Students often ask me, how do I connect the literature in my
study? When you think about it, you are required to take a series of very
different ideas/ literature and put them together in a way that makes logical
sense. By definition, you are doing something very creative, it has never been
done that way before. Somehow, you have to link these ideas as you go, so that
the writing flows easily and doesn’t lose your reader.
There are a couple of ways that I have found to accomplish
this. Let's use an example paper for illustrative purposes. I will be using a
paper that published in an education journal on developing virtual research
labs (Stadtlander, Giles, & Sickel, 2013). The first way to link ideas is
to preview them in an introduction to the paper or to a subsection (in green in the example below). A second way is to
end a paragraph with the topic that will be discussed in the subsequent one (in red).
In a land-based lab, students gain
exposure to a positive research-training environment, faculty modeling of
research skills and enthusiasm for the research process, and the social
experience of working with others (Love et al., 2007). These factors have been
reported to increase student research self-efficacy and lead to higher research
productivity (Hollingsworth & Fassinger, 2002; Phillips & Russell,
1994). The land-based academic research training
environment has been found to predict research outcome expectations (Bishop
& Bieschke, 1998; Kahn, 2001) and research investigative interests (Bishop
& Bieschke, 1998; Kahn, 2001).
It is not known, however, if a
virtual lab can provide the research skills and research interest as seen in a
land-based lab. In
an attempt to examine this issue, the current study recruited 10 doctoral
psychology students at an online university to participate in a 3-quarter
virtual lab, in which they assisted in a faculty-designed research project. A comparison
group of students was matched with the lab students based upon milestones in
program progress (e.g., completion of all required courses). A measure of confidence in the development of research skills
(measured with Bieschke and Bishop's [1994] Research Outcome Expectations scale),
and a researcher designed research knowledge and skills self-assessment
examined the students' experience, as well as weekly journals from the 3
quarters in the lab. In order to place the current
virtual lab study into context, a brief history of labs in academia will be
examined, as well as what is known about virtual research labs. (Stadtlander
et al., in press, p. 1)
Another
method to link ideas is to refer to the relationship between the information
and your study (in purple).
Research outcome expectations have been
identified as accounting for more variance in students' research interests than
any other significant variable, including research self-efficacy beliefs (Bard,
Bieschke, Herbert, & Eberz, 2000; Bishop & Bieschke, 1998), the
research training environment (Bishop & Bieschke, 1998; Kahn, 2001),
investigative interests (Kahn, 2001), and age (Bishop & Bieschke, 1998).
Kahn has speculated that students may be unable to discriminate between their
interest in research and their expectations about the outcomes that may result
from engaging in research activities. In the
present study, the Research Outcome Expectations Questionnaire (Bieschke &
Bishop, 1994) was used as a measure of student researchers' confidence in the
development of research competencies. (Stadtlander et al., 2013, p. 4)
Hopefully, this helps to give you some ideas how to link
your different literatures.
Stadtlander,
L., Giles, M. & Sickel, A. (2013). The Virtual Research Lab: Research Outcomes
Expectations, Research Knowledge, and the Graduate Student Experience. Journal of
Educational Research and Practice, 3(1),
120-138.
Next time, we will welcome summer quarter. 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
