literature review qut

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Becoming a good writer takes time, practice, and perseverance. Few people find writing easy, no matter how often or how much they write. This is because when you write, you are undertaking a complex process. This QUT write resource will guide you through the process and give you the skills and knowledge to develop into a confident writer.

Good academic writing always considers the audience and the topic . A writer should always consider the reader’s role, expectations and purpose for reading. For assessed tasks think about the criteria used to mark your work. Your writing should show you understand the topic and that you can use your knowledge to respond to the task.

Good academic writing is clear, coherent, and credible .

A writer’s meaning should always be clear to the reader. One way to achieve clarity is to effectively use grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation. Coherence describes how you link your ideas so they flow from sentence to sentence and between paragraphs. The goal is to be logical as the reader cannot ask questions to check what you mean. Finally, good academic writing is credible . Check you have used the most appropriate research to support your ideas, looked at the issue from relevant perspectives and that you know your topic. If you keep these considerations in mind, you are on the way to producing stronger writing.

Keep reading QUT write for more detailed guidance. If you would like to try some activities to develop your writing and learn more skills to study successfully, go to Study Smart . If you are a QUT student more support is available in the study section of HiQ .

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Literature Review vs. Essay.

It is easy to get confused about the difference between literature reviews and essays because these two writing structures can be based on the same research.  However, the main difference is on where the emphasis is placed.

The purpose of an essay is to use what is known about a subject to prove an argument or point of view.  Not all of the knowledge of a topic may be used in an essay, but only what is relevant to the argument.  In an essay, mentioning the people who discovered or developed the knowledge is generally only for referencing purposes.

On the other hand, a literature review is designed to be a critical analysis of all the knowledge that has been discovered about a subject.  Its purpose is to examine all that others have already discovered about the subject and the researchers working on the subject are considered to be key.

At a sentence level, one way to emphasise a particular aspect of a subject is to place that aspect at the beginning of sentences and paragraphs.

In an essay, where the focus is on the knowledge itself, it is put to the front of sentences.  For example:

Playing computer and video games have risen dramatically in popularity.  It is estimated that three billion hours of gaming are played globally each week.  The major reason for this is because players are able to tap into a high level of emotional satisfaction that is difficult to experience in everyday life (McGonigal, 2011).

However, in literature reviews what is considered to be more important are the authors and researchers who found or developed the information.  Therefore they appear at the beginning of sentences.

  Jane McGonigal (2011) estimates that three billion hours of gaming are played globally every week.  Her research suggests that the major reason for this is because players are able to tap into a high level of emotional satisfaction that is difficult to experience in everyday life.

This is not to say that both kinds of sentences can be used in both types of writing.  However, the overall trend for essays is to emphasise the information, whereas for literature reviews the trend is to emphasise the authors.

For more on the differences between the structure of essays and the structure of literature reviews ,  check out QUT Cite|Write

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Thank you for your help! I understand what has been said here but when I re-read my literature review, it sounds just like an essay. Does anyone have any more tips?

Have you looked at our Literature Review checklist ? You might like to compare the checklist to your own work.

Cheers, Megan

To me a literature review is about stating what other researchers think of the topic. So, mostly I just restate what they said and put that in a nice form. Still, it’s indeed really hard to draw a clear line between the two, well, between any type of papers. For example, this literature essay on Beowulf is said to be an essay. But shouldn’t an essay have a thesis statement, some ideas to prove? Well, this one doesn’t have them. It looks like a narrative essay still it doesn’t tell a personal story. So, in the end I just cannot clearly define it.

Thanks for your comment! You can take a look at our page for Writing an Essay for some examples of different essay styles.

Helped like a charm, thank you very much!!

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Thank you, Jennifer, I also confused on this difference between literature reviews and essays. You define is very well I’m so glad. Before I will write essays and a research paper on a daily basis meantime I found a written research paper on literature . Here are lots of research papers I see I have shared one, and I hope that this would add value to the readers.

Thanks Julie! We are happy that our post was able to help you! And thank you for sharing the other research papers with us.

