ORGANIZING

LITERATURE REVIEW
Ari Probandari
TB Operations Research Workshop
May 22, 2012

Learning objective
In the end of the session, participants should be able:
To describe the reasons for reviewing available literatures
to be used in the study protocol.
To describe steps in the literature review.
To exercise literature search and management.
To identify important literatures for the study protocol
development.

Why review literature?

Prevents you from duplicating work that has been done

already
Find out what others have learned and reported, in order
to refine problem statement
Familiarize with various relevant research approaches
Provide convincing arguments why your particular study is
needed

Varkevisser CM, Pathmanathan I, Brownlee A. (2003). Designing and

Conducting Health Systems Research Projects. KIT Publishers, Amsterdam
International Development Research Centre. pp 68.

Literatures sources
Articles (journals, magazine, newspaper)
Books
Grey literatures
Conference proceedings and presentations
Reports
Dissertation/thesis
Websites
Personal communication

How to review literature?

Defining the search-questions

What are determinants to treatment compliance of TB

patients?
Are there other studies on the use of mobile phones in
improving treatment compliance of TB patients?
What are the causes of MDR-TB?

Searching literature
http://google.co.id/

http://scholar.google.co.id/

Searching literature

Skimming literature
Publication type
Peer-review:
Original article
IMRaD structure
Study type: e.g. intervention studies
Review
Policy and practice

Date
Language

Appraising literature
Does the literature address your search
question?
Does the literature contain trustable
important aspects?

Indexing literatures
Author(s) Surname followed by initials. Title of article. Name of

Journal, Volume (number): page numbers of article - key words

A summary of contents/abstracts
A brief analysis of the content, with comments such as:
Appropriateness of the methodology
Weakness
Important aspects of the study
How information from the study can be used in your research

Varkevisser CM, Pathmanathan I, Brownlee A. (2003). Designing and

Conducting Health Systems Research Projects. KIT Publishers, Amsterdam
International Development Research Centre. pp 68.

Searching and Indexing

Indexing

Indexing

Mendeley
http://www.mendeley.com/features/
http://www.mendeley.com/videos-tutorials/

Synthesizing and presenting

Use your problem analysis diagram as a framework.
Place the information from the literature in your problem

analysis.
Write a coherent discussion in your own words, using all
relevant literature linked to each other.
Write in a referencing system (Harvard/Vancouver) use
a bibliography software when possible.

Varkevisser CM, Pathmanathan I, Brownlee A. (2003). Designing and

Conducting Health Systems Research Projects. KIT Publishers, Amsterdam
International Development Research Centre. pp 68.

Example
Evaluations among various PPM DOTS pilot projects in
many high-TB-burden countries showed that the PPM
DOTS approach was feasible to scale-up (WHO 2003a;
WHO, 2004a) because it gave high treatment success and
case notification (Newell et al., 2004; Kumar et al., 2005;
Dewan et al., 2006). Moreover, the PPM DOTS involving
private practitioners has been shown to be cost-effective
(WHO, 2004b, Floyd et al., 2006) and improve equity in
access (Lnnroth et al., 2007).
Probandari A. (2010). Revisiting the choice to involve hospitals in the
partnership for tuberculosis control. Umea University Sweden. Dissertation.