Accessing and Documenting Resources

Identifying Your Sources

For your review, you will examine a range of sources that are pertinent to your topic. To start, it is best to consult educational encyclopedias, handbooks, and annual reviews found in libraries. These resources provide summaries of important topics in education and reviews of research on various topics. They allow you to get a picture of your topic in the broader context . And also help you understand where it fits in the field.

You may also find these sources useful for identifying search terms and aspects related to your topic.

The following are some examples of handbooks, encyclopedias, and reviews relevant to educational research:

■ The International Encyclopedia of Education

■ Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies

■ Handbook of Research on Teacher Education:

Enduring Questions in Changing Contexts

■ Handbook of Research on the Education of

Young Children

■ Handbook of Latinos and Education: Theory,

Research, and Practice

■ Handbook of Research on Practices and

Outcomes in E-Learning: Issues and Trends

■ Handbook of Research on the Education of

School Leaders

■ Handbook of Research on New Media Literacy

at the K–12 Level: Issues and Challenges

■ Handbook of Education Policy Research

■ Handbook of Research on School Choice

■ Handbook of Research on Literacy and Diversity

■ Handbook of Education Finance and Policy

■ Research on the Sociocultural Foundations of Education

■ Handbook of Research on Schools, Schooling, and Human Development.

There are two types of sources used by educational researchers: primary sources

and secondary sources.

A primary source contains firsthand information. It is an original document or a description of a study written by the person who conducted the study. The data are factual rather than interpretive, so the study is more valued than secondary research. Research reports, dissertations, experiments, surveys, conference proceedings, letters, and interviews are some examples of primary sources. 

There is a difference between the opinion of an author and the results of an empirical study. The latter is more valued in a review. 

A secondary source is a source that interprets or analyzes the work of others. It can be a primary source or another secondary source. It is a brief description of a study written by someone other than the person who conducted it. Secondary sources are often used to review what has already been written or studied. Education encyclopaedias, handbooks, and other reference works are example.

These works contain secondhand information summarizing research studies conducted on a given topic. Secondary sources usually give complete bibliographic 

information for the references cited, so they can direct you to relevant primary sources, which are preferred over secondary sources.

Online sources are also used in research to search indexes of articles—some of which are full textbooks, abstracts, or other documents. These databases such as the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Education Fulltext, PsycInfo, and others provide an excellent way to identify primary sources and secondary sources.

Liberary services

Having identified your keywords and some potential resources, you are ready to make an initial foray into your university library.

Most libraries, especially university libraries, provide help and education in the use of their resources.  

You should be familiar with services offered by the library as well as the rules and regulations regarding the use of library materials.

You should learn about the references that are available and where they are located. You should know how to completely navigate your library’s website and how to access resources from any location with a connection to the Internet. 

You should learn to use the library online catalog and browse the stacks to search for books on your topic.

Significant technological advances have changed the way research is conducted in the library. In today’s academic libraries, card catalogs of previous generations have been replaced with online catalogs. These catalogues provide access to the resources in the library as well as materials from other libraries within a particular region as part of a library’s consortium agreement with other institutions. These electronic catalogs are extremely user friendly and give you a good place to start your search for literature related to your area of focus.

To locate books, video, and other materials such as government documents, you need to conduct a search of the library catalog. To search by topic, begin with a keyword search. In library catalogs, a keyword search will search the entire record of an item that includes the content notes—these are chapter headings or titles of essays within a book. If you see a book that is relevant to your search, check the subject headings that are listed. You may be able to refine your search or find additional materials. 

For example, to find summaries of research previously conducted in an area of literature, you may enter the keywords handbook and literature or encyclopaedia and literature.

 If you search for a particular topic such as 

creative writing, enter those terms as a keyword search. The keyword search is important when you are looking for books because the search retrieves items with your keywords in the title, subject heading, and the content notes. 

If you know a title of a book, then you can also search for the specific title.

The online catalog found in a library is an example of a database, a sortable, analyzable collection of records such as books, documents, dvds, and videos that are maintained on a computer.

The ERIC database is available at most every academic library or via the ERIC website at http://www.eric.ed.gov . The PsycINFO database is the online version of Psychological Abstracts, a former print source that presents summaries of completed psychological research studies. see http://www.apa.org/psycinfo .

There is an abundance of educational materials available on the Web—from primary research articles and educational theory to lesson plans and research

guides. Rsearchers can find primary sources using tools such as Google Scholar, Google Books,  and more. Even Wikipedia can provide background information that can help a researcher understand fundamental concepts and theory. www.ed.gov . This site contains links 

to the education databases supported by the 

U.S. government (including ERIC).

https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/ is an initiative of the MHRD under its National Mission on Education. This website provides thousand of ebooks and videos on various subjects.

Reviewing Literature

The review of literature involves the systematic identification, location, and analysis of documents containing information related to the research problem. The term is also used to describe the written component of a research plan or report that discusses the reviewed documents. These documents can include articles, abstracts, reviews, monographs, dissertations, books, other research reports, and electronic media effort.

Allyn & Bacon argued  "reviewing the literature curtails inductive analysis—using induction to determine the direction of the research—and should be avoided at the early stages of the research process".

Others suggest that the review of related literature is important early in the qualitative research process because it serves the following functions: 

• The literature review demonstrates the underlying assumptions (i.e., propositions) behind the research questions that are central to the research proposal.  
•  The literature review provides a way for the novice researcher to convince the proposal reviewers that he or she is knowledgeable about the related research and the intellectual traditions that support the proposed study. 
•  The literature review provides the researcher with an opportunity to identify any gaps that may exist in the body of literature and to provide a rationale for how the proposed study may contribute to the existing body of  knowledge.  
•  The literature review helps the researcher to refine the research questions and embed them in guiding hypotheses that provide possible  directions the researcher may follow.

Conducting a literature review follows a basic set of steps for both quantitative and qualitative research. Here is the basic process you take when reviewing the literature. 

The major purpose of reviewing the literature is to determine what has already been done that relates to your topic. This knowledge gives you the understanding and insight to place your topic within a logical framework. Previous studies can provide the rationale for your research hypothesis. Indications of what needs to be done can help you justify the significance of your study.

Another important purpose of reviewing the literature is to discover research strategies and specific data collection approaches that have or have not been productive in investigations of topics similar to yours. This information will help you avoid other researchers’ mistakes and profit from their experiences. It may suggest approaches and procedures that you previously had not considered. 

For example, suppose your topic involved the comparative effects of a brand-new experimental method versus the traditional method on the achievement of eighth-grade science students. The review of literature may reveal 10 related studies that found no differences in achievement. Several of the studies suggest that the brand-new method is more effective for certain kinds of students than for others. 

Thus, you may reformulate your topic to involve the comparative effectiveness of the brand new method versus the traditional method.

Being familiar with previous research also 

facilitates interpretation of your study results. There results can be discussed in terms of whether and how they agree with previous findings. 

If the results contradict previous findings, you can describe differences between your study and the others, providing a rationale for the discrepancy. 

If your results are consistent with other findings, your report should include suggestions for the next step; if they are not consistent, your report should include suggestions for studies that may 

resolve the conflict.

Post written by Vikram Beniwal