{"id":37929,"date":"2017-02-21T12:41:35","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T20:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=37929"},"modified":"2017-02-21T12:41:35","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T20:41:35","slug":"using-diagrams-research-aids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/using-diagrams-research-aids\/","title":{"rendered":"Using diagrams as research aids"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dental\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I hate doing literature reviews. I always feel I have not read enough. I worry that what I write will be \u2018wrong\u2019 because I have missed some vital piece of literature. These feelings never seem to entirely go away, even though I have been publishing papers for over a decade. I can certainly relate to new PhD candidates paralysed by the sheer amount of reading they have to do. I am always looking for ways to help them \u2013 and myself.<\/p>\n

In a previous post I documented a way to use a spider diagram to scope a literature review . <\/a>This technique works well when you have a relatively defined topic, but what if you are just, you know \u2013 sniffing about? Trying to get the lay of the land before you start a new project?<\/p>\n

This is the kind of literature searching behaviour you tend to do right at the start of your PhD, or when you start to bring in a new area of literature to an existing project. Now, if you are anything like me, this kind of searching is a bit random.<\/p>\n

Generally I type a few dozen search strings into a database like Google Scholar and hope that something interesting will float to the surface. Citation searches help me see if there is a useful conversation around that topic. When I have exhausted one search string, I try random variations on it, just to see if I have missed anything.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a laborious and, to be frank, not very systematic method.<\/p>\n

Recently I have started using another diagram method from a book recommended by Dr Jonathon Downie<\/a> called \u2018Salsa dancing into the social sciences\u2019 <\/a>by Kristin Luker. In it Luker shows a simple method to generate ideas for new search terms she calls the \u2018bedraggled daisy\u2019 diagram.<\/p>\n

The bedraggled daisy is a Venn diagram on steroids. To refresh your memory, a Venn diagram is a way of representing sets. Here is a Venn diagram of why I hate literature reviews:<\/p>\n

\"anxiety\"<\/a>
\nMy dislike of literature reviews is the intersection: where anxiety meets no time to read and too many books. Luker\u2019s bedraggled daisy diagrams has so many circles that they become squished and look more like petals.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s use this method to do a literature review about \u2026 why people get stuck trying to write literature reviews because that will be pleasingly meta. We start with a list of at least eight possible search terms that touch on various aspects of the problem:<\/p>\n