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Tallinna Ülikooli üliõpilaste 2015/2016. õppeaasta PARIMAD TEADUSTÖÖD / Artiklite kogumik HARIDUSTEADUSED
Grant et. al. [3] have described fourteen different primary reviewing methodologies, based on both scoping literary studies as well as personal experience. These methodologies were mapped against the SALSA framework and grouped into a table, characterising each methodology by a short summary and the methods it uses for search, appraisal, synthesis and analysis.
To better understand what are the specific requirements of each methodology’s different work phases, a new table was created based on Grant & Booth’s [3] table of methodologies, with each cell filled with specific work methods.
DiscussiON
e expansion of evidence-based research led to an increasingly varied selection of literature reviewing methodologies. Since most of these methodologies are developed for di erent end-goals, they may vary in their work methods. However, their main approaches to reviewing literature remain inherently similar, due to which they can easily be analysed using the same framework. e framework proposed by Grant & Booth [3] divides a literature reviewing methodology into four di erent stand-alone stages – search, analysis, appraisal and synthesis. By grouping all literature analysis methodologies proposed by Grant & Booth [3] into a spreadsheet and comparing them, it becomes increasingly relevant that most literature reviewing methodologies di erentiate on a conceptual level. e di erences between methodologies are perfunctory and mostly re ect in how data is analysed and presented.
is lack of di erences between methodologies was also evident in the case study. Although some elements were inherent to a systematised (or a systematic) review, such as generating a review protocol, most methods used were seemingly similarly represented in other methodologies. is may somewhat be attributed to the nature of a systematised review, which allows omitting di erent phases and methods in case of need.
is inherent similarity in approaches is also visible in di erent qualitative content analysis methodologies. Whilst there are certain di erences in terms of speci c work methods, all three approaches proposed by Shannon & Hsieh [8] focus on coding various concepts from qualitative data and attempting to de ne them.
e similarity of di erent literature reviewing methodologies re ects on the speci cs of so ware available for conducting literature reviews. Most widely used literature reviewing so ware is suitable for most methodologies, regardless of their work methods. is comes from the fact that the majority of literature reviewing so ware is focused mainly on the data analysis and synthesis stages without o ering any functionality in terms of constructing search queries, carrying out quality assessments, etc. Due to this, a hypothetical assumption was made that in order to reach the best results, several tools should be employed for each phase of the literature review.
e case study conducted to evaluate the usefulness of employing speci c so ware in literature reviews disproved this hypothesis. Choosing the tool to conduct the case study was not di cult, as most technologies were inherently similar in their functionality. Hence, the nal choice was made by choosing the so ware that met three criteria:
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