Researching and Evaluating Literature

Assignment: Literature Synthesis: Draft
Overview
The ability to conduct an evidence-based change project requires skills in researching and evaluating high-quality literature. The literature review is not only a key academic writing competency, but a crucial component of your doctoral project. High-quality literature reviews support evidence-based practice. If you aspire to publish in a trade or academic publication, well-crafted literature reviews are vital. In a literature review you can:
• Critically examine existing research that is significant to your topic.
• Demonstrate your knowledge of the field.
• Justify your proposed study or project interventions.
• Establish the context for a project.
• Identify the issues and authors that are important to you and those that are not.
• Evaluate the evidence and best practices.
This assignment provides an opportunity to execute an effective search strategy, conduct a critical analysis of the literature and identify main themes, synthesize your findings, and present your conclusions in a literature synthesis draft that you will submit for review and feedback.
Instructions
For this assignment, continue to explore the literature and expand on the evidence you have found that addresses your PICO or PICO(D) question.
• Describe your search strategy.
• Analyze the evidence and identify main themes in the literature.
• Write a coherent, scholarly synthesis of the literature gathered during your review.
• Present the inferences and conclusions you drew from your synthesis.
Graded Requirements
The following requirements correspond to the rubric criteria, so be sure to address each point. Read the performance-level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed.
• Describe your literature search strategy.
o Be sure to capture refinements you have made to the search strategy you developed in Week 2, based on faculty feedback and on lessons learned executing your strategy.
o Include search terms, medical subject headings (MeSH), hand searches, the number of pieces found, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the number of pieces retained and why.
o Consider a search strategy that extends beyond published studies, which may include systematic reviews, government publications and, as applicable, dissertations or thesis reports (“gray material”).
o Limit your search to sources published within the last five years. Sources older than five years should only be included in your literature synthesis if they are influential or clearly valuable and professionally relevant to your project.
• Analyze the literature addressing your PICO or PICO(D) question.
o Continue to use the Evidence Table to document and analyze your source materials.
o Read carefully to make informed decisions in weeding out irrelevant and inferior studies and recognize the best available evidence that addresses your PICO or PICO(D) question.
o Critically evaluate the evidence.
 Do not accept articles at face value.
 Consider opposing viewpoints.
 Analyze the credibility, quality, and authenticity of each source using critical appraisal tools.
o Identify the main themes in the literature.
 The main ideas or themes you identify in the literature can be used as headings to organize the reviewed literature in a meaningful way.
o Continue to document the main themes in the Main Themes Table.
• Synthesize the findings from your analysis of the literature.
o Describe the main themes in the literature.
o Explain how your sources relate to one another.
 Identify commonalities and differences in research questions, methodologies, and findings.
 Consider supporting and opposing viewpoints.
o Explain how your sources build upon one another.
 Refer to the annotated Literature Synthesis linked in Resources for an example.
• Write clearly and concisely in a logically coherent and appropriate form and style.
o Write with a specific purpose and audience in mind.
o Adhere to scholarly and disciplinary writing standards.
o Proofread your writing to minimize errors that could distract readers and make it difficult for them to focus on the substance of your writing.
• Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references.
Literature Synthesis Format and Organization
Format your document using APA style.
• Use the APA Style Paper Template. An APA Style Paper Tutorial is also provided to help you in writing and formatting your narrative. Be sure to include:
o A title page and references page. An abstract is not required.
o Appropriate section headings.
Organize your literature synthesis as follows:
• Introduction. Your introduction should include a brief and succinct overview of the gap or problem you are seeking to address with your project, data to support the issue, an introduction to the intervention and outcomes, and your PICO or PICO(D) question.
• Search Strategy. Provide a comprehensive description of the process you used to find your literature.
• Synthesis of the Literature. After an introductory paragraph that tells the reader what they will find in the synthesis, present your interpretation of the main themes and relationships among sources uncovered in your search.
• Conclusion. Present the inferences and conclusions you drew from your review.
Additional Requirements
Your narrative synthesis should comprise 15–20 content pages plus the cover page, evidence table, and main themes table.
Refer to the helpful links in Resources as you prepare your assignment. Consider saving your assignment to your ePortfolio.