LITERATURE REVIEW 13 August 2009 Learning Objectives

1. LITERATURE REVIEW 13 August 2009 Learning Objectives • To understand the importance of literature review. • To learn how to paraphrase texts from previous studies.

2. Literature Review • A literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. • Not a summary. Not annotated bibliography. • It is also vital that you evaluate this work, show the relationships between different work, and show how it relates to your work.

3. Literature Review Writing a literature review lets you gain and demonstrate skills in two areas: • information seeking: the ability to scan the literature efficiently, using manual or computerized methods, to identify a set of useful articles and books • critical appraisal: the ability to apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies.

4. Why doing a literature review? A rigorous literature search and review affords you: • Finding a research problem • Defining research gap and situating a research with current status quo of a subject • Finding underpinnings and developing framework of study • Searching for research method, research design or research approach

5. Why doing a literature review?Finding a research problem • Children in the City: Reclaiming the Street (2006) • Fun, Fast and Fit: Influences and Motivators for Teenagers Who Cycle to School (2006) • Mixture and Material Factors Affecting the Strength and Shrinkage of High Performance Concrete

6. Why doing a literature review?Defining research gap • A review of literature can ensure a researcher to define his or her study gap by analyzing what previous studies had examined and what have not been investigated.

7. Why doing a literature review? Finding underpinnings • An underpinning is a theory, concept or a theoretical framework that forms a base for a research to take a stride to fulfill the research objectives. • A theory is a set of concepts used to define and/or explain some phenomenon. • A concept is a mental image of a research subject. For example, green infrastructure is comprised of greenery and open spaces linked by streets, waterways and drainage ways around and between urban areas, at all spatial scales (Tzoulas et al. 2007).

8. Why doing a literature review?Method • Searching for research method, research design or research approach. • For example: Green Infrastructure as Network of Social Spaces Well-being of Urban Residents 1) Definition, background and theories and concepts of green infrastructure, community preference study and towns and their existing green infrastructure network. 2) Synthesis on criteria for quality green infrastructure for community well-being. 3) Field surveys and data collection. 4) Descriptive and inferential statistic analyses on urban community’s responses towards green infrastructure. 5) Mapping of findings on social values of urban residents. 6) Documentation of findings of the green infrastructure attributes and design values for enhancing community’s health and well-being and conclusion and implication of study.

9. Method and Design ADMINISTRATION AND RESPONDENTS MEASURE • Survey questionnaire that measure behavioural responses of residents from experience with green spaces in the town. • Contents: • Socio-demographic information - age, gender, ethnicity and length of residency. • Dimensions of attachment in multiple response scale, Likert scale and bipolar adjective rating scale perception, feeling and preference of activities. • sense of attachment to a range of green infrastructure. • Taiping town, Kamunting, Tupai and Assam Kumbang using purposive sampling method. • A variation of the drop-off survey: • (a) drop-off door to door in the neighbourhoods and government office • (b) public space intercept in town centre and green spaces. • Respondents – from two types of neighbourhood housing areas (terrace housing and village-like neighbourhood), spaces in town centre and the Lake Gardens. THE ANALYSIS • The analyses were carried out to discern the uses of green spaces and contributions of the physical properties and attributes of the green spaces to residents’ feeling of attachment

10. Organization of Materials Groat and Wang (2002) suggest that materials gathered from literature search to be organized in the following manner: • What are the key sources? • What are the key theories or concepts? • What are the major issues and debates about this topic? • What are the epistemological and ontological grounds for the discipline? • What are the main questions and problems that have been addressed to date?

11. Concepts and Variables • Concepts are mental images of a research subject. Concepts need to be specified in understandable terms. Terms are names representing a collection of apparently related phenomena and serve the purpose of filing and communication (Babbie, 1992). For example, green infrastructure is comprised of greenery and open spaces linked by streets, waterways and drainage ways around and between urban areas, at all spatial scales (Tzoulas et al. 2007). • Each concept is derived from many from several dimensions or layers of meanings. Dimension is a specifiable aspect of a concept. Each dimension contains only one aspect of a concept.

12. Research Hypotheses or Questions • The major difference between research hypotheses and questions is that hypotheses specify the relationships among variables whereas questions do not. • Theoretical research (basic research) generally involves testing hypotheses developed from theories that are intellectually interesting to the researcher. Applied research that focuses on social problems generally specifies its purpose through research questions.

13. Research Hypotheses or Questions The formulation of RH or RQ shares some common characteristics: • RH or RQ must be conceptually clear • RH or RQ must be statements of fact susceptible to empirical investigation • RH or RQ be specific and narrowly defined to allow actual testing • RH or RQ must be practical • RH or RQ must be suitable to available techniques and research methods • RH are probabilistic in nature and may not be confirmed with certainty