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
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