Literature Reviews: A Research Guide
Question/Problem Formulation
"...problem formulations are themselves problematic and so require continual attention to assure that the questions being asked will direct research toward the desired end." -- from "Formulating Research Problems." In Foundations of Multimethod Research, edited by John Brewer and Albert Hunter, 38-58. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2006.
Question formulation, or problem formulation, is a key part of the research process, and should be something you give some thought to before you begin a literature review. The book referenced above is an excellent introduction to problem formulation for a research project.
While you may not be able to formulate a problem or question in great detail until after you've reviewed the relevant literature, you need to have enough of an idea of your question to be able to generate keywords and think about what literature you want to include and exclude when going through your search results.
Be as specific as you can: Try to avoid or at least put parameters around vague terminology such as "best practices" or "stakeholder engagement" in favour of more specific terms, or at least define them in your own mind -- what constitutes a best practice? How is this evaluated? Who are your stakeholders, and how might you engage them, and to what end?
Think about inclusion and exclusion criteria. Does it make sense to limit to recent literature, or include older literature? Are you only interested in literature from certain countries? If studying a human population, do you want to include all ages? Do you want to limit to certain methodologies? You may not build these criteria into your search, but they are useful to have in order to decide whether or not to include the literature you find.
Can you phrase your topic in the form of a question?
Examples:
General Topic | Specific Questions |
---|---|
Children's mental health during COVID |
What impact have school closures and remote learning had on children's mental health during the pandemic? What are the impacts on kids' mental health of public health measures such as masking and distancing? How do parent attitudes influence children's perceptions? How has the experience of COVID in themselves or their immediate family impacted children's mental health? |
Autonomous (self-driving) vehicle safety systems |
How can we design self-driving vehicles to perform better in adverse weather conditions (heavy rain, snow, ice)? What ethical considerations should inform the design of decision-making systems for autonomous vehicles? |
Climate change and the meat industry |
What impact does extreme heat/heat stress have on cattle reproduction? How can we measure the carbon footprint of the meat industry? |
You'll need to break down your question into individual concepts for the purpose of searching literature databases. While Google is very good at analyzing long phrases, figuring out what you mean, and searching for synonyms for your terms, most databases do not have this functionality, and you'll have to input all of these terms and their synonyms. It's usually useful to create a table like the one in the example below to organize your concepts.
Example question: What impact have school closures and remote learning had on children's mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Concept 1 | Concept 2 | Concept 3 | Concept 4 |
---|---|---|---|
school closures | children | mental health | COVID |
lockdowns | adolescents | mental illness | pandemic |
remote learning | elementary | mental disorders | |
high school | anxiety | ||
pediatric | depression | ||
stress |
- Last Updated: Oct 2, 2024 8:13 AM
- URL: https://libguides.ucalgary.ca/guides/litreviews
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