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i am doing research on cultural discrimination and cultural value .but after many articles read link not comes in mind how to do review .kindly help to do some kind trick and tips as i do start and remove my confusion many thanks shazia

Have you looked at our Literature Review checklist? You might like to compare the checklist to your own work. https://www.citewrite.qut.edu.au/write/litreview.jsp

If you’re studying at a university, get in touch with your librarian who might also be able to provide you with some useful information or meet with you on an individual basis.

This is indeed a great one so far so good.

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Hi, I like what you have written as this is a problem I see time and time again. One of the issues is that students are often guided differently by teachers and subject on how to write and structure a lit review, and instead produce argument essays. I don’t think this areas is flagged up enough.

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The main difference between an essay and this kind of literature review is that an essay focuses on a topic, and uses the literature as a support for the arguments? Anyways, thanks for helping me out with this.

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A literature review is a critical evaluation of existing research on a particular topic. It can be used to identify gaps in existing knowledge, assess a particular idea or concept, and to provide a framework for further research.

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• QUT Library
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Scoping Reviews

• Conducting a Scoping Review
• Step 1 Formulate objectives, question(s) and inclusion criteria
• Step 2 Protocol
• Step 3 Search for evidence
• Step 4 Screening
• Step 5 Data extraction
• Step 6 Report and write

What is a Scoping Review?

Scoping reviews (ScRs) generally provide an overview of a broad topic area . Both systematic reviews/meta‐analyses and scoping reviews begin with a primary question on which inquiry is focused . However, a ScR allows for a more general question and exploration of the related literature, rather than focusing on providing answers to a more limited/focused question. ScR questions are less narrow but broader in conceptual range.

ScRs suit topics with diverse, complex or heterogeneous bodies of literature nature not amenable to a more precise systematic review of the evidence. Theoretical and narrative reviews, grey literature, as well as both qualitative and quantitative research are all included within a scoping review.

Reported ScRs are generally presented in a narrative form , with minimal or limited statistical information. ScRs set out to synthesise the research in the topic area, by mapping the key concepts that underpin a field of research, clarify working definitions , and/or the conceptual boundaries of a topic and illustrate the types of evidence sources .

This mapping process illustrates what is known about the topic and points to where there may be gaps in knowledge or future research.

(Peterson et al., 2017)  

Why do a scoping review?

According to JBI ( Munn et al. 2018a ), scoping reviews may be conducted for a number of reasons:

• As a precursor to a systematic review.
• To identify the types of available evidence in a given field.
• To identify and analyse knowledge gaps.
• To clarify key concepts/ definitions in the literature.
• To examine how research is conducted on a certain topic or field.
• To identify key characteristics or factors related to a concept.

What is the difference between a scoping review, systematic review and literature review?

This table from UniSA provides a detailed overview of how these review types differ.

Further reading

• Seminal article which laid the groundwork for subsequent ScR methodological frameworks/guidelines
• Munn, Z., Peters, M. D. J., Stern, C., Tufanaru, C., McArthur, A., & Aromataris, E. (2018). Systematic review or scoping review? Guidance for authors when choosing between a systematic or scoping review approach . BMC Medical Research Methodology, 18 (1), 143. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-018-0611-x 
• Next: Conducting a Scoping Review >>
• Last Updated: Jan 15, 2024 12:54 PM
• URL: https://libguides.library.qut.edu.au/scopingreviews

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• Using VOSVIEWER: A tool for literature review analysis and bibliometrics

In conjunction with Prof Jan Kietzmann, University of Victoria, Canada, the BEST Centre is pleased to host this professional development seminar.  Presented by Andrew Park, a Phd student at Simon Fraser University, Canada.

Workshop presentation – Andrew Park on VosViewer:

Workshop description:

Date: 9th September, 2020 Time:  8:00am – 9:30am (AEST) Zoom Link:  https://uvic.zoom.us/j/93905990891?pwd=SXJId0tyeVc4amVnTDZPZlhPMEE0Zz09

Vosviewer is a new software tool that can be used to generate, visualize and analyze bibliometric networks. These networks include research authors, journals, institutions and individual publications. Through Vosviewer, these networks can be visualized at speeds and scales that are infeasible using manual methods or legacy software tools. Vosviewer also has text mining capabilities that can construct network maps of co-occurring keywords sourced from abstracts and bodies of research articles. In this workshop, we walk you through how to conduct a complete bibliometric analysis using Vosviewer. We then provide an example of how to use this analysis to write a bibliometric research article for journal submission.

