themed, one that draws out the arguments between scholars rather well, one that is exciting, what would that be? Any favourites in books/chapters/journal articles? It would be great if you could put in that one favourite citation here, and those of us interested could look around this interdisciplinary pool and figure out stuff..

too much to ask before the festivities jingle their way in? yes? no?

Best, p'bug:-)

my advice would be to look at your colleagues' theses. Have you got anyone in your department who submitted in the last few years? if so have a flick through theirs and see how they approached it.

Did that, most are pretty cataloguish...if you get what I mean...:)

Ok Guys,

reviving what was evidently an unpopular thread. Simple thing. Anyone who's done a chapter length literature review, can you just, (just for the mo's sake) give me the number of references you had? Especially for interdisciplinary topics?

(All, you know I am not asking this as some kind of target/ideal to follow or copy and implement, and I do know how variable these things all are)

Best

Hi PhDBug

I'm in the final-ish stages of my PhD now (4th-year part-time) - social sciences (technology and education with an element of semiotics). I have a main lit review and a subsidiary one at present (total around 12,000 words). Conceptual framework is developed throughout thesis (as this is what I'm trying to 'prove' - it's a methodological thesis). Because my lit review is both 'internally' and 'externally' comparative it perhaps has more sources than 'the norm'... particularly as the area is new, transdisciplinary and there are fewer books and more articles on the topic area. In my main lit review chapter (9,500 words) I probably have around 65 references.

I first did a full chapter length version in the early part of my 2nd year (having written a 'full' version prior to that which was chronologically comparative). The chronological didn't work and that's when I knew it needed to be a mix of chronological and thematic - I needed the thematic for the conceptual framework. So, the comparative element remained chronological but the laying out of the conceptual work (within the section on the theorist I was looking at) was thematic. Within the comparative element, I also had themes but these were chronological rather than conceptual - if that makes sense.

That said, I did a semi-systematic review for the subsidiary literature chapter, shorter chapter but more references and differently themes (according to applications of a theory) and I read 200 papers/book chapters for that, and used 150 of them for the systematic review. I decided that was way too much for the thesis, so am in the process of cutting that down to key thematic examples (with probably around 25-30 references) and am using the systematic review for a paper instead.

On last questions... not sure. I've been reading Wendy Wheelers "The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture" recently and her first chapter has a nice thematic lit review - in fact the whole book is more or less a review of the literature on perspectives of complexity between the 'hard' and 'soft' sciences. You can find it on Google books if you want to browse.

Futurelab has a series of Systematic Lit Reviews you could look at to get an idea of comparative, thematic reviews - the one on Creativity in Education is quite good.

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications-reports-articles/literature-reviews .

Happy Christmas.

:-)

PS In my thesis overall (at about 2/3 of way through) - I have around 200-250 references in all, in case that helps.

HI!!

That was so very very helpful! Thanks so much for this :)

Well Phdbug, just for you (!) I've counted the number of refs in my lit review from 2006 and there are 34 in its bibliography. I found that chapter quite problematic, as I realised quite quickly that most stuff on my topic was fairly similar, repeating what other authors had said, so there didn't seem to be anything of use. It took me a while to realise that the deficiencies were a bonus as it left the field open for new interpretations and that an interdisciplinary approach would be useful.

The lit review dictated the theoretical methodology and the organisation of the type of data I wanted to look at in the subsequent chapters. The lit review chapter didn't really gel properly until about the equivalent of the end of a F/T student's second year, when theoretical ideas fell into place explicitly, ideas that had only been implicit until then.

I can't really think of any useful examples of good practice though, everyone I read is located in their own discipline and so doesn't cover the same topic from other perspectives. Death Studies in the UK is quite interdisciplinary these days, at least the DDD conferences and the journal are, in that they attract people from most disciplines which is always thought provoking, but I can't think of anyone offhand that actually weaves that approach into their writing. I think interdisciplinarity is only valid when your actual research questions can only be addressed in that way, if you are left with a nagging feeling that something seems very unsatisfactory in its explanation if you stick to one discipline and leaves you with a lot of intellectual gaps and unanswered questions. Otherwise it can be like a trendy academic equivalent of pick 'n' mix and can end up seeming a bit un-rigorous and flaky.

Woffling on now and not sure if that's any use to you really, but I'm grappling with my methodology and revised lit review at the moment.

Oh Rubyw Thank you a million times for looking it up :) It's so helpful of you.

Ok now for the reason behind my question that's driving you guys to counting numbers!

See, my research is at a certain cutting edge. First it is digital media, it involves the youth, you can probably imagine the number of academics that have gone bonkers producing endless research on such like. But still that's not the point. Because of the very nature of the topic it has a leg rooted in public policy (you can understand, that deals with youth and digital media). And cutting edge, i say, like EVERY moment things are changing and new literature is getting produced.

I am going crazy. I have a lit rev list (temporary) of 576 refernces, and one larger one (resulting from keyword searches across databases) for 1564 ones.

