How to do your own experiments in psychology and education
Develop a Reading Strategy
How are you going to read the mountain of books and articles that you found? One by one, in alphabetical order? From oldest to most recent? The whole article from end to end? Only the abstract? These are important questions if you want to do a great job without feeling overwhelmed. A reading strategy is a set of answers to these questions – a plan for getting the most out of your sources.
If you sorted and prioritized your sources, then you can see that that will be a big help. Now, how will you approach all of those “definitely read” sources that you found?
There is a general reading strategy that is common to all of the parts of the Lit Review:
Read only what you need to read!
You should not read all of your articles from end to end;
SKIM the articles for relevant information.
This suggestion comes as a surprise to most students, who often think that they should read everything, from start to finish. That is probably because most of your experience with reading is related to literary works and textbooks, which are designed to be read from beginning to end. Technical and scientific writing are different: articles have a very predictable structure so that you can quickly skim to find the part of the article that you want and get only the information that you need for a particular purpose. Of course, if you have extra time and/or extra interest, you can read everything. Your main strategy, however, will be to locate relevant information. You are not reading comic books or delicious literary works; you are looking for specific information, so you have to be selective or reading will become very time consuming. With this skimming strategy, reviewing even 40 or 50 articles will not be a lot of work. This allows you to include references to more articles (a good idea!) without adding too much work. You usually do not need to read the methods section of each article for the Lit Review. But you should skim through it looking for ideas about how to do your own study.
In some cases, you can get the information that you need by reading only the abstract [the summary at the beginning of an article], particularly when you need to decide whether a study is really worth reading or not.
Specific reading strategies. Prioritize! Decide what is most important to read first. A Lit Review has different sections that focus on different kinds of information from different sources. So, you will have a different reading strategy for each section, just as if you had a different search strategy for each section in Task 2. Depending on which part of the Lit Review you are working on, you should only read one or two sections of an article, then you might go back to the same article later and read other sections. For each section of the Lit Review, there is a part of this Task Package that discusses the section’s goals, organization, and a good reading strategy. Most of the information that you need for the Specific Background section, for example, will come from the results and conclusion sections of each article. For the Opening of your Lit Review, you will focus on information from the introduction and discussion sections of each article, etc.
The table here gives you some hints on where to find the information that you will need for your Lit Review. The Methods section of an article is generally not useful for writing your Lit Review but you should look at it quickly to get ideas for your own methods.
Take notes while you read. One option is to use a separate sheet of scrap paper for notes about each section. Write down useful information and include which article and which page you found it on – so you can find it again.
Read this topic next: Develop a writing strategy.
If you sorted and prioritized your sources, then you can see that that will be a big help. Now, how will you approach all of those “definitely read” sources that you found?
There is a general reading strategy that is common to all of the parts of the Lit Review:
Read only what you need to read!
You should not read all of your articles from end to end;
SKIM the articles for relevant information.
This suggestion comes as a surprise to most students, who often think that they should read everything, from start to finish. That is probably because most of your experience with reading is related to literary works and textbooks, which are designed to be read from beginning to end. Technical and scientific writing are different: articles have a very predictable structure so that you can quickly skim to find the part of the article that you want and get only the information that you need for a particular purpose. Of course, if you have extra time and/or extra interest, you can read everything. Your main strategy, however, will be to locate relevant information. You are not reading comic books or delicious literary works; you are looking for specific information, so you have to be selective or reading will become very time consuming. With this skimming strategy, reviewing even 40 or 50 articles will not be a lot of work. This allows you to include references to more articles (a good idea!) without adding too much work. You usually do not need to read the methods section of each article for the Lit Review. But you should skim through it looking for ideas about how to do your own study.
In some cases, you can get the information that you need by reading only the abstract [the summary at the beginning of an article], particularly when you need to decide whether a study is really worth reading or not.
Specific reading strategies. Prioritize! Decide what is most important to read first. A Lit Review has different sections that focus on different kinds of information from different sources. So, you will have a different reading strategy for each section, just as if you had a different search strategy for each section in Task 2. Depending on which part of the Lit Review you are working on, you should only read one or two sections of an article, then you might go back to the same article later and read other sections. For each section of the Lit Review, there is a part of this Task Package that discusses the section’s goals, organization, and a good reading strategy. Most of the information that you need for the Specific Background section, for example, will come from the results and conclusion sections of each article. For the Opening of your Lit Review, you will focus on information from the introduction and discussion sections of each article, etc.
The table here gives you some hints on where to find the information that you will need for your Lit Review. The Methods section of an article is generally not useful for writing your Lit Review but you should look at it quickly to get ideas for your own methods.
Take notes while you read. One option is to use a separate sheet of scrap paper for notes about each section. Write down useful information and include which article and which page you found it on – so you can find it again.
Read this topic next: Develop a writing strategy.
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© 2009 Created by Mike Dillinger, PhD on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
