I’m in the very early days of my fellowship so I haven’t had chance to do a thorough literature search yet. For the past year or so, I’ve been doing some general reading. Enjoying serendipity when I came across a relevant paper. I kept my eyes open for literature relating to international students, postgraduates and photovoice. I’ve also welcomed recommendations for readings from colleagues which have helped me to expand my understanding of the area. Now, however, it’s time to do a more considered approach to literature searching.
This is something I discuss with my students every day in work. Adapting ideas from numerous sources (I’ll put some recommendations later) I tend to work through a broad three stage process:
- Plan your search,
- Search,
- Review and adapt your search.
For most projects, this works well, especially when you’re on a close timeframe. The important part is to plan before you dive into searching.
1. Planning your search:
This is where you need to think about a few different elements – what topic are you looking for information on? There may be a couple of elements that you need to search separately. If you have an essay question you can pick out the main concepts from the question and then explore related terms and synonyms to give you flexibility when you search. Some keywords will work better in different places. When you’re looking for books on a topic, try to keep things quite broad, but when you’re looking for case studies, research and examples in databases you can be more specific.
What type of information do you need? Sometimes, especially when we’re thinking about finding information for an assessment, we have quite clear ideas. For example, when I’m looking for an introduction to a subject, I need to refer to books and I’m going to find those on NELSON (our library catalogue and discovery tool). Within health subject areas, you may be asked to refer to guidelines and care pathways (in which case you’re going to be searching for those specifically on a website like NICE) or research (in which case I recommend you search the databases). Thinking about what you need helps you to work out some of your strategy – where do I need to look and what for?
You also might want to consider any limits to your search. Does it matter how old the literature is (if you’re looking at historical context then no, but if you’re looking at current practice you may want to have a date range in mind)? Do you want information relating to a specific population group? Or for a specific country or region? Often the databases might have filters to help you narrow down your search by age or gender, or you might have to add something into your search. For example, you might add a country such as ‘England’ to your search to narrow it down to information relating to England.
At this point you have some keywords (this could be in a list, mind map or table) and a note of the type of information you need and where to find it. This is an outline search strategy that you can use to guide your search.
2. Search:
Once you’ve planned your search, you then need to give yourself time to search. We’re all used to Google and getting results instantly, but when it comes to academic literature it takes a little more time. We need to search in more than one place (NELSON, databases, websites for specific information like clinical guidelines or statistics) and we might have to do a few different searches. Try one search and then adapt it by changing your keywords or the filters you use, depending on the results you’re getting.
3. Review and adapt your search:
It’s really important to give yourself time to review and adapt your search. We all hope that the first results are going to be the most useful. However, often we might find we’re getting too many results, so we need to consider ways to narrow it down. Or, the results aren’t relevant, it’s bringing up loads of information you don’t need – so you need to change your search term. You don’t have to take the first results as the best, having planned your search and having a few keywords to hand, means that you can change and adapt your search to get better results.
When you get some good information, have a look at the language they’re using. What terms or keywords are they using? Can you use those to add to your search? When you read it, you may also find it interesting to follow up on the sources of information (references) that they have used. They can help you build your understanding of the topic.
Remember, you’re going to have to do more than one search in more than one place. You won’t find everything in one place. Think of it as a bit like shopping, although the big supermarkets sell everything from milk to hair dryers, not everything you need is covered. Sometimes you have to go to a specialist shop for an ingredient. Although they sell shoes, they may not sell the walking boots you need if you’re going hiking. So, keep your eyes open and look in more than one place.
Once you’ve got your literature, you then need to read it. I’ll update you on my search strategy in my next post. Otherwise, this will be a REALLY long blog post.
Lessons learnt:
- Plan your search.
- Give yourself time to explore the topic.
- Be prepared to adapt your search and search in more than one place!
Useful links:
Useful books available in our library:
Really straightforward a great place to start:
- Aveyard, H. (2019). Doing a literature review in health and social care: a practical guide (Fourth edition.). McGraw Hill Education/Open University Press.
This one is very detailed and great for postgraduate and doctoral research students:
- Booth, A., Sutton, A., Clowes, M., Martyn-St James, M., & Booth, A. (2022). Systematic approaches to a successful literature review. (Third edition / Andrew Booth, Anthea Sutton, Mark Clowes, Marrissa Martyn-St James.). SAGE.