A literature review collects, discusses, and analyzes studies, data, and other relevant information for a research question or problem statement. Evidence-based studies in peer-reviewed journals, professional publications, and government data are all crucial to a thorough review.
A literature review helps to:
Finding the studies and information you need means using library databases such as CINAHL, PubMed, and Cochrane, as well as general tools like Google Scholar.
A research question helps provide a roadmap to your research. It can be very easy to get lost if you only have a vague idea of where you're going. You may have a general idea of a topic to study and maybe even a group of clients or patients as well. But you will need to focus your topic into a discrete question to avoid getting overwhelmed by all the studies you find.
The research question also provides you with the terms and parameters you will use to search the databases. For Example:
| General Topics | Research Question |
|
Children with autism spectrum disorder Using technology to help build communication skills |
Can the use of social robots help build interpersonal communication skills in early childhood for children with autism spectrum disorder? |
Patient - Intervention - Comparison - Outcome (PICO) can help focus your topic.
P - Children with autism spectrum disorder (early childhood, 3-8)
I - using social robots
C - compared to other technologies (ipads, VR, etc.)
O - build interpersonal communication skills
Breaking your question in key terms helps you navigate and focus a search in a database or on the web. You should also be looking for synonyms, subject headings, and clinical terms to include in your searches. You can use AND and OR to combine keywords.
A search might look like: early childhood AND (autism spectrum disorder OR asd) AND social robots AND interpersonal communication
The AND combines the keywords to get a pool of relevant articles -- the OR helps expand the pool with synonyms or clinical terms.
You can use an asterisk * at the spot where the spelling of a word might change: child* = child OR childhood OR children OR childs
You can use quotation marks around a specific phrase: "Activities of Daily Living"
Databases have specialized terms for the concepts in an article called subject headings. PubMed has a specific set of terms called MeSH. Look for these terms to help find all the relevant studies on your topic.
These databases are best bets for OT research. Click the link and scroll down the page to the databases you want to use.
You can also use our meta-search database Iceberg, as well as Google Scholar to find more resources.