Workshop outline below  – please follow the instructions to download and install the software, and watch the quick YouTube video prior to the workshop.

• Download Vosviewer: https://www.Vosviewer.com/download
• Watch introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTWkNRxUtw&feature=emb_title

Bio – Andrew Park:

Andrew Park founded and sold a successful software startup that grew to over 100 employees, with offices in British Columbia and Washington State. He then returned to academia at SFU Beedie where is a PhD candidate conducting research in innovation and entrepreneurship with a focus on healthcare and digital technology. He is currently investigating how Open Innovation mechanisms impact value creation of firms emerging in the intersection of software and biotechnology. He has been published in interdisciplinary journals such as Research-Technology Management, Business Horizons and the Journal of Medicine & Philosophy spanning the diverse fields of medicine, biotechnology, digital innovation and management. Andrew is also part of a national network of innovation scholars (4POINT0) evaluating innovation ecosystem models that accelerate the trajectory of Science & Technology innovations to foster strong economic development in Canada. Finally, he recently co-founded another software startup that aims to decentralize and improve access to personal health data. He holds a BSc. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and a Management of Technology MBA from Simon Fraser University.

Suggested Preparation

• Download Vosviewer https://www.Vosviewer.com/download
• Watch introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTWkNRxUtw&feature=emb_title

Workshop Outline

• Intro to bibliographic analyses
• Examples of insights derived from Vosviewer
• Longitudinal look at journal trends
• Summary of academic discussions occurring in different domains of study and groups of journals
• How does Vosviewer enable deeper insights compared to manual analyses?
• Data sources
• Visualization
• Output techniques and algorithms
• Martínez-López, F.J., Merigó, J.M., Valenzuela-Fernández, L., & Nicolás, C. (2018). Fifty years of the European Journal of Marketing: A bibliometric analysis. European Journal of Marketing, 52(1/2), 439-468.
• Advantages and Disadvantages vs. Scopus
• Constructing a Boolean search
• Selecting the appropriate options
• Complying with Vosviewer requirements
• Analyzing data in Web of Science and post-download
• Co-citations
• Co-authorship
• Bibliometric coupling
• Feeding data into Vosviewer
• Selecting the appropriate options for your desired output
• Setting reasonable limits to data output
• Making sense of the raw data output
• Making sense of the network diagrams and customizing them
• Review different sections of sample paper
• Collating data before writing
• Writing the paper with efficiency, without being formulaic
• Potential reviewer pushback (e.g. including editorials)

Time Permitting

• Create a full data set on your own using Web of Science and Vosviewer

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

How to write a literature review

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• Assignment writing

A literature review critically analyses existing literature to develop an argument.

Writing a literature review can be challenging because:

• you need to coordinate many sources and ideas into a logical argument
• you may be dealing with language and ideas you haven't fully mastered yet
• there are no fixed rules for what to include or how to organise your writing.

This is just a general guide to help you write a literature review. The specific requirements for your course may be different. Make sure you read through any assignment requirements carefully and ask your lecturer or tutor if you're unsure how to meet them.

Purpose of a literature review

A literature review should demonstrate your overall understanding of the literature and develop an argument, often by answering specific questions. It shouldn't just list and summarise what you've read.

Unlike other assignment types, you're often expected to determine the purpose of a literature review yourself.

Commonly, a literature review is written to help develop and justify a novel research question. But they have many other uses. For example, you may use a literature review to develop an argument that:

• justifies the significance or interest of a research question
• demonstrates your professional competence in a field of research
• critically reviews theory or methodological approaches
• weighs evidence to reach a conclusion or recommendation.

Selecting relevant materials

Your literature review should only include relevant materials, and it should be clear how each work is relevant to your main argument.

When selecting materials you should:

• read widely – don't just cite papers produced by a particular research group, or from only one country or continent.
• use up-to-date material – if you're completing a PhD or MPhil, you'll need to update your confirmation literature review for your final thesis.
• include relevant landmark studies – show that you know the influential and highly cited works in your field, but make sure they're relevant to your argument.
• limit background information – only include background details that are needed to orient the reader and help them appreciate your argument.
• include as much evidence as needed – be selective about what you include, even if you're building on, updating or challenging previous work. To challenge a common assumption, include a representative list of papers to demonstrate that it's common; you don't have to list every paper that makes the assumption.

