The Literature Review

2/21/04 Addendum added below

The purpose of the mini-Literature Review is to become familiar with the type of research techniques used in studying family systems.  Each student should identify one central question about families and family systems that can be answered, at least in part, by reviewing at least five (5) empirical journal articles from the professional literature.  Empirical articles are those that have data as evidence. Professional journals are generally peer reviewed and are not magazines, newspapers, or websites written for the general public.  Good questions may involve how families deal with some challenge (material, developmental, physical, or social) or some characteristics that are out of the mainstream when trying to navigate normally occurring transitions or interact with mainstream institutions.  Examples might include how families cope with chronic illness, how immigrant families cope with American schools, or whether there are cultural or ethnic differences in support of single parent families.

Oral Presentation

Be prepared to talk for 10 minutes.  You might have a list of the articles you read and to which you will be referring typed out in APA citation style to distribute, as well as a brief synopsis of the method and finding. 

Pay attention to how the article found out what it did as well as what the bottom line findings and the conclusions were.  Your presentations will be the basis for our in class discussions of the strengths and limitations of research methods.

What should you pay attention to in methods?  Pay attention to the questions in Beeman (2002) the reading for 2/19.  Who was studied?  What are the operational definitions of constructs studied (how are they defining such things as happiness, health, poverty, or stress)?  Are there comparison groups?  Are the folks in the study representative of the group to whom you are trying to generalize?  Are the methods reliable and how do the authors assure you. 

Do your best to understand the nuts and bolts of articles, but also try to present them in a unified manner rather than in a checklist of separate items. Weave a thread through your presentation. 

The oral presentation should be well prepared though it need not be a polished final product.  That is the purpose of the written paper.

Written Summary

Weave your research question and the findings from these five (or more) papers into a 5-7 page essay.  State the question to give context and try to present a cogent, empirically based response.  Try not to list study after study after study, but integrate them.  In your integration, do not lose sight of the methods used to gather data and how that informs what the authors have found.  Do not be afraid to critique.  End your paper with a summary including the limitations of the studies reviewed and some suggestions for future work.

Double space, type, and use APA guidelines (see links in General Academic Resources).  All citations should be according to APA style.

Addendum

Think of this assignment as an opportunity to bring a family systems perspective to the literature you are reading.  For example, you might find papers that indicate boys have more adjustment problems following divorce and the papers might imply that boys are generally more vulnerable or more sensitive.  What would a family systems perspective suggest about this finding?  Given the numbers of children who are placed with their mothers as primary custodian following divorce, how does the departure of a dad affect the system, its homeostasis, and the roles of every other family member?  If that is a helpful way to interpret the data, then you can also think about what a systems perspective might predict about ways in which divorcing parents might be able to minimize disruption to the system and therefore the strain on their sons.

In other words, just because the articles you read do not necessarily address systems factors, it doesn't mean you can't re-interpret according to a systems perspective. 

Be sure to be explicit in your application of family systems concepts to the literature you review in your paper.