How to synthesize research articles?
Hi. It has been three weeks now that I’m still trying to write the literature review chapter of my thesis. My research is about the unfavourable impact that technology has on employees at the workplace. And for this, I obtained 61 research articles and papers from libraries and DOA which are really useful. So, the problem is that I reviewed all of them, finalized 20 research papers and prepared detailed notes. But I cannot synthesize the 20 sources which then are troubling me in writing LR. Are there some tools or any easy peasy way to get done with it?
Thomas, and 
Discuss your Dissertation 
jamie16917 1:17 am on July 19, 2017 Permalink |
So are you trying to synthesize all of the 20 articles? I don’t think you will be able to synthesize and you are not supposed to do that. Don’t you think it will be too much for the reader to grasp your intent? Instead, out of those 20, you take out 10-12 research papers which you can actually cite and synthesize them all. Now for writing part, you can explore synthesis matrices. Here is a good template of research synthesis matrix. Referring to this create your synthesis matrix and then bring out the main concepts or ideas of those research papers along with the mentioning the sources. https://danieltedman.com/demo/literature-review/resources/docs/synthesis-matrix.pdf
Thomas 8:20 am on July 23, 2017 Permalink |
What I understand of the problem you are facing is perhaps you are unable to plunge into the articles for understanding the central idea & the developmental structure or organization of the articles. So, first read and review each of those articles and write the main theme of each of them in a synthesis chart or table; whatever you feel like! When you can visualize these, you will automatically see the connecting or the contrasting ideas of multiple sources. And then you can easily write all of these in a coherent manner. You can either begin synthesizing those ideas either source by source or theme by theme. In such way, you can write your focused literature review carefully.
tom2331 7:19 am on July 27, 2017 Permalink |
Watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPKEuWkdcF4 although, the idea is not practically elaborated, still, it will clear of many of your doubts. A month back, I had a similar problem with writing literature review chapter when I found this video. It’s good.