Theses are usually structured in five parts: Introduction, Literature review, Research method, Findings, Conclusions & recommendations. Students often question this structure when they must develop theory first before they can do the fieldwork. In such cases they present the structure as: Introduction, Research method, Literature review… When I question this, they tell me that in their case the literature review is, in fact, a method and should therefore follow on the method section instead of preceding it. Such reasoning is based on a misunderstanding of the difference between a literature survey and a document analysis. In the introduction you therefore have to point out the dualistic nature of your research.
The purpose of a literature
review is to point out the current gap in our knowledge and to suggest a
point of departure of research towards filling that gap. In the case in point,
the literature survey would come in two parts. The first part of the literature
survey will describe the intellectual puzzle – what do we already know about
the situation on the ground, and what does not quite add up. The second part
will describe the current gap in theory – what has already been done, why it
does not work, and where we should begin looking for answers.
Now comes the research
method section. First you will explain your process: developing a framework
from the literature and then using that framework to solve a research problem.
Thus the research section will have two parts, but the sequence is reversed.
The first part describes the Systematic Literature Review (SLR), which is not a
literature survey, but an actual research procedure where the texts are treated
as data, rather than sources. The second part will describe the field work.
Both parts of the research method section will contain the five key elements: Logic
of enquiry (quantitative or qualitative), Research setting, Data collection, Data
analysis, and Ethics (Kshetrimayum, 2022).
For the systematic
literature review you will describe how you searched for the sources you used,
key words, databases, etc. They you will explain how you filtered them down (your
criteria for inclusion and exclusion). You will describe the types of analysis
you did to extract the eventual themes. You may want to consider the ethical
implications of sensitive texts that you may have included or excluded and the effect
that it may have on the reliability and validity of your findings. The PRISMA STATEMENT of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic
Reviews and Meta-Analyses (Moher et al.,
2009) provides clear guidelines for a systematic literature review.
For the fieldwork you
will do the same. Is it a quantitative, qualitative, or mixed method study and
why? What is the context where you did your research? What was your population,
how did you sample and why? How did you collect the data and why. How did you
clean and analyze the data? What were the ethical considerations. In experimental
or field research this part is straightforward, while for desk-top studies are
often misunderstood. For experimental and field research we ask: How did you
set up the laboratory? What experimental design did you chose and how did you
execute it. How did you analyze the data? How did you ensure safety for all. For
field research: In what stetting did you do the research, how did you select
your participants, what intervention did you make, how did you collect and
analyze data and how did you protect your participants? Desk-top studies are,
in fact, the same. The only difference is that the data sources are mostly text
based.
In fields such as Policy
studies, History or Literature the analyzed policies, historical documents or
literary texts are often confused with literature sources. Paradoxically, in when
you study the work of a great literary figure you are not doing a literature study.
You are doing a document analysis. The policies, biographies, or anthologies
that you are studying are your data sources. Thus, in your method section you
will again take a stance regarding quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods,
you will explain your setting (libraries, archives, or your own PC), how did
you select your data sources (original manuscripts, published works, reprints),
what did you look for in your analysis, and what ethical considerations are
there. In policy, historical work, or literature, for instance, the principle
of anonymity becomes problematic, since the political, historical or literary subject
of your study may well still be alive.
Finally at the end of
the research method section you will explain how you used the framework that
you developed from the systematic literature review as a filter for the data
that you collected in your experimental, field or desk-top research.
The findings will
also come in two parts. Firstly, there will be a discussion of the Systematic Literature
Review and the framework that emerged. Then you show what happened when you
filtered your data through it, and finally you will present the answers to each
of your research questions.
The conclusions
take place in reverse. First you give the answers to your primary research
questions – what your data told you once you filtered it through your framework.
Then you express yourself on the value of your model in making sense of the
data. Finally you present recommendations for further research of your
problem, and further development of your model.
The thesis structure,
therefore, remains the same: Introduction: I am going to solve this problem by
first developing a framework from a systematic literature review, then I am
going to use the framework tot analyze data. Literature review: This is what
we don’t know about the research problem this is what we don’t know about the theory.
Research method: This is how I developed a framework through a Systematic
Literature Review. This is how I used the framework do solve the problem. Findings:
This is what the framework looks like. This is what I found when I filtered my
data through it. Conclusions and recommendations: This is the new knowledge
and this is my contribution to theory. Now we need to solve the following
problems and address the following theoretical shortcomings.
And then you graduate.
References
Kshetrimayum,
M. 2022. 5 Key Elements of Methodology Section of a Research Paper. Mel
Insights. https://melinsights.com/5-key-elements-of-methodology-section-of-a-research-paper-2/.
Moher, D.,
Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D.G. & Group*, P. 2009. Preferred
reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement.
Annals of internal medicine, 151(4): 264–269. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097
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