Analysing the literature

Your literature review should provide a detailed justification for your main argument. You need to critically review the literature and synthesise your analysis into a logical argument.

This general process may help:

• familiarise yourself with the literature to learn what's been done and what's already known
• organise the materials around themes, issues or questions rather than individual papers
• critically review the information to identify things like assumptions, limitations, deficiencies, lack of clarity, methodological weaknesses, gaps, controversies and problems in existing knowledge or practice that need to be addressed.

Organising your argument

Your literature review should be a logical, well-structured argument organised into an introduction, body and conclusion.

To help organise your argument:

• plan before you start writing – creating a mind map or outline can help to clarify your thinking before you start drafting.
• refine as you write – give yourself time to write many drafts, and refine the writing and structure of your argument as you go. Look for repetition and common themes.
• Assignment types
• Steps for writing assignments
• Literature review example analysis

Learning Advisers

Our advisers can help undergraduate and postgraduate students in all programs clarify ideas from workshops, help you develop skills and give feedback on assignments.

How a Learning Adviser can help

Further support

UQ Library guide to literature reviews Guide for research students (PDF, 1.7 MB) Example literature review analysis

• AIRS modules
• 1 The research question
• 2 Preliminary search
• 3 Retrieving and evaluating information
• 4 Comprehensive search
• 5 Search alerts
• 6 Cited reference search
• 7 Organising the literature
• 7.1 Specialist research software
• 7.2 Bibliographic management
• 7.3 Coding the literature
• 7.4 Keeping useful notes
• 7.5 Module 7: Knowledge check
• 8 Managing data
• 9 Collaboration
• 10 Getting published
• 11 Publication metrics
• 12 Building further skills

Keeping useful notes

Notes allow a researcher to quickly remember, access, and utilise ideas with academic integrity. Notes consist of four components:

• a summary, direct quote or paraphrase of the author's words/ideas
• your own comments, ideas, analysis reflections, reactions to these words
• bibliographic reference
• a code that connects the note to a concept from your research question.

In this section you will learn about methods to read and keep useful notes. You can effectively use one or more of these techniques depending on your preferences.

Good note-taking relies on efficient reading techniques, particularly skimming, scanning and in-depth reading.

Skimming is used to quickly get the main ideas and logic of a text. To skim, look quickly over the page noting the abstract, headings, and words in italics, diagrams, introduction, discussion and summaries. Summaries are often indicated with words such as:

• this paper/research will
• to summarise
• in conclusion.

Scanning is used for finding particular words or phrases in a text. Use scanning to quickly locate specific information or concepts relevant to your research question before reading in more depth. Move your eyes quickly over the page and look at the first sentence of each paragraph to:

• identify new concepts or terminology so you can check their meaning
• find information on a specific topic
• find key words that indicate the scope of the text
• look at the first sentence of each paragraph to get a feel for the content.

The main thesis of an article often uses words such as:

• significant
• underpinning
• most important

As you scan the document, highlight and code sections that are directly relevant to your research question.

The fast reading techniques of skimming and scanning will save you a lot of time and frustration as you explore and categorise literature for your research. Practising these techniques will make you a more efficient and effective researcher. For more fast reading resources see books in the QUT Library catalogue on postgraduate reading techniques .

The following video gives some tips on how to best skim and scan journal articles. You can view other videos in this series to gain further tips about how to engage meaningfully and critically with your reading.

Watch the video: Reading Strategies for Research Students: Practical Strategies (YouTube video, 5m30s)

In-depth reading

In-depth reading is when you read every word in a section of reading such as a journal article or book chapter. In-depth reading allows you to analyse information more carefully and write detailed and comprehensive notes. Limit in-depth reading to critically important texts that will substantially impact your argument.

The following video shares a student's perspective around how to best engage with your reading and how to write detailed and comprehensive notes as you do so.

Watch the video: Reading Strategies for Research Students: A students perspective - Jacquie (YouTube video, 6m48s)

Writing notes

Writing notes can be done directly onto a book or document, or using specific software on your computer or mobile device. You may need to use a variety of methods depending on the resources you are annotating. Be diligent and consistent with your note-taking and note management to ensure you can track and use prior research to meet your current writing needs.

