Skip to main content

Reviewing Research Literature

From Locke et al. (1999) on reviewing the literature:
In writin a research proposal, the author is obligated to place the (research) question or hypothesis in the context of previous work in such a way as to explain and justify the decisions made. That alone is required. Nothing more is apprepriate, and nothing more should be attempted (page 68).
...sound proposals devote most of the literature review to explaining (a) exactly "how and why the research question or hypothesis was formulated in the proposed form" and (b) exactly "why the proposed research strategy was selected." What is required...is a step-by-step explanation of decisions, punctuated by reference to studies that support the ongoing argument (page 68).
...there is no place for the "Smith says this..." and "Jones says that..." paragraph-by-paragraph recital...This is the place to answer the reader's most immediate questions: What is it the author wants to know, and why has this plan been devised to find the answer? (page 69)
...the writer's task is to employ the research literature artfully to support and explain the choices made for this study, not to educate the reader concerning the state of science in the problem area. Neither is the purpose of the section to display the energy and thoroughness with which the author has pursued a comprehensive understanding of the literature (page 69).


Keywords: ,

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0 provider is not registered on the local machine" Error on Windows 7 (64-bit) + Office 2010 (64-bit) + Visual Studio 2010

If you use (1) Windows 7 (64-bit), and (2) Office 2010 (64-bit), and  (3) Visual Studio 2010 to write an ASP.NET code to connect to Access or Excel database using the Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0 provider and consistently get the "Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0 provider is not registered on the local machine" error, try installing the 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components , which is basically a Microsoft Access Database Engine 2007 Redistributable for Windows (32-bit) from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=23734 Many forums suggested by Google Search suggest installing the Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable for Windows (32-bit, 64-bit) downloadable from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=13255 but it wouldn't help because Visual Studio 2010 is a 32-bit application; what you need is a 32-bit Data Connectivity component. The 2010 download will not allow you to install i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tips: Mac OS X: Full ANSI Color Support in Terminal.app

I'm trying to switch my Java development platform from Windows XP to Mac OS X Tiger. Wondering how to colorize the Terminal screen, I spent some time googling. From the discussions at the end of this page: macosxhints.com - Add full ANSI color support to Terminal.app Here's a summary of how to enable it: With bash shell as default, simply add export TERM=xterm-color [I prefer this for Linux compatibility] or export TERM=dtterm in the ~/.profile (single-user) or /etc/profile (system-wide) Color terminal is enabled. Use ' ls -G ' (the -G enables color output) to test. Add alias ls='ls -G' in the profile file for convenience. Keywords: mac-os-x , unix , terminal , shell , tips
1 comment
Read more

Lenovo IdeaPad S10: Annoying Fan Noise Fix and Heat Conduction Upgrade

Here's a repost of my message on the Lenovo.com board: I would like to thank Slash (on Lenovo.com board) so much for his messages on this thread: http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=IdeaPad_Netbook&message.id=1183#M1183 I decide today (February 28, 2009) to walk into a Lenovo Service Center inside a computer mall in downtown Bangkok because I cannot tolerate the constant grinding noise from my S10 anymore. I bought my S10 in late November 2008 and I started to hear some grinding noise in late December 2008. I have been using the S10 as my primary computer both for work and for home. At work, this noise has embarrassed me many, many times. At home, I left the S10 with Vista in High Performance mode on overnight so that it can complete the maintenance tasks, e.g., HDD Defrag and Indexing, but the fan noise from high CPU temperature woke me up at 4:45 in the morning! I learned from Slash's picture http://i41.tinypic.com/25alq3d.jpg that Lenovo chose to use chea...
3 comments
Read more