Literature

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Literature Review
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Information Sources

• Primary Data - ones collected by you or your
  agents
• Secondary Data - studies made by others

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Primary Data

• Can collect precisely the information you want
• or at monitor and record, the extraneous
  influences

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Secondary Data

• Three purposes
• Fill a need for specific reference or citation
• demonstrate why the proposed research fills a
  void in the knowledge base
• need early exploration to learn if the past can
  contribute to the present study
• help you decide what further research needs to be
  done and is a rich source of hypotheses
• may also need reference benchmarks against which
  to test your findings

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Secondary Data

• integral part of larger studies to justify having
  bypassed the costs and benefits of doing primary
  research (not reinventing the wheel)
• could be used as the sole basis for the research
  study (historians)

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A Strategy for Secondary Data

• 1. Explore the topic and form a focus or state a
  hypothesis
• consult an encyclopedia ( no older than three
  years old)
• this gives you a popular framework of the topic

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A Strategy for Secondary Data

• 2. Get an overview and retrospective information
• go to the library and locate books for inspection
• the first step is for you to learn whether anyone
  has already prepared a bibliography on your topic
  (bibs frequently are in books)
• note that you may have to do additional work if
  it older than 6 months
• for very recent books check out amazon.com or
  Barnes and Noble

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A Strategy for Secondary Data

• 3. Get more current or specific information
• visit the library again and browse the latest
  periodicals. This will give you a notion of the
  scope and depth of coverage of various topics
• ask the librarian if they have electronic journal
  full text resources
• use the periodicals themselves to get more
  citations

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A Strategy for Secondary Data

• 4. Get more in-depth information
• use research reports, conference proceedings

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A Strategy for Secondary Data

• 5. Evaluate and Close Library Search
• be selective in what you record
• develop a recording system