literature review

read all items and follow grading scale

Write a literature review in support of the identified problem or practice gap and intervention. Your literature review should include 3-5 themes supported by 5-10 resources and will be 4-5 pages in length.

Introduction

A literature review applies what has been learned through previous research efforts to describe a problem and defend a solution. By synthesizing resources to support a problem and solution, the scholar shows that a new practice or project is founded firmly on the conclusions reached by previous researchers.

Demonstration of Proficiency

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the course competencies through the following assessment scoring guide criteria:

· Competency 1: Address assessment purpose in a well-organized text, incorporating appropriate evidence and tone in grammatically sound sentences.

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Respond to the assessment prompt with appropriate understanding of the topic, scope, and purpose.

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Support main points, assertions, arguments, conclusions, or recommendations with relevant and credible evidence.

 

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Produce text with minimal grammar, usage, spelling, and mechanical errors.

· Competency 2: Craft a compelling argument.

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Anticipate counterarguments or alternative perspectives.

· Competency 3: Create a literature review that supports a possible intervention or process change.

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Synthesize the information in research articles in support of an intervention that addresses a problem.

  

Preparation

Use the 

Evidence Table [XLSX]

 provided to analyze and summarize the sources you have gathered.

Instructions

This assessment has been identified as a Signature Assessment. Signature assessments serve a dual purpose: to meet the competencies in the course where the signature assessment appears and acquire skills needed to demonstrate competencies specific to the completion of the Doctoral Project Report. Learners must successfully meet the established criteria for demonstrating competence on this assessment in order to successfully complete the course (see University Policy 3.4.07 Grading).  Completion of this course is a program-specific requirement. Consequently, learners must pass this course in order to remain in good academic standing (see University Policy 3.01.04 Academic Standing).

Write a literature review that supports the problem/practice gap and the intervention. The evidence must show that your intervention is effective at addressing your problem/practice gap.

Your assessment will be graded according to the following scoring guide criteria:

· Respond to the assessment prompt with appropriate understanding of the topic, scope, and purpose.

· Synthesize the information in research articles in support of an intervention that addresses an identified problem.

· Anticipate counterarguments or alternative perspectives.

· Support main points, assertions, arguments, conclusions, or recommendations with relevant and credible evidence.

· Produce text with minimal grammar, usage, spelling, and mechanical errors.

Additional Requirements

· Find and cite a minimum of 5 pieces of evidence.

· Submit your Evidence Table and your literature review.

· Provide in-text citations and full references for the pieces of evidence.

· Your paper should be 4–5 pages in length, not including a title page and reference page.

Literature Review Scoring Guide

CRITERIA	NON-PERFORMANCE	BASIC	PROFICIENT	DISTINGUISHED
Respond to the assessment prompt with appropriate understanding of the topic, scope, and purpose.	Does not respond to the assessment prompt.	Responds to the prompt, but demonstrates a weak understanding of the topic, scope, or purpose of the prompt.	Responds to the assessment prompt with appropriate understanding of the topic, scope, and purpose.	Responds to the assessment prompt; demonstrates a thorough understanding of the topic, scope, and purpose.
Synthesize the information in research articles in support of an intervention that addresses a problem.	Does not cite the information in research articles in support of an intervention that addresses a problem.	Cites the information in research articles in support of an intervention that addresses a problem, but does not establish how research articles connection to the problem and/or the intervention.	Synthesizes the information in research articles in support of an intervention that addresses a problem.	Synthesizes the information in research articles in support of an intervention that addresses a problem; evaluates the strengths and weaknesses cited as support.
Anticipate counterarguments or alternative perspectives.	Does not mention counterarguments or alternative perspectives.	Mentions but does not address or refute counterarguments or alternative perspectives.	Anticipates counterarguments or alternative perspectives	Anticipates counterarguments or alternative perspectives; evaluates them in the context of evidence.
Support main points, assertions, arguments, conclusions, or recommendations with relevant and credible evidence.	Does not support main points, assertions, arguments, conclusions, or recommendations with relevant and credible evidence.	Sources lack relevance or credibility, or the evidence is not persuasive or explicitly supportive of main points, assertions, arguments, conclusions, or recommendations.	Supports main points, assertions, arguments, conclusions, or recommendations with relevant and credible evidence.	Supports main points, assertions, arguments, conclusions, or recommendations with relevant, credible, and convincing evidence. Skillfully combines virtually error-free source citations with a perceptive and coherent synthesis of the evidence.
Produce text with minimal grammar, usage, spelling, and mechanical errors.	Produces text where meaning is unclear due to errors in grammar, usage, word choice, spelling, or mechanics.	Produces text where meaning is interrupted due to errors in grammar, usage, word choice, spelling, or mechanics.	Produces text with minimal grammar, usage, spelling, and mechanical errors.	Produces text written with a professional level of competence in grammar, usage, spelling, and mechanical errors.

The following steps offer a process for analyzing the evidence you have gathered, discovering themes supported by evidence, and creating an outline for your literature review. 

1. Examine the arguments you have made in course assessments, in which you have drawn from research to identify the PICOT question, argue for a target population, describe a practice gap at your practicum site, and identify the interests of stakeholders. Throughout, you have summarized or synthesized evidence to make connections with your identified practice gap. Review these assessment for hints at how you may construct the arguments in your literature review.

