Q4 What are some of the sources of literature review, Discuss

A literature review is a description and analysis of literature relevant to a particular field or

topic. It gives an overview of what has been said , who the key writers are, what are the
prevailing theories and hypothesis , what questions are being asked , and what methods and
methodologies are appropriate and useful. As such , it is not in itself primary research, rather,
it reports on findings of others.

A literature review uses as its data base reports of primary or original scholarship and does not
report new primary scholarship itself. The primary reports used in the literature may be
empirical, theoretical, critical or analytic or, methodological in nature. Second a literature
review seeks to describe, summarize, evaluate, clarify and or integrate the content of primary
reports. ( H. M. Cooper, 1988)

SOURCES OF LITERATURE REVIEW

The main sources of literature review are Journals, Thesis and dissertations, Books, Conference
proceeding, Government or corporate reports, Newspapers, Internet, Magazines, Guide to
library, research reports, Previous Research papers, World wide web, Bibliographies etc.

Literature can be reviewed from two main sources.

Primary Sources are;

Research reports, description of studies written by researchers who conducted them, primary
source is written by a person who developed the theory or conducted the research, an
investigation written by the person who conducted it, Most primary sources are found in
published literature; for example, a nursing research article.

Secondary Sources are

Description of studies prepared by some-one other than the original researcher. and
they are written by people other than the individuals who developed the theory or
conducted the research. The secondary sources may be used when primary sources
are not available.

The importance of Literature Review Research is made in order to inform people with new
knowledge or discovery. However, it is not to be expected that everybody would willingly
believe what you are tackling in your whole research paper. Thus, what you can do to make
your research more credible will be to support them with other works which have spoken
about the same topic that you have for your research. This is where literature review comes in.

Objectives of literature review is to identification of research problem and development of

research questions, generation of useful research questions, orientation to what is known and
not known about an area of inquiry. It is also a determination of any gaps or inconsistencies in
a body of knowledge, discovery of unanswered questions about subjects, concepts, or problems
and determination of a need to replicate a prior study in different study settings or different
samples or sizes or different study populations. The idea is also identification of relevant
theoretical or conceptual framework for research problems among other objectives.

The purposes of literature review is understanding of subject under review, describe the
relationship of each study to other research studies under consideration, identify new ways to
interpret and shed light on any gaps in previous research, resolve conflicts amongst seemingly
contradictory previous studies and identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of
effort etc.

Steps of literature review are systematic search for information, which follows the following
steps such as search for sources, locate the source, review the selected literature, synthesize
findings from relevant studies, organize the reviewed literature and write the literature review

Points to be considered for writing the review of literature is document the current knowledge,
indicate the findings that are ready for use in practice, a detailed outline should be developed,
beginning with an introduction, critically evaluate each contribution and include relevant
studies, avoid technical terms, avoid abbreviation, use simple sentences, avoid common errors
of punctuations and grammar among other considerations.

The literature review has the following advantages were it provides rationale for the current
study, it puts the present study into the context of what is known about the topic review of
relevant literature and it provides theoretical and conceptual of the study.

In conclusion literature review provides a critical look at the existing literature, which is
significant to the researcher to carry-out the project. It is a concise description of an article that
highlights the relationship between different work and how it is related to the researchers own
work.
Q5 What do you understand by the term validity and what are some of threats to
internal validity?

Validity means a measurement quality indicating the extent to which the measure replicates
the underlying construct, to be precise, whether it measures what it claims to measure. The
concept of validity in research is generally asking whether or not the information found is
valid. Cosby and Bates (2012) defined validity of a measurement as the extent to which the
instrument measures what is intended to measure. Overall, validity refers to the approximate
truth of propositions, inferences, or conclusions. There are three key type of validity to
include, Internal Validity, External Validity and Construct Validity.

Internal validity refers to how well an experiment is done, especially whether it avoids
confounding more than one possible independent variable cause acting at the same time. The
less chance for confounding in a study, the higher its internal validity is.Therefore, internal
validity refers to how well a piece of research allows you to choose among alternate
explanations of something. A research study with high internal validity lets you choose one
explanation over another with a lot of confidence, because it avoids many possible confounds.
Internal validity may be important in determining the accuracy of the results. Given that
samples may not be selected randomly, the results may perhaps be inaccurate.

Be that it may, Internal validity refers to the ability of making inferences about causal
relationships from the results of a study (Cosby & Bates, 2012). For example, if researchers
propose that creating a 21st century policy to protect civil liberties will reduce the risk of
having citizens' civil rights being violated, they want to ensure that they can articulate this
theory with as much confidence as possible, and they must be confident in the knowledge that
what they investigated, and not other factors, explains the results. Strong internal validity can
be found in a study if one variable causes changes in the other variable. However, Cosby and
Bates pointed out that three key elements such as temporal precedence, covariation and
elimination of alternatives must be analysed before determining if a strong internal validity
exists in a study.

Internal validity threats include:

Yu and Ohlund (2012) underlined different factors than can jeopardize internal validity such
as participation selection, participant attrition, experimental history, maturation, effects of
testing, instrument decay, experimenter effects, demand characteristics, regression to the
mean, diffusion of treatment, compensation rivalry and resentful demoralization. All these
elements pose threats to the internal validity which is the most important property of any
experiment. Therefore, a researcher must be aware of those factors and protect the integrity of
internal validity because with low internal validity comes low power.

Testing: this relates to the potential effects of a pre-test on the participants performance in a
study on the post-test. This may alert participants to the fact that they are being intentionally
studied (Beyer-Westendorf and Bu ller, 2011).

Statistical regression: this refers to the affinity of extreme scores to regress (or move) in the
direction of the mean score on succeeding re-testing. For instance, students scoring on an IQ
test, below twenty five percent (lowest extreme) may be given a post-test. A high post-test
score may be expected.

Mortality: this refers to loss of subjects from a study owing to the initial non-availability or
consequent withdrawal from the study For instance, most high-scoring people may drop-out
from the experimental group than from the control group

What is the impact of having one type of validity but not the other?

To start with, unless your research may be internally valid, it can never be externally valid.
Additionally, an internally valid design lacking external validity may be worthless. If one
cannot apply the results externally from the laboratory (or the results cannot generalize a
population except those studied), in that case it may not be valuable; hence an exercise in
futility (Green, 1977). For instance, if one had an ideal experiment set-up, that evaluates
something faultlessly, then it may have internal validity. However, one has not shown that one
would get similar results in diverse cultures, or in dissimilar periods of times; hence, the
experiment may lack external validity.
References

Bernard H. (2000). Social Research Methods. Thousands Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.
Print.

Beyer-Westendorf J., and Bu ller H. (2011).External and internal validity of open label or
double-blind trials in oral anticoagulation: better, worse or just different? J Thromb Haemost;
9: 21538.

Calder B., Phillips L., and Tybout A. (1983). The concept of external validity. J Consum Res.

Walwyn R., and Roberts C., (2010). Therapist variation within randomised trials of
psychotherapy: implications for precision, internal and external validity. Statistical Methods
in Medical Research 2010; 19: 291315.

Article: Literature Review Writing (Uncover the Secrets to Write an Excellent Literature
Review)