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determine the thoroughness of a review unless you are an expert on the research topic or you conduct your own search to check for comprehensiveness. A thorough literature review should attempt to present a balanced view by discussing the conflicting ideas of different researchers and authors. A literature review should not be just a list of documents published on a certain subject. As noted above, the ideas in different documents should be compared and contrasted. There may be gaps in certain areas of the literature that the authors should acknowledge. Sometimes the page 14 Research awareness in nursing and midwifery: a workbook researchers announce an intention to fill some of the gaps with their research findings. In addition, there should be a critique of the quality of the documents reviewed; significant methodological flaws, for example, may detract from the worth of data, conclusions and recommendations. The ability to critique research documents depends largely on skills developed through research awareness. Referencing systems There are two main systems in use for citing and referencing other work: the Harvard system and the numerical system. In the Harvard system, references are cited in the text by giving the name(s) of the author(s) followed by the year of publication. This may be done in one of two ways: • Polit & Hungler (1989) pointed out that … • It has been observed (Briggs, 1972) that … In the reference list, the references are set out in alphabetical order of the first author. If there are two or more references by the same author(s), these are given in chronological order. If there are two or more by the same author(s) in the same year, these are designated (and also in the text) as, for example, 1998a, 1998b, etc. In the numerical system (as used in this workbook), the references are numbered consecutively as they occur in the text. The names of the author(s) may or may not be given: • Polit & Hungler (11) pointed out that … • It has been observed (5) that … In the list, the references are set out in numerical order. Note that where there are several authors many publishers prefer to use “et al.” in the text to denote that there are more than a certain number, commonly two or three. Some publishers also use this system in the list of references. You may also come across the use of the term Vancouver system or Vancouver style. This is not a referencing system as such (although it uses the numerical system) but part of a set of standards, formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, on how authors should prepare manuscripts for publication. Exercise 4 Can you locate the literature review in each of the three articles? Do the reviews discuss literature directly relevant to the aims of the research? Are the documents reviewed evaluated in terms of quality? Are the ideas in different documents compared and contrasted? Are most of the references recent (from the last five years)? Do the three articles use numerical or Harvard referencing systems? Write a few notes in response to these questions and then turn to the relevant discussion in Section 6. Reading and evaluating research reports page 15 3.8 The choice of research methods The aims, research questions and hypotheses should be restated at the start of the Methods section of a research document. This should help you to assess whether the methods chosen by the researchers were appropriate to meet the aims of the study. Quantitative or qualitative research? One of the choices that researchers may need to make is that between quantitative and qualitative methods. Put simply, quantitative research seeks to answer questions of “how much?” and “how many?” and is concerned with the relationships (especially causal relationships) between variables, whereas qualitative research is concerned with a matrix of “who, why, when and where?” questions and with the exploration of issues. Quantitative research often takes the form of experiments, quasi-experiments and surveys, which generate numerical data for tabulation and/or statistical testing. Qualitative research utilizes unstructured or semi-structured interviews, participant observation and/or the analysis of documents and conversations, often in combination. Qualitative data are in the form of words, such as interview transcripts and researchers’ field notes. Data are assigned to thematical categories, which are used as a basis for discussion. Quantitative research is associated with a philosophy known as positivism, which is based on ideas about the existence of objective reality and the ability of human beings to discover facts if they set aside their personal biases and take a scientific approach. Positivist philosophy and quantitative method underpin most research into the natural sciences (physical, chemical and biological experiments) and medical research (drug trials) and also some social science research (psychological experiments and social surveys). Qualitative research draws on a number of theories that can be loosely grouped under the term “interpretivism”. Interpretivists assert that, as human beings, we can never achieve complete objectivity and that we have to rely on a process of subjective interpretation in order to construct knowledge. Researchers working within an interpretivist framework believe that it is impossible for human beings to set aside their
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