Qualitative Literature Reviews

When a body of literature is primarily qualitative, either alone or in conjunction with a quantitative review, or containing a mix of quantitative and qualitative results, a qualitative review, either alone or in conjunction with a quantitative review, may be required.

This section describes two approaches to conducting qualitative literature reviews. Ogawa and Malen were the first to propose the first method. The second method I propose borrows from phenomenological research and applies it to conducting a literature review. Noblit and Hare are other useful resources for conducting qualitative literature reviews that are not discussed.

Ogawa and Malen’s method

Step 1: Create an audit trail. The reviewer meticulously documents all of the steps taken in this step. The audit trail serves as documentation to show the evidence that supports each finding, where it can be found, and how it was interpreted.

Step 2. Define the focus of the review. This stage is similar to the earlier mentioned problem formation stage. At this stage, the review's constructs are defined, and it is decided what to include and exclude from the review.

Step 3: Search for relevant literature. This stage is similar to the earlier mentioned data collection stage. Nonresearch reports, such as memos, newspaper articles, or meeting minutes, should be included in the review, according to Ogawa and Malen, and should not be regarded as having less value than qualitative research reports. 

Step 4: Classify the documents. The reviewer categorizes the documents in this step based on the types of data they represent. Some documents, for example, maybe first-hand reports of qualitative research, while others may be policy statements about the issue at hand, and still others may describe projects related to the issue.

Step 5: Create summary databases. This stage is comparable to the data evaluation stage. The reviewer creates coding schemes and attempts to reduce the amount of information in the relevant documents at this stage.

You cannot simply read all of these documents, take random notes, and then write a literature review at this point. Instead, you must create narrative summaries and coding schemes that take into account all relevant information in the documents. Because the process is iterative, you may need to develop a coding scheme, apply it to the documents, revise it based on this experience, and re-apply it.

Step 6: Identify constructs and hypothesized causal linkages. Following the creation of summary databases, the task is to identify the essential themes of the documents and develop hypotheses about the relationships between the themes. Unlike meta-analysis, the goal here is to improve understanding of the phenomena under investigation, not to integrate outcomes and identify factors that correlate with outcomes.

 Step 7: Search for contrary findings and rival interpretations. Contrary findings and competing interpretations must be actively sought in the tradition of primary qualitative research. At this point, one could, for example, reread the documents to look for contradictory evidence.

Step 8: Use colleagues or informants to corroborate findings. Findings that corroborate primary qualitative research. In this step, a draft of the report is distributed to colleagues and informants, such as the authors of the documents included in the review, with the request that they critically analyze the review. In this way, the reviewer can confirm the soundness of the review's conclusions based on the extent of agreement among the informants.

The phenomenological method for conducting a qualitative literature review

Phenomenological research aims to discover the essence of a phenomenon's lived experience. When used as a review technique, the goal is to discover the essence of researchers' empirical experiences with a phenomenon. Individuals who have witnessed a particular phenomenon are interviewed in first-hand phenomenology. When using phenomenology as a review technique, the research report serves as the unit of analysis rather than an individual who witnessed the phenomenon. When using phenomenology as a review technique, the data is derived from an empirical research report rather than from interviews.

Not surprisingly, the steps of a phenomenological review mirror the steps of phenomenological research. These steps are briefly described below:

Step 1: Bracketing. The first step in phenomenological research is to identify the phenomenon to be studied. The researcher then "brackets" his or her experience with the phenomenon by explaining his or her own experiences with and perspectives on it.

Step 2: Collecting data. The next step is to gather information about the phenomenon. The researcher would conduct primary phenomenological research by interviewing a group of people who had witnessed the phenomenon. The reviewer would read the reports of scientists who have done research on the phenomenon if the phenomenological method was used as a review tool. As with quantitative reviews, the reviewer must still decide on inclusion criteria and define the research strategy.

Step 3: Identifying meaningful statements. The third step is to find relevant statements. The researcher could accomplish this by highlighting empirical claims made about the phenomenon of interest and collecting those claims, word for word, in a spreadsheet or qualitative software to make the data more manageable.

Step 4. Giving meaning. After identifying meaningful statements, the next step is to give those statements meaning. That is, the reviewer may categorize the meaningful statements and then interpret and paraphrase them as groups.

Step 5. Thick, rich description. The final step is to write a detailed description of the essence of the primary researchers' encounters with the phenomenon. The goal is to describe the essence of the phenomenon as seen through the researchers who investigated it.

Also Read : Quantitative Literature Review

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