Week 3 Readings

THE REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

(extracted from Judith Bell, Doing your Research Project: A guide for first-time researchers in

education, health and social science, 4th ed, Open University Press, London, 2005)

-Hart considers a literature review important because

without it you will not acquire an understanding of your topic, of what has already been done on it, how it has been researched, and what the key issues are. In your written project you will be expected to show that you understand previous research on your topic.

-In Hart’s view, ‘the review is therefore a part of your academic development – of becoming an

expert in the field’ (p. 1). …

-Reveiw should provide reader with a picture, and the major questions on the topic.

As Polit and Hungler point out:

-Frameworks are efficient mechanisms for drawing together and summarizing accumulated facts .

-The linkage of findings into a coherent structure makes the body of accumulated knowledge more accessible and, thus, more useful both to practitioners who seek to implement findings and to researchers who seek to extend the knowledge base. (Polit and Hungler 1995: 101)

Theoretical Framework- an explanatory device ‘which explains either graphically or in

narrative form, the main to be studied – the key factors, constructs or variables – and the presumed relationships among them.

The Gilbert Fan review

- he had to decide on specific topics which were of particular interest to him and under which he could group his findings.

-Gilbert made a good job of categorizing his findings under the five main headings, each of which had sub-headings.

The review of the literature checklist

1. Evidence of reading will always be required in any research.

2. Researchers collect many facts but then must select, organize and classify findings into a

coherent pattern.

3. Your framework will not only provide a map of how the research will be conducted and

analysed but it will also give you ideas about a structure for your review.

4. Literature reviews should be succinct and, as far as is possible in a small study, should

give a picture of the state of knowledge and of major questions in your topic area.

5. Ensure that all references are complete. Note the page numbers of any quotations and

paraphrases of good ideas.

6. Watch your language. Perhaps inferences may be drawn, but ‘proof’ is hard to come by

when dealing with human beings.

7. Examine your sources critically before you decide to use them.

8. Remember that unless you are comparing like with like, you can make no claims for

comparability.

9. Do not be tempted to leave out any reports of research merely because they differ from

your own findings.

10. Start the first draft of your review early in your reading. Many more drafts will be

required before you have a coherent and ‘critical’ account but better to start small and

then build on your first attempt than to have to make sense of everything you have read

at one attempt.

Know it All Can Wikipedia conquer Expertise?

Stacy Schiff

The New Yorker, July 31st, 2006

Anyone with internet access can create a Wikipedia entry or edit one. The site has hundreds of thousands of contributers

-functions as a filter for vast amount of information

-2003 Wikipedia became a non-profit organization.

-is offered in over 200 languages

-Whales for encyclopedia was the World Book.

-it was originally supposed to be scholarly articles subjected to a seven step review process. Whales being out of school for several years felt like he was doing homework and being judged.

-May be the worlds most ambitious vanity press

-In a survey Wikipedia had four errors for every three of Brittanica's

THE NEWS BUSINESS OUT OF PRINT

The death and life of the American newspaper.

by Eric Alterman

MARCH 31, 2008

The American newspaper has been around for approximately three hundred years.

-It really was not until 1721, when the printer James Franklin launched the New England Courant, that any of Britain’s North American colonies saw what we might recognize today as a real newspaper.

-Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin’s Courant, it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America’s last genuine newspaper.

-The rise of the Internet, which has made the daily newspaper look slow and unresponsive; the advent of Craigslist, which is wiping out classified advertising––have created a palpable sense of Arianna Huffington questions newspapers’“veneer of unassailable trustworthiness.”

-Independent, publicly traded American newspapers have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three years, according to the media entrepreneur Alan Mutter.

-Until recently, newspapers were accustomed to operating as high-margin monopolies. To own the dominant, or only, newspaper in a mid-sized American city was, for many decades, a kind of license to print money.

-Taking its place, of course, is the Internet, which is about to pass newspapers as a source of political news for American readers.

-On the Huffington Post, Peretti explains, news is not something handed down from above but “a shared enterprise

between its producer and its consumer.”

-Though Huffington has a news staff (it is tiny, but the hope is to expand in the future), the vast majority of the stories that it features originate elsewhere, whether in print, on television, or on someone’s video camera or cell phone.