Doing a Literature Review in Health and Social Care

Right, it's my pleasure to welcome you to this webinar. Um, so the subject of today's meeting is "Doing a Literature Review," by Helen Aviard. Um, I'm sure many of you will be familiar with who Helen is, um, but we'll certainly be getting to that in a moment in some more detail. Helen will be in conversation with Nicola Ring on this topic.

So, just to give you a quick idea of the agenda for the session, we've got 45 minutes today. Um, first of all, I'm just doing this quick welcome, some housekeeping, and we'll introduce our speakers for you. Um, Helen will then be in conversation with Nicola for around about 30 minutes, and then at the end of the session, we would love you to put your questions to Helen. Um, so please do use the Q&A box for that purpose.

Um, so just in case, a very narrow chance, you've not been to a Zoom webinar before, um, once you're in the meeting, you'll make two. One, we want to make sure you can see and hear um everybody that's on the panel today—that would be Helen and Sam at the moment that you can see. Make sure you close down any apps on your system that are going to take a lot of connectivity. So, if you've got Netflix or YouTube open, I'd suggest closing that. We are recording the session; we will be providing the recording by email to everybody who's registered, and we're very happy for you to share it widely with anyone else—your colleagues or your students—after the session, too. So, as I mentioned, if you have a question, please pop it in the Q&A box, and we'll get to that at the end of the session. And if you have a general comment you would like to make, please pop that in the chat box. Lovely. And without further ado, I'd just like to introduce our speakers.

Um, so Helen Aviard, Dr. Helen Aviard, is a principal lecturer at Oxford Brooks University. She's also a best-selling author, which is why we're here today. Um, Helen has now written uh four books with Palgrave Macmillan. We are celebrating the brand new fifth edition of "Doing a Literature Review in Health and Social Care," which is just published in April, which is the reason that we're having the event today. But we're hoping that those of you attending will find lots of useful advice and tips from this conversation that you can take away. And um, in conversation with Helen today, it's Professor Nicola Ring from Edinburgh Napier University. Um, she is Professor of Nursing in the school of health and social care, and she's a very experienced—they're both—at teaching and research, and I'm sure we'll have lots of interesting things to discuss today. So, without further ado, let me hand over to Nicola. And I apologize once again that you can't currently see her.

Thank you very much, Bryony, for that introduction. I'm hoping people can hear me. I think my white—my mic is—is working. I have to say that um, for those of you who can't see me, I look even more stunning than the picture that Bryony just showed on the phone—on the—on the screen. And I'm actually—that what I should say is I'm slightly gutted not to be shown on screen because you have no idea how much housekeeping I did off the bookcase behind me to make it all neat and tidy this morning. So you just have to imagine me standing in front of a beautiful cleared shelf. Anyway, the focus of today is Helen, and I think it's really important to say that um, although in recent years that Helen and I have been collaborating, that I've been using her books, particularly—they're doing—now let's show everyone—from the beginning, I've used them—used it in my homework, but I've also used it and the other books within my teaching and supervision. I've recommended them to undergraduate students, postgraduate students, and in modules that I've led on. So I genuinely am a huge fan of Helen's work, and so I'm not here today just because we're recent collaborators, but I genuinely have used her books a lot. So, Helen, I wanted to start by asking you a really straightforward question, which is: your first book, "Doing a Literature Review in Health and Social Care"—what inspired you to write it? Where did you get the idea from?

Well, thanks very much, Nicola, and thanks, Bryony and Sam, for uh the help in setting up this webinar. Uh, where did I get the idea to write the book from? There wasn't a book, basically. I was um asked to become module leader for our dissertation module and was very keen to do that. I was fairly shortly out of my own PhD, new to academia. I thought, right, great, um, really keen to get on with supporting students, leading that dissertation module, and one of the first things you do in that role is think, right, what are the key texts? And I looked and looked, and there kind of wasn't one. So I carried on supervising in the way that I felt was right and consulted with colleagues about how we felt we should be supervising. Um, and then it was a chance encounter with um somebody from uh Open University Press who just happened to be attending our University one day, and I was just saying that I can't find anything on this, and and from there uh the book—um the idea for the book—developed from there, really.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. So I know that quite a few people on the call—they're already working in universities, and some might go on to work in universities in future—and often there's a lot of focus on um people writing journal papers, but actually your books show just how important that it's also that people are writing textbooks and not just journal papers. I think so. I agree with you; there's an awful lot of focus on on writing um journal articles for their research assessment exercises and so on, and of course that's all well and good, but writing a textbook can develop you as an academic in—in—in—in just—it can be just as important in developing you as an academic. Different—completely different skill—would it show in a way that you are delving into a subject, making it accessible to students, and you learn a massive amount along the way yourself? So um, obviously both are important, but I think writing textbooks for yourself as a—for your own development as an academic is something that I would absolutely recommend. I always say to people, if you don't know about a subject, write a book. I—I've never been brave enough to write a book yet. Maybe you should be. So when you first—you know, your seminal text—"Literature Review" book—is known as fifth edition, but did you ever imagine at the beginning they would have this much impact and be so popular with readers internationally?

Uh, yes and no is the answer. I knew when I was writing the book—I loved writing the book. I just felt like I was speaking to my students. I felt like I was capturing the ideas that we were sharing as colleagues. I—I felt that it was a good creation in the making—that that's for sure. Um, no, didn't have any idea that it would speak to students and staff in the in the way that it—that it does, and I'm delighted. And when I get emails and messages from students to say how much it's helped them, honestly, it just made a highlight of my day every time. Um, because you know that's what it's about. If we can share our understanding of research, help our students develop their understanding of research, send them out into practice as research-knowledgeable um practitioners, then I'm absolutely delighted. I feel like we've made our contribution. So yeah, very, very rewarding. And thank you. So again, quite a lot of people on the call are M-students, and but what they're probably interested in knowing is that: what do you mean by literature review when you're referring to the title of your book, and when would listeners do one?

Oh, that's a really good question. So a literature review can be a standalone piece of work, or it can be the piece of work that you do prior to an empirical study. So the standalone piece of work is where you have a question, and you answer that with the available existing research. And a lot of our students do a dissertation like that. So you set your research question, you identify really clear inclusion and exclusion criteria, and you gather the research—it's generally research, not always, but generally—you gather the research on that particular question, and then you—it's a little bit like one piece of research is just one piece of a jigsaw, and when you see all of the research in its entirety around that question, or all the bits of the jigsaw gradually come together. So in that case, you're using the existing literature—normally research—to answer a particular question. Now, um, that is very, very slightly different from the literature you do—pro review—you do prior to an empirical study, where let's say you've got a research question, and you're about to go and do a survey or a questionnaire or whatever your research method is, and you do a literature review, but in this particular case, instead of bringing together all the literature to answer a question, you're bringing all the literature together to demonstrate a gap. Now the processes are almost identical: you search for literature, you appraise the quality of its evidence, you analyze the literature, but in the first approach, when it's a standalone literature review, you're looking at the evidence in its entirety; when it's uh prior to an empirical project, you're demonstrating a gap. So it's a really subtle difference, but it's really quite an important difference that people need to sort of be aware of when they're starting out on a review.

I think that's so important, Helen, from what you're saying there, because um it's almost like for anybody, whether they're coming at it with an idea for, say, some honors dissertation or research proposal for a doctoral qualification or research proposal for an application—whatever—sometimes there is a temptation to jump to the literature reviewing to support your empirical question, but you often miss the book, which is actually: does this research need done in the first place? Is there a gap? And so that um, or preliminary or first step or foundational step is: what's out there that needs—that's been done? Where is the gap? And I love that idea of the jigsaw because, again, often supporting students or even in my own research, it's quite easy to sometimes start off with a slight level of—I wouldn't say bias, but you—you often think you know all the research on the literature that's been written in a particular area, but often you only know maybe from your discipline, maybe from nursing, but you may be not aware of—I know there's somebody who's a podiatrist on the call—you might not know or say something diabetes foot also. You might know what's wrong with my nursing point of view, but not from Podiatry City. And so I really love that idea about the doing a literature review is that standalone first step really to complete those jigsaw to get a better idea before you then progress, although I understand that completing the jigsaw might be a purpose because you're doing an honors dissertation or something, but I really love that idea about about the jigsaw. So we may come back to that in the Q&A bit um uh later on. So I think you really clearly and succinctly said there about why doing a literature review and how that differs from doing one where in the context of empirical research. So another—I'm a quite small question, but a very challenging one, which is: what is the most important message of your literature review book? Hey, no pressure, Helen.

Oh, that's a really good question. The most important message is, I think, that at any level we can encourage students to do a literature review systematically—not to get confused with the term systematic review, which hasn't—you know, it has a meaning within the Cochrane Collaboration and so on—but we can encourage all of our students, or whatever level they're working at, to do their review systematically. And that means having a focused question—that doesn't have people sort of going off at all sorts of tangents—but a really focused question, followed by a really clear and comprehensive search um for literature, followed by really clear critical appraisal, which allows people to identify the strengths and weaknesses and then to give more weight to the more robust evidence that they find in the subsequent analysis. And I think it's that very sort of clear, structured, uh logical approach to doing a literature review that is the most important message coming out of the book. Um, right, so I think—and I think it really helps keep people um focused and—had to have that streamlined question that they then follow through. And also, I think one thing that sort of often needs um a little bit of clarity is the difference between background literature and the literature review. Now, I'm not saying the way that I—I describe it is the only way, because you know there're always in academia—there's lots of different ideas—but I feel that probably to keep a student sort of focused on their project, it's useful to think of the background literature as just that—the much wider background literature—um which you discuss to a larger or lesser extent at the beginning of a project, but the literature review is something different from that. It's focused; it's—so studies that—that lead directly onto the research question that you are looking at, or that focus directly on your research question—it—that the most important thing about a lit review is that it—the—the literature that you use is all focused on one's specific question, and that's—so that's probably the one of the main messages in the book, and then the rest of the book is how to—is how to do it. I think it's very practical steps in how to achieve that. Because it was sticking to—when you mentioned that that your jigsaw—Paul said, yeah, actually it's a bit like, you know, you've got the picture on the jigsaw box, and it's a bit about that you've maybe got most of the edges done, but not all of it, and you're—you're trying to get the—I'm sorry, you can't see me on screen, so you can't see my hand actions, but you know you're trying to do the outside of the jigsaw—I'm working—and then sometimes you might find a bit of—if your picture's of the beach—that you might find a bit of sea, but then you actually realize that that jigsaw piece of the sea actually belongs to a different jigsaw; it's a—it's a background reading; it's sort of relevant, but actually it's not relevant to your picture and jigsaw you're building. So I—I really like that bit about the—you know, you've got this focus, and you know what you're doing—what information you're after—and you're making sure that you're not bringing in literature that is of interest but not directly relevant to where you're going.

Okay, so that's—that's the key message then, really. So um, what I really like about all your books—obviously particularly the health and literally Health and Social Care—is that the books—they're not so massive that you need like Eddie Sobart to help you get your book—carry your book around—it. They're a good size; they're not too clunky; the content's succinct, accessible, and I really like how there's the clear chapters, and it's focused and very applied. So how do you—how did you manage to achieve that within your book? How do you know what readers want in the chapters?

That's a really good question. I think sometimes we bombard students with too much information, and they then fail to—it's either that—easy then not to be able to see the wood for the trees. And if we give people too much, you just—I—I don't know if you've ever watched a documentary and you've come away at the end of it none the wiser than when you started, because there's so much information in it, you're not getting the key points. And I think I was very keen to make sure that we got—there—I got the key points over, that we would then build on, rather than lots and lots and lots of points that people then can't see what the key points are. So, and it was quite a challenge because obviously the last thing we want to do is to oversimplify material that then um, you know, it loses—loses its meaning. So the challenge was taking the um more complex text and—for example, a key text that I used with the was the Cochrane Collaboration handbook—and now obviously that is—that is designed for teams of researchers who are doing complex projects, but I sort of read through that, and I took the—the most fundamental aspects from that that I felt were needed and distilled those down into a book. But when I looked at it, we were still getting—students could do great—really good, strong pieces of work from this, but they weren't uh sidetracked by lots of different detail that—i.e., made the decision—could possibly be left out in this case at undergraduate level. And then when I revisited the book with some colleagues to the postgraduate, but we made similar decisions as to what was required on a postgraduate level. And I think that's what I like about the books—and that I recommended them myself to students at the different—you know, undergraduate and postgraduate—is that in some ways it's your book is like an uh sort of gateway into the topic, and if somebody's doing an honors dissertation, then the reading and some of the records that you cite will be enough for them to have that level of knowledge, but if somebody's um using your book because they're doing a PhD, then it gives them ideas of where to go up and do further reading that's much more in depth that helps them show the level of knowledge and originality they need to show at level 12. Anyway, they—obviously for people doing a literature review for whatever reason they're doing it—what matters is that they need a good research question. So what are your tips for students in identifying a research question?

Oh, that's a really good question. Go small. By far the biggest piece of feedback we get—we give—I and my colleagues on the call probably agree with this—is that it's too big a question; it's too big. We're always—always saying, go small, go small. And then she'll think, well, how do I go small? And they sort of say, well, I'll limit it to a geographical area. No, no, we didn't mean small like that. The—the—the concept of the question has got to be um small, because the idea is you're going out and you're getting all of the research on a small and focused question. So it—but in a way, it—that—you don't always know what small is until you've been to the literature to find out. So you—you might think, oh, there's going to be tons of research on that—that's going to be too big—but then you go to the literature, you do some initial searches—I'm a great fan of doing sort of some initial searches on SciELO just to sort of test the waters a bit—and what you thought was a massive—massive—there must be loads on that—it's really big topic—and you can't—you don't find very much. You think, oh, well, okay, maybe this question is focused enough, or maybe it's the other way around. You go to a topic, and there's—you—there's loads and loads of research on it, including some already published literature reviews, which we'll probably talk about a little bit later on, and then that topic's too big. So—so you can't really tell how focused a question is until you've been to the literature to see how much is out there. So those two always go up and hand in hand: you have your question, go to the literature, have your question, go back to the literature, and those two things generally would happen um hand in hand when you've got an idea for how much literature is available. And that is—you know, again, because for me I like books that are applied, and I like how in your literature review book you've got examples of broad research questions and then show what they would look like as a focused one, and of course they're—they're applied examples—they're on—on health—and they're relatable to people in different health disciplines or from social care. And I—I do think because often when students get the message of be specific, be focused, it's still helpful to see nice examples like what you have in your book. But—and then also what you're saying to is—is that—I'm—I'm with you that the initial searching—that the preliminary searching for literature—is really, really important. Is there other tips that you've got for literature searching that you would like to mention to people that are listening?

I've come, after years of working in this area, to the conclusion that literature searching is not as intuitive as we sometimes might think. I don't know if any of my professional students are on the call, but we devote a whole day to searching in our professional doctorate course. I'm sure when they look at the schedule, they think, "Seriously?" But actually, every time I sit in on sessions with the librarian, I learn a bit more, and I've come to the conclusion that it's more complex than we might like to think. I think this is possibly assisted by the use of Google: you type in a phrase, and lots of stuff comes up. But searching is far more complex, and I think it's really useful to break down the sort of common elements.

Common errors are: people sometimes think, "Oh, if a word is included in my research question, I must search it." Well, no, because it might be implied in other words, and so adding that in might just make the search too specific. Um, so people often think, "Oh, if it's in my question, I must include it." Together with that goes the use of "and," which requires that both words appear in the search. So if you have too many "ands," your search will just be too restricted. You can quite often see at a glance how good that search is going to be by understanding the students' use of "and" and "or." Common errors with "or" are: you just go too broad, or the words should mean exactly the same. If you go too broad, you're going to have heaps of other stuff coming in. So it is a real skill that we all need to keep refining and developing.

And I think, too, from my experience of doing much reviewing and supervising people that are doing them, is that searching for literature isn't a linear process; there's lots of going backwards and forwards, and it's definitely not a one-off. No, no, no, no. And also, often people—not just students, but researchers, too—can be a bit frightened of going wrong with their searching. But I just think, well, actually, if you've gone wrong and you've picked that up, that's really good, as opposed to a learning experience. Actually, you just call it a preliminary literature search, refine your search terms, and you do it again. No, absolutely. And keep a record of your search as well, because there's nothing wrong with your supervisor or somebody saying, "Well, did you search for...?" and you're like, "Oh..." So keep really meticulous records so that when you're thinking, "Oh, did I have that term in...? Did I...?" then you've got a record of that, so you don't have to keep repeating the searches.

