Chapter 2: Literature Search Strategy

The next section in chapter 2 is the literature search strategy. This section will go easily if you kept track of all of your literature searches in your research journal. If not, you may need to rerun them.  

You need to walk your reader through how and where you did your literature search; you are demonstrating the thoroughness of your scholarship. List the databases you searched, they should go beyond the psychology ones, include academic search premier, Thoreau, perhaps education and medical ones, dissertations, and Google scholar. List the search terms that you used, and the combinations of keywords that you used.  

One of the most common questions I get is how to do literature searches. A brief review: You need to think about both breadth and depth in your searches. Let's do an example together, let's say we are interested in the elderly and resilience. Some words to start with would be elderly, seniors, older adult, I would also try young-old, middle-old, and oldest old (these are terms you see in the literature). I would combine each of these with resilience. When I find relevant articles, I will check out their keywords and add those into my combinations. 

If you have difficulty finding appropriate literature and terms, please talk to the Walden librarians. They are a wonderful resource and will give you all kinds of ideas that you have not considered. Keep track in your research journal: everyone you talk to, all literature searches, and everything you do related to your project.  

Next time we will examine Chapter 2: Theories and Conceptual Framework. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu