Conducting a Literature Review

Research is a strategic activity.

• Once you have a topic to explore and research strategy (keywords, where to search etc), it helps to keep track of your search activities and results.
• Keeping a record on paper or electronically allows you to see patterns in your approach that may help develop further approaches and your final hypothesis. 
• Some databases (OVID) and indexes (Pubmed, Medline, ERIC) allow you to save your strategies electronically.

 Whether written or electronic it is essential to take note of things such as: 

• what terms have you used, as well as any searching techniques such as truncation (e.g. nurs*)
• any limiters applied, e.g. date or geography
• how many results retrieved
• how many of the results were relevant

You may wish to keep a record using a document such as the Search Log below. 

You may find it helpful to use a research grid (see below for an example) to track critical features, distinguish what reviews have similar topic focus, and note the similarities in research results. 

• Noting these patterns will help you write the review and learn to quickly skim the literature on a topic.