What do I DOOOOO?

(My conceptual framework has around 4 scholars, with 6 or 7 primary texts from each except one from whom i have 2)

Do you mean by searching some words on an electronic search device thing you have 1.5k odd references? Surely they're not all relevant so you're not going to read them all?

When I do a search, I have words which mean different things in different contexts to I get masses of hits. One of my keywords can even be a name so I get all those often too. But I quickly scroll through till I find ones that are relevant, which will be a tiny minority.

But you don't know what's relevant till you're further down the road and do I recall you are early days? So read what's interesting and then follow it from there. Keywords searches are of limited use. These days I follow up references in interesting papers instead, and then their references, and then their references etc till it isn't relevant. And I also do it the other way - I forget what it's called but you can search for papers that reference papers that are of interest to you.

Maybe you need to be a little less systematic and more messy. I can understand the temptation to do a key word search and then sit down to read them all, but it doesn't really work like that. That sounds too linear, it is more like a web.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you and so totally off track, but I can't imagine a subject narrow enough for a PhD that has 1.5k people writing about it, where you can then make a unique contribution...

It is a topic, that is, in my supervisor's words a long needed theoretical and empirical intervention in our field.

Anyway, what i meant was this: my searches span currently around 7 disciplines, and all of which have some 'interface' with certain aspects of the 'subject'.

So let's say the subject is Social Networking Sites (Facebook for eg). There are medics writing about its uses for them, communication scholars, sociologists, anthros, even historians: My approach let's say is to use them as an instance for a specific phenomenon X of relevance towards the theoretical progression of niche field Y.

But I am still interested (and indeed intrigued) by the ways in which diverse disciplines have interfaced with this one thing: hence the keyword searches (And yes, much is banal!).


Ultimately, we all know, the real question how (if at all) these interfaces inform my question.


Does that show some clarity in the way in which i've been progressing?

Wow Phdbug - that's one heck of a lot of references - I almost envy you in a strange way lol - in my field there is a lot of debate, but its pretty much circular and most of the references from papers etc go back to a certain few initial ones (if that makes sense). I tend to follow the same pattern as Alice in that I started with a particular paper that was given to me as an ideal place to start by my supervisor in that it summed up the entire argument (and got it wrong lol lol lol) and then I'm following the references through from that out and out - I have loads printed up to read (its mainly articles) and am now going out into other areas too from different starting points.
My work will be interdisciplinary - my BA was joint honours History and Sociology, my MA was shared between the two depts also and now the same will happen with the Phd, part social sciences, part historical - your classic cultural and social historical basis.
I'm also preparing my lit review right now - I have to have the paper submitted to the members of the board by the 19th of Jan and the board is on the 28th - terrifying as I just don't have a clue where to start with it :-(

Oh and yes, no one but an idiot would start a reading list (however it is that it has been compiled, reference to reference way, or search way, or both) no one but an idiot would start to read at A and go till Z!!!!

So, yes, I dont have such plans. What I was trying to say is that my research is at very highly popular cutting edge, amongst academic and policy circles, so there is a large amount of different sources coming in all the time. (This is a problem, that researchers of online phenomena perhaps have a little more than film or tv researchers, but let me not go into the details of the field!!)

All in all, I have a very crisp and tight topic, that's been progressing rather well, the problem is not so much in reading all over the place (which really is not something I am doing) but a problem of dealing with cross cutting interfaces in a very fluid and malleable cutting edge zone.

best.

Ouch! It sounds both extremely exciting and also rather daunting. I do wish we could discuss our ideas more on here as it sounds fascinating, when you do have your first board?

If you have 1500 references then I would like to suggest that you need to narrow down the question you want to answer. You should treat it like you would a research question (as it is a research question!). In health we have the PICO method, i.e., define population, intervention, comparators and outcome.

I am also doing work in a very new (as well as fairly controversial) area which is based in public policy (mine is in health), using a particular format of media, with a group of participants who are traditionally all below 25 (all deliberately vague). When I conducted my major systematic review in my first year I wound up with more than 10,000 hits. By the end of the process I had two papers which had made ANY attempt at answering the question I wanted to know the answer for. I am now expanding my question because the area is so new I'm having to look at applications in similar ways, but not quite the same as I will be doing.

Firstly, have you looked for previous literature reviews which have attempted to answer your question - in health we have the Cochrane library which is a whole load of literature reviews which are classed as the gold standard. If they had done a review in my area last year then to be honest, there would almost definitely be little I could contribute by repeating this review so I would just do the same kind of review for the remaining years of my PhD.

Secondly, define your question! And be strict about it.

Thirdly, and I assume this is true of most disciplines, you should have some measure of quality. That is, for example, there is no point in including a paper which is methodologically flawed. Throw it out! It's meaningless and will possibly confuse you.

Hope this helps a little. Sorry if it sounds a little muddled. I'm having issues remembering my words today...

A