Establish a system of organising your written annotations.

Watch these interactive videos, which highlight the LATCH and Literature Grid method of notetaking.

Watch the video: Notetaking Part 1: The Literature Grid (YouTube video, 4m02s)

Watch the video: Notetaking Part 2: LATCH (YouTube video, 3m04s) .

Dr Inger Mewburn has an excellent blog post on how to ' tame the literature dragon '. She recommends coding each piece of information via Location, Alphabet, Time, Category and Hierarchy (LATCH). The LATCH system is described in more detail in the book Information Anxiety 2 by Richard S. Wurman (the creator of TED Talks).

• Location - How is the author situated in the debate being considered?
• Alphabet - Keep your information in alphabetical order.
• Time - Order your notes in the order that the referenced articles were published.
• Category - Sort notes by themes that can be used as sections within a chapter of your thesis.
• Hierarchy - Order your categories to establish the logic of your literature review. Each category will play a different critical role in how you present your ideas.

A literature grid or source grid can help you keep track of your key sources and help to identify strengths and gaps of each paper that you read. It's a good place to keep a record of direct quotes and the associated references.

Example Literature Grid (Word DOC, 13.5KB)

The LATCH Method and Literature Grid are just two examples of systems you can use to create and organise your notes. For others, such as the Cornell Method, see California Polytechnic State University's Note Taking Systems .

Directly onto hardcopy

As you read your own copy of a book or printed article, code the text with the system you have chosen and write notes in the margins or on the back of the page. Be sure to code each comment and then copy those comments into a blank document (with full reference including page number) for future use.

Software and mobile apps

Using an electronic system for making and recording notes allows you to manage your notes more efficiently through the use of tags, keywords or metadata. Establish a consistent format to allow you to easily distinguish your own thoughts and ideas from quotes or ideas of others.

Many bibliographic management tools (e.g. Endnote, Mendeley, Zotero ) also include ways to keep notes on each reference. Using these tools in combination with specific note-taking tools can be a useful strategy for managing your notes from reading the literature and notes from attending research seminars or meetings with your supervisor or research team.

• Evernote is designed for note-taking and archiving text, websites, pictures, voice memos and handwritten notes. You can photograph a concept map from a whiteboard or notepad and then store it electronically with keywords, tags etc.
• Scrivener works like an electronic 'index card' system. It allows you to move your notes and ideas around, trying different logical structures and connections.
• Papers (Mac, PC and iOS) stores all your PDF documents and allows you to write notes on each page and bookmark those notes. Your PDFs become a database of references that you can keep with you and access easily any time, synchronised across your computers and mobile devices.
• Microsoft OneNote acts as a notebook divided into various sections, and within each section you can create any number of pages. Use OneNote with various software packages, access, edit and manage your notebooks anywhere anytime using multiple devices.

For more ideas, ask your supervisor and peers how they manage their notes.

Activity – Making useful notes

• Choose one of the note-making strategies listed above.
• Skim and scan quickly through ten references, coding and writing brief notes for later use.
• Keep your own ideas clearly separated from the authors'.

When you are ready to start writing, it can be useful to print your notes and cut them up into sections. Then, get a big piece of cardboard or paper to arrange these sections graphically into sub-sections and to write your own ideas around them in the empty space. Physically moving sections spatially can generate new ideas about how ideas fit together or relate to one another.

Use the critical thinking template from QUT cite|write to conceptualise your argument and the logical structure of how your notes provide evidence for answering your research question.

Systematic literature review: Research on supported playgroups

Williams, Kate , Berthelsen, Donna , Nicholson, Jan , & Viviani, Maria (2015) Systematic literature review: Research on supported playgroups. Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

