Literature+Review

Your literature review, which some refer to as a background research paper, will give you the confidence to have enough general information to start designing your experiment. This is not the same as the Research Paper. The Final Research Paper includes the Literature Review as well as everything else you did throughout the inquiry process.
 * Literature Review Organization
 * Literature Review Example

Finding a topic:
Record all your observations, thoughts, and questions in a journal or blog. Treat this like a brainstorming session. What are your natural interests? Do you have hobbies? Do you enjoy doing certain activities? Observe the happenings all around you. Did you see something and wish you could have helped? Is there a problem that science inquiry could help begin to solve? Ask others if they experienced anything frustrating and what they wished they had to help? Narrow down your list of possible topics. Make observations around each of the possibilities. Narrow down the list even more. Make more observations, seek input from others. At some point, you will identify the topic of most interest to you and you can focus on that for your literature review. If you are having trouble choosing a topic, this Topic Selection Wizard from ScienceBuddies might help.

Conducting Background Research:
Conduct background research on your general topic. Use multiple sources: encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, texts, guides, journals, online publications, and credible websites (Guide to finding credible sources). You decide what information is important to know before designing your experiment. Combine, organize, and present your background information in a purposeful, organized way.

Researching Classic Works/Experiments:
After becoming a mini-expert on the topic, now is the time to research the classic experiments that have already been done regarding something more specific about the topic. How can you tell if an experiment is a "classic?" When you read a research article, take a look at the References used. A source that is sited in several papers is most likely a classic experiment.

Researching Current Works/Experiments:
It is critical not only to identify the classic experiments, but also to investigate the most current experiments as well. The current experiments will help you ask the next logical question. Instead of designing experiments that have already been done, you will look at answering a question that has neither been asked nor answered yet. That's a really neat place to be. Through your project that you designed you could find something out that no one else thought to look at before you came along. Summarize both classic and current experiments in your literature review. Choose to summarize only the experiments that are important for what you want to specifically explore. If it seems like there is too much information for you to summarize, then your topic might still be too broad; make it more specific and narrow it down more.

After the literature review is completed, you can begin to think about your own experimental design. Tests can now be done to see if there can be measurable differences made in variables. These variables will lead you to a very specific, unique, and testable problem question. Keep in mind that throughout the process, you may need to do additional research, which you should add to your original literature review. Maybe you need to find out a procedure or about how others measured a certain variable. Maybe you need specific information that you did not think to research the first time around. It's profitable to continue researching your topic and adding to your literature review all along the way.


 * Literature Review Organization
 * Literature Review Example

Common Difficulties

 * 1) **Observation v. Opinion ** - An __observation __ makes use of the five physical senses or extensions of those senses: sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste. Don't taste anything without adult supervision and safety precautions followed. An extension of the sense of sight is a microscope where we can view what our eyes cannot. An __opinion __ does not use any of the physical senses, but rather it is something that others may or may not agree with: "The balloon is //pretty //."
 * 2) **Classic Experiments v. Current Experiments** - __Classics__ are easy to pick out because they are cited in many of the current and past experiments. Classics are older and usually the foundation for the current experiments. Choose __current experiments__ (the most recent ones) that interest you and will guide you to an experiment that will engage you personally.
 * 3) **Plagiarism** - Students sometimes cut and paste a paper together from many sources; in the end it just doesn't make sense. They should read as much as possible from many sources, noting ideas and the specific source those ideas come from. The synthesis (combining), organizing, and explaining all of the different information from various sources are the ideas that belong to the you.

Introduction
Introduce your topic. How did you come to choose this topic? What application does this topic have to something in the real world.

Content Summary
You already chose what information was important for you to know in order to do your experiment. Organize the information in a simple and understandable way.

Classic Work/Experiments Click here to find out how to decide if something is a classic or not. Summarize the classics. How does the information relate to what you might do in your experiment? What is a classic? Classic work includes any information or experiments that were important to what we now know about the topic.

Current Work/Experiments Summarize current experiments on your topic. How does the information lead you to what you might do in your experiment?

Conclusion End the Literature Review by introducing what you want to explore in your experiments. Discuss the variables you might manipulate and measure. You don't need to know your exact experimental design yet, but you should be able to describe a little of what you would like to explore.


 * Important Writing Note: Each section does not represent a single paragraph. It represents similar ideas; each idea in a section should have its own paragraph within the section.