Page 75 - Tallinn University

HARIDUSTEADUSED Tallinna Ülikooli üliõpilaste 2015/2016. õppeaasta PARIMAD TEADUSTÖÖD / Artiklite kogumik
Working through existing material and sources allows researchers to place the relevance of their own research into a larger context of what has been already done, but it can also create a sense of rapport within the academic community. This may prove to be important to novice researchers, who have yet to build a reputation in the scientific community. By providing a thorough review of the topic, the audience will perceive the author as having done the necessary background studies.
The growing popularity of evidence-based research amongst different areas of knowledge lead to an increasing variety of review methodologies. Although these methodologies vary in terms of specific work methods, they all share the same base structure. Grant et. al. [3] have defined this structure as the SALSA (Search, Appraisal, Synthesis and Analysis) framework.
Figure 1: the SALSA framework stages with their corresponding results (Grant & Booth, 2009)
The SALSA framework divides the literature review process into four stages. Each stage is represented in the literature review, but the exact work methods and the amount of sub-stages may differ for each literature reviewing methodology.
The searching stage aims to gather a large amount of publications by using a predefined search strategy (e.g. defining a list of search keywords, selecting the databases etc.). The aim of this stage is to define the research scope and preliminary list of publications to analyse.
The appraisal phase aims to evaluate all the papers that have been selected in the previous phase. The aim of this activity is to extract all irrelevant papers from the initial sample.
The final two phases deal with analysing the selected papers, drawing conclusions from them and categorising the findings by extracting relevant data from the papers collected. As a final stage, the findings are transcribed and summed up in a final report.
The results of the first stages of literature reviews are empirical studies that investigate a specific research question and are defined as primary studies [2], while studies that review the primary studies with the aim of synthesising evidence related to a research question are defined as secondary studies.
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