Yeah, and I think, too—I know that not everybody on the call is doing a PhD, but some are—I think what matters, too, is when you're doing your literature searching, your vibe might not be for a couple of years, and you know it's possible that you'll update it before your bible. But actually, it's really important that you do document and have these clear records about why you used particular search terms, or why you used particular databases, or how—and document and articulate how your literature searching strategy was refined, because it is a really complex process. And I think it's important people do recognize that, because sometimes they forget by the time they get to write up. I'm conscious of the time because we do need um questions. Do you want me to ask Helen one more question, and then we just go to what people want to know, or do you want to just go straight to what people want to know now?

I think we have time for a very short one last question, then we'll move on to the questions we've got come up in the chat. Okay, so Helen, a political street: has anything changed in which student viewing since you wrote Edition one? Um, no, I don't think so. I think we've—no, I don't think it has. I think we've all got better at it. When I go to our student conferences, I—I think that nursing and healthcare is ahead of the game with this, honestly. I do, not just saying that. I think—I think we have generally got better at it; better at the need—identifying the need to um review the literature in the way that we've just described. I am—at the principles of fundamentally stayed the same. Obviously, there are lots of different methods for doing a literature review, which we talk about in the post-grad book. We don't—we tend to say to our undergraduate students, "Just focus on the basic principles of doing a review; don't worry about slotting it into a particular method." But there are particular methods, like an integrated review, meta-ethnography, and so on, and um those are very useful for people studying at later stages. For our undergrads, um my advice is just focus on being systematic, with a small 's,' with the searching, the appraisal, and the analysis. And also, you've mentioned already the importance of records, because it's good, not just your searching, but any other parts of the process. And you know, there has been considerable growth in reporting guidance—research reporting guidance and literature reviewing reporting guidance—as opposed as you wrote your first edition, and uh and so I think, you know, but your—your book, you know, tells it—just it raises the importance of good reporting and good recording. And I suppose it's just to remind listeners about following appropriate reporting guidance and things like that. So Sam, do you want to ask questions, or shall I have a quick—do you want to ask a question? I'll have a quick swizz up there—yeah, look at the chat to see bizarre things that you ask. Sounds good to me. I've got a couple in the Q&A session, so I'll just start first one there. Um, the first one is about if you're able to talk alone about scoping reviews in comparison with literature reviews; the differences we might choose one mythology. That's a really good question. Scoping—so my take on this is: scoping reviews—it's based—they're basically like a mapping exercise where you want to know what's out there, and you want to see who's published on what, and they're really useful reviews because somebody's gone and plotted what's out there and mapped it. There is a little bit of confusion in the literature sometimes. Um, I edit for the Journal of Advanced Nursing, and sometimes scoping reviews come in, and you think, "Well, that's not scoping; that looks like a…" So there can be a little bit of confusion. You would do a scoping review when you want to map out what's known, and therefore, generally speaking, um they don't contain a lot of analysis. So normally, for a dissertation, you probably wouldn't do a scoping review because they don't give you that—they don't have a lot of—there isn't a lot of analysis in there, so they don't allow you to develop those skills. They quite often—the preliminary work ahead of a study—and quite a lot of people will do a scoping review and then move on to do um a deeper analysis whenever—when they've identified their research question.