2. Use the technique described in 

Locating Common Themes in a Literature Review

 to identify themes (main ideas) and evidence that supports the themes in the research articles that you have selected for your literature review.

3. Place these themes and evidence (findings) in the Evidence Table [XLSX]. Because the Evidence Table is designed to support you as you progress through your doctoral project courses, its columns go into significant detail. For the next steps in this activity, it may serve you best to focus on a limited number of columns, such as themes, findings, gaps, and population. You can accomplish with the simple adjustment of hiding some columns in the table temporarily and unhiding them when you choose. Use this 5-minute video for help in how to hide and unhide columns in an Excel table:

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Deleting and Hiding Excel 2016 Data [Video]

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· Review the Evidence Table and ask these questions:

. Which themes are most strongly supported across the literature you have read? How do they relate to your problem statement and intervention?

. Are there gaps in evidence for a theme (or themes)? If so, conduct additional research in the Capella library to find items for your literature review.

. This assessment requires a minimum of 5 articles for the Literature Review. You may need more than that to find supported themes.

· Write a thematic outline of 3–5 themes that are strongly supported across 5–10 articles you read. For each theme, briefly state how it relates to the problem statement and proposed intervention. Include in the outline citations that support these connections.

Evidence Table

PICO or PICO(D) Question [Insert here]

APA Source Reference

Writing a literature review in your field is one of the most helpful things you’ll learn to do as a graduate learner. Every time you write a lit review, you gather, gain, and synthesize ideas within your field; by doing so, you add to the depth of your knowledge. As you learn more about what has already been said by other scholars, you’ll see new places to enter the conversation.

Literature reviews typically come early in academic papers. This position lets them do their best work: first, orienting the reader to the established knowledge about the issue you’re writing on, and second, positioning your ideas within that body of knowledge. Once you have explained your understanding of the field to a reader, you are in position to address those ideas in your own right. A clear and understandable literature review is a great lead-in to a clear and understandable research paper that reflects your ideas.

Of course, those ideas originate, at least in some form, from your process of selecting and reading academic writing. Once you have located your readings, the heavy lifting begins. For the readings to be helpful, you must find a way to read, understand, and connect them. Reading and retaining all of the information in your head may seem overwhelming—and very often, it is. Instead of keeping track of your ideas this way, we recommend you experiment with a variety of tools and strategies that will help you organize your notes, focus your thinking, and streamline the reading and writing process.

The “Bubble Outline” is an easy tool to use, providing visual and cognitive reference points for you as you shape and organize your thoughts and ideas.

The concept is simple. First, read an article and take notes. We recommend that as you read you pay attention to four things: main ideas, definitions of terms, examples (or evidence) for the main ideas, and statements or ideas with which you disagree (or “arguable statements”). Once you’ve read and understood the article, translate your notes into three Bubbles

Find three main ideas (or themes) from the article and list one in each Bubble. Next to each Bubble, list definitions, examples, and/or debatable statements related to each of the three themes. That’s it!

A completed Bubble Outline might look like this:

The purpose here is to track as much information as is useful to you. This isn’t an exact science— may be you’ll have more than three themes or ideas to work with, or may be only two pieces of evidence, and so on. Your goal isn’t to find three of everything, but to find enough information that a) you know you understand the primary components of the reading, and b) you are able to connect those primary components to other readings. So fill in what you can, and prepare to move on to the next article. At this point, you are making progress in the reading and thinking that will form the basis and focus of your literature review, and you have divided your sources into manageable pieces.

Now, when you move to the next reading, you can use the ideas or themes from the first article as “lenses” through which you read. For example, once you have read Smith’s article and you are focused on graduate school, time management and working adults, you can begin the next article keyed into those same things. Read this second article just as you did the first, taking notes and reacting to the reading. You may or may not find similar themes; if you do find similar themes, you will likely find that each writer approaches those themes from a different perspective or with different information.

After you finish reading and annotating the second article, stop and complete another Bubble Outline.

Before you move to the third reading, stop and look through both Outlines. Do you see any recurring themes or ideas? If not, no problem. If so, keep them in mind as you read and take notes on your third reading. When you’re done, complete a third Outline. At this point, you’ll have three individual Bubble Outlines, and you’ll be ready to move on to the next stage.
You now have three outlines of themes and evidence from your readings. See what common themes are present in all three articles, and consolidate the individual Outlines into one that merges three important shared themes. (The example uses just two Outlines, but the principal is the same.)

Remember that this exercise is only a tool to help you organize and synthesize material as you read. You may find that you love it and use it every time you read, or you may never use it again. Even if you don’t use the tool, however, you’ll still want to read carefully and take good notes on what you read so that you can find another way to track that important information. With the Bubble Outline, you have essentially generated a kind of data warehouse: lists of ideas and arguments, charts of important themes and evidence, and points of synthesis that show where points within articles merge. You have charted a path of synthesized ideas that tracks your reading and thinking; moreover, you’ve done it in a manageable time frame that is easy to reference. From an even broader perspective, you have made choices about what is and is not important in the literature pertaining to your topic, and those choices have positioned you to write about those connections for an academic audience. Those choices are your voice in the academic conversation.