What Are The Main Determinants Of Infant Mortality?

The Mini Literature Review

The Session Long Project (SLP 1-5) component of this course is designed to provide the opportunity to write a mini literature review (Chapter 2) for students’ future individual dissertation research. The mini literature review will assist in refining focus for individual research topics and questions. This activity will pave the way for developing and maximizing the quality of the dissertation.

Requirements for SLP 1-5

Students will accomplish the following four important objectives in preparing the SLP 1-5 Mini Literature Review:

The review should provide a thorough overview of previous research on the topic. This should be a helpful review for readers who are already familiar with the topic and an essential background for readers who are new to the topic. The review should provide a clear sense about how the author’s current research fits into the broader understanding of the topic. When the reader completes the reading of the literature review, she or he should be able to say, “I now know what previous research has learned about this topic.”

The review should contain references to important studies related to the research question from high quality sources, such as scholarly books and journals. A good literature review conveys to readers that the author has been conscientious in examining previous research and that the author’s research builds on what is already known. In this process, highly interested readers are also provided with a set of references that they may wish to read themselves.

The review should be succinct and well organized. Your mini lit review should be 10-12 pages in length and begin with a short “Introduction” section that identifies the general topic and its importance. This is followed by the “Literature Review” section that provides the overview of previous research and explains what has and what has not already been learned. Much of the focus of the literature review is on previous research related to the dependent variable. This includes use of theories/models to explain the variables of interest.

The review should follow generally established stylistic APA guidelines. This conveys to readers that the author is familiar with scholarly publication style, adding legitimacy to the author’s work, while providing effective organization for the reader.

Mining Existing Literature Reviews: Empirical Studies & Ph.D. Dissertations

The literature reviews of existing empirical studies and Ph.D. dissertations can readily be mined for information regarding who is publishing in a given field about a topic and what themes, theories, and questions are being explored. In the literature review, themes are the common ideas being discussed across the literature on a given topic. In the literature, theories (quantitative) are “an interrelated set of constructs (or variables) formed into propositions that specify the relationship among variables (typically in terms of magnitude or direction” (Creswell, 2009).

In this assignment, you will evaluate scholarly work to guide the search for information on the intended dissertation topic and/or research questions.

Directions:

State the topic, working title, problem, purpose, and research questions.

Locate three pieces of scholarly literature (2 empirical articles and 1 Ph.D. dissertation) on topics or research questions related to the research study.

Write a brief summary 2- to 3-page paper that:

Outlines the topic, working title, problem, purpose, and research questions.

Addresses the following questions about the literature reviewed:

What common themes (at least 3-5 themes) are observed in the content of the 3 studies? How do these themes relate to the proposed dissertation topic or research questions?

What common theories (at least 2-4) are observed in the content of the 3 studies? How do these theories the proposed dissertation topic or research questions?