Description

Overview This review of research conducted with supported playgroups was prepared for the Queensland Department of Education, Training and Employment (DETE). The report provides a synthesis of the research on the effectiveness of supported playgroups to improve child, parent, and community outcomes and to identify key features of supported playgroups that support effective outcomes. Supported playgroups are community-based services that provide a low intensity parenting intervention, through regular group sessions for parent-child dyads. Supported playgroups target vulnerable families who may benefit from parenting support. Supported playgroups have common goals to enhance children’s early learning and parental wellbeing. Method A search strategy was devised to identify research studies, nationally and internationally, that involved parent-child group programs for families with young children, delivered under the leadership of an employed facilitator. Academic databases and other data sources were explored for studies conducted in the period from 2004 to 2014. Summary descriptions of the research studies were developed; assessment of research methodologies was made; research evidence on the effectiveness of supported playgroups to improve child, parent, and community outcomes was identified; and comparative analyses of the implementation features of supported playgroups were completed. Findings The search strategy identified 34 research publications, reporting on 29 different programs. Twenty-six of the studies report on research conducted in Australia and eight reported on research conducted in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Three clusters of playgroups were identified: Category 1 - Standard supported playgroups; Category 2 - Mobile playgroups; Category 3 – Supported playgroups with specific interventions. The research studies identified encompassed experimental and non-experimental research designs. The studies of standard supported playgroups and mobile playgroups were most often qualitative studies and modest in scale, in terms of the number of research participants. Experimental and quasi-experimental research designs characterised the studies identified in the category of supported playgroups with specific interventions. Overall, the research studies that were categorised as supported playgroups with specific interventions provided stronger evidence for effectiveness to improve parental behaviour in ways that are known to support children’s early developmental competence. Qualitative studies, including case studies and ethnographic research, documented important features of program delivery, such as the importance of facilitators’ interpersonal skills to positive experiences for families in the playgroups; as well as the important opportunities that the playgroups afforded to vulnerable families to reduce social isolation. Conclusions The potential for supported playgroups to improve a broad range of learning and psychosocial outcomes for children and parents was suggested by many of the research studies. However, the nature of the research designs employed means that it is not possible to conclude that there is strong evidence of the impact of supported playgroups on child, parent, and community outcomes. The qualitative studies did provide rich descriptions about the implementation processes of playgroups and also captured the variability in the delivery of the playgroups in terms of who participated, local contextual factors that impacted on the playgroup experiences, and the nature of the experiences of parents within the playgroups. Research methodologies need to be employed that address the limitations of the studies to date. This would provide more defensible evidence that supported playgroups have an impact over time on outcomes for children, families, and communities. Overall, this area of research remains relatively under-evaluated in terms of rigorous research designs. The identified research studies point to some promising research directions but do not yet enable strong claims to be made about the effectiveness of the standard playgroup or mobile playgroup models to impact on parenting outcomes. Data collected from interview and survey methodologies clearly identifies that supported playgroups are highly acceptable to families. Given the popularity of supported playgroups to engage families across diverse communities, and the reported high levels of satisfaction and benefits identified within many of the research studies, it is clear that the provision of supported playgroups is fulfilling an important community need by providing support to parents with young children. However, there is a need to strengthen the evidence base that supported playgroups are an effective early parenting intervention that improves outcomes for children, parents, and communities.

Impact and interest:

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Literature review

Anon. (2003) Literature review. [Report]

There are many studies that reveal the nature of design thinking and the nature of conceptual design as distinct from detailed or embodiment design. The results can assist in our understanding of how the process of design can be supported and how new technologies can be introduced into the workplace. Existing studies provide limited information about the nature of collaborative design as it takes place on the ground and in the actual working context. How to provide appropriate and effective of support for collaborative design information sharing across companies, countries and heterogeneous computer systems is a key issue. As data are passed between designers and the computer systems they employ, many exchanges are made. These exchanges may be used to establish measures of the benefits that new support systems can bring. Collaboration support tools represent a fast growing section of the commercial software market place and a reasonable range of products are available. Many of them offer significant application to design for the support of distributed meetings by the provision of video and audio communications and the sharing of information, including collaborative sketching. The tools that specifically support 3D models and other very design specific features are less common and many of those are in prototype stages of development. A key question is to find viable ways of combining design information visualisation support with the collaboration support technologies that can be seen today. When collaborating, different views will need to be accessible at different times to all the collaborators. The architects may want to explain some ideas on their model, the structural engineers on their model and so on. However, there are issues of ownership when the structural engineer wants to manipulate the architect’s model and vice versa. The modes of working, synchronous or asynchronous may have a bearing as in a synchronous session there is control of what is happening.

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