Yeah, I'm with you on that, Helen. It goes back to the purpose: why are you doing a scoping review and not another type of review, for example, like integrative, or why you're doing a systematic literature review? And it is about the purpose, and often—they're having possible growth and people doing scoping reviews, but often it's like the first part of their empirical research is that they've already established through systematic literature—there's a systematic review of the literature—that there's a gap and that more research is needed, but they really need to have a better understanding of—and what research has been done today in that area in all related fields, not just say in nursing. So it's about the purpose, isn't it? You're like, Helen, why people need to be sure why they're doing something and taking the right approach. Thank you both. We've got quite a good question here from Charlotte, which I'm sure resonates with quite a few other instructors that are—so lecturer of nursing and new to role: what do you think the best way to support and guide students to develop this process in dissertation meetings is? Oh, that's a really good question. Um, this is a very practical thing, but when I meet with students, generally it's little and often, because I think it's really important that the student takes control of this—the process themselves, but with a lot of prompts and helps. So I quite often meet with a student for 10 minutes, and then they come back three days later—another 10 minutes. Um, I don't think—so I think—and I think that helps the student to sort of take control of it: "Well, have you thought about this? Have you searched for this?" And—and so I think um it's really important that the student has control of the topic, so it—I think the role of the supervisor is just nudging the student and reassuring: "Yes, you're doing the right thing," because it's—it's probably—starting off—it's a long time since I was a student—but starting off, it can make—probably seems a bewildering process. So it's a case of support, but nudging them and sort of—so lots of questions, lots of support, but I think um little and often enables the student to go—because quite often you can't have more of a conversation if you don't—if this—if you don't know what literature's out there; it's not a good use of your time with this student together to be searching sooner—like you—you know, you wouldn't get through your day. So advise the student to go off and search, then they'll come back two days later with what they've got, and you have another 15 minutes, and then they—you—they go off and do something else. So I think that very supportive, guided structure, and keeping the student firmly in charge of the project, is—it's probably—it's the way I—it's the way I do it. Anyone—can I just add two because you mentioned nurturing, and that is so important, because in my experience that we know that many students are on placement, we've got their theory modules, but many of them have got paid jobs as well. And for me, it's the nudging them to start early enough, because uh the quality of a systematic review of literature that you do three days before your dissertation hand-in is not going to be the same level of quality and rigor and systematicism as if you started, you know, three weeks, even, or preferably three months at the start of the of the module, because you do need that time for reflection; you know, you do need time to redo searches and refine your search terms and things. So I'm with you, Helen—nudging, I am—and to nudge them to start um maybe not as early as you would like, but at least earlier than than three days before submission. No, definitely stage advice. And I think um they're in the chat there's a question which has come as a result we just talked about. Um, the owner asks: when choosing a chapter for submission to my supervisor, which chapter or content would be the most ideal to get the best overall feedback on their literature review? I think I'd have to say methods, I think, because that is the key to the whole thing. I mean, like I said before, if you—it—you can tell whether the writer understands the process by reading the methods. Um, and so I think—I think that's probably—and and there are lots of tips there. So, for example, 99 times out of 100 a lit review will be papers, and it will be research papers, but not always. So I say to students: if you're finding that you're answering your question not with research papers, go and check with your supervisor that they agree that you're on the right lines. And that would also come out in the methods. I mean, I say to students: try and identify what type of research you need to answer that question at a very basic level: is it qualitative, quantitative, and/or is it—is it maybe not research? Um, but that's very unusual. But going to the methods—going to the—is probably the key to everything, I would suggest. And again, I would say: don't worry when you're drafting chapters, because sometimes you do put information in the wrong place, and you might have it—maybe in your results section—and you know, but that's what the supervisors are therefore to sort of say to—actually, that's really important information, but it needs to be in your methods rather than in your discussion or your findings—or reminding you to use things like the PRISMA reporting—um—template—that's not the right word—but you know what I mean—things like that. Thank you. Um, so moving on to another question from the Q&A section. Um, so we have a question here about: what are the strategies—or what strategies do you use to ensure the finding section is cohesive? And I've always just summarizing different research papers, and they go on to say: should the discussion, but I know you focus on analyzing different aspects of the findings, or should it address potential issues within the papers, such as broad methodology? Oh, that's a big one. Yeah, that's a lot better. Okay, uh findings are generally a thematic analysis. So common errors here: people write about—develop themes that aren't related to their research questions. So tip number one: make sure all of your themes—if there's interesting stuff in the papers, but it doesn't relate to your research question, just forget it, because you haven't got—that's—you haven't got scope for that. So make sure all of your themes address your research questions. So ideally, you look at the research question, and then you look at all of the themes, and they all answer them. If you didn't read the narrative, you would—from the headings—you would get the answer to the research