Updates from Laura Betcher Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Laura Betcher 7:00 am on October 9, 2017 Permalink | Reply  

    What to do when my research findings do not match up with the literature review? 

    My thesis is due next month, and I have been stuck here with my thesis! The findings of my research are totally different what I expected them to be. My literature review and the objectives of the study were aimed to study something else, but now I realize that it wasn’t what I expected. My research has gone awry! If I promised to study ABC, my data analysis gave me the answer xyz of another question which I didn’t even think about. How can it be completely opposite! I guess the questionnaire is to be blamed for this for I didn’t check its reliability before-hand. What shall I do now? If I change the objectives and literature review of my thesis, won’t my proposal would be questioned which submitted to the committee? I have no idea what to do. In such a short time, I could not re-analyze my data!! No idea guys, please advise!

     

  • Laura Betcher 12:12 pm on July 18, 2017 Permalink | Reply  

    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?

     

    • jamie16917 1:17 am on July 19, 2017 Permalink | Reply

      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 | Reply

      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 | Reply

      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.

c
Compose new post
j
Next post/Next comment
k
Previous post/Previous comment
r
Reply
e
Edit
o
Show/Hide comments
t
Go to top
l
Go to login
h
Show/Hide help
shift + esc
Cancel