Conducting Research Literature Reviews

This book shows how to interpret and analyze published and unpublished research literature.

The author unravels the intricacies of: selecting questions to maximize the efficiency of the review; identifying subject headings and key words for electronic searches; identifying the most appropriate databases; including supplementing computer and Web-based searches; identifying and dealing with unpublished studies; setting inclusion and exclusion criteria; justifying methods for reviewing only the `highest quality' literature; preparing a structured literature abstraction form; ensuring the reliability and validity of the review; synthesizing and reporting results; conducting and evaluating descriptive literature reviews; and, how to understand and evaluate the principles of meta-analysis.