question. I think that's really important, and it stops you going off at a tangent. And also, try not to write just as a theme: "education," well, that doesn't—you know—will research or whatever. Try and give the theme a proper name that helps you understand its contribution to answering the research question. All of the things should contribute to answering the research question, and in—and of themselves, they kind of make a story. Um, they—so you can—you can order your theme so that they make a story, so that one leads on um to the next, so that the—the result is a really um contextual, um comprehensive um answer to your research question. You do bring in strengths and weaknesses of the literature into your themes. I encourage students to give more weight to the stronger studies, um and—and that's how the—the critical appraisal comes into the development of your themes. And can I just add two as well, Helen? Sometimes when you're reporting your findings, as to report to on what's not—I am—there, what's not in the papers you've looked at. So, for example, I've got an interest in young people's mental health, but very often the study participants are young, white females, and they're not necessarily representative of all those young people with mental health issues. So I would add, too, is: look to see what—whose voices are missing, for example, in—in studies. Yeah, no, absolutely. So critical appraisal is—and I think the other thing to remember is that when you're doing a literature review, um students have probably done a lot of searching, although, as I'm saying, you know, we always learn more; they've probably done a lot of critical appraisals. So people come to a lit review already armed with those—those first two skills that are needed, and—and then it's the data analysis, probably, is the new thing that they're engaging with. But the—the—the first two section—sort of processes that need to happen—people probably come armed with good skills already in that area. Brendan just popped a question in the chat, and sorry, let's jump over some of the earlier questions, but I think it's quite a good one. Um, when a student avoids doing a literature review—a topic or question that lacks sufficient analysis literature—does this avoid students conducting reviews and research that cries out for more research on that topic? That's a really good question. The jury's out on that, for me, in—in this publishing industry; they're referred to as empty reviews, you know, so reviews that—and they are really useful because it's useful to know that we don't know anything about it. Now, obviously, it depends on the award. If it's for an undergrad dissertation, I wouldn't mark anyone down if they went through the whole process and found very little—like, I personally wouldn't do that—as long as they were able to meet the criteria of the ward or the award for which they were studying. Obviously, it's more satisfying for the student if they've got something to write about and they've got more research to write about. And at a master's level, you probably struggle to meet the criteria. But um, yeah, it's out, basically. But I think it's easier for the student to widen the topic so that they are able to then include a few more papers. And—and I could just add there, too, that sometimes people will—maybe doing a review because they're looking to see on mental health nursing specifically, and it might be they need to broaden out the review to look at qualified staff and students in mental health, or it may be that you have to look at all fields of nursing. So there's often ways that you can broaden out so what you're looking for without necessarily changing your topic or moving too far away from it. And that's when a good conversation with your supervisor is really useful there. So I mean—and related to this question—Amanda's only found 12 relevant papers. You know, let's just surround that question, subjects, there's this too few—yeah, yeah. It depends on—for an undergraduate project, that would be pretty standard, I would say, but it does depend on the depth and—of the quality of the research and the depth of the data that's provided in that research. So obviously, there's a lot of in-depth data, you'll be able to do much more with the analysis than if it's a bit more—not quite so much there. Kieran has a question earlier: a lot of their students struggle with structuring a review and then end up just dumping or stacking research, even though obvious organizational structure. So what's your advice in terms of structuring your review and where in the process to start thinking about that structure? Yeah, well, I guess that refers to the identification of themes, um and—and—and I guess this refers back to my earlier question that the themes arise from what's relevant to your research question. So I think it's—if you're—I mean, there are other ways; you don't have to do a thematic analysis, but probably most people do a thematic analysis, and I think that helps you move—so you're not discussing um your results paper by paper, because that lacks a sort of overall analysis. But your—your dividing the—the find—the findings into themes, and you discuss—you discuss uh the findings theme by theme rather than paper by paper. I think that allows a deeper form of analysis. Um, Kira asks: if you're investigating a topic which there has been very little to no research conducted previously? I think you'll have to draw on research that is as close to your topic as possible in the literature review itself. Yeah, absolutely. The last of that, Helen, haven't we a little bit—oh, did you already? In my apologies. Yeah, you continue talking at that point. Yeah, I mean, there's always parallel—you know, you might be interested in patients' experience of X, but there's nothing on that, but if you go to a related condition, there might—so—so it's these are sort of methodological decisions that um you can make um as—as you—as you go along. But also, in that, it's clear that there is—you make it clear to the readers that we just don't know about X, but what we do know about is—is—is Y. Just to briefly say that. That's queer again—maybe looking again at your search terms matter, because it could be that the search terms you're using are UK-centered, and actually, who—maybe used a different word—that they use in America, Australia—you might get more hits. So it's that bit about the reflective—reflection as well. So I'm unconscious of the time—going—you said we've got 45 minutes, and then basically we'll implode, is that right? If anyone is jumping off the meeting, it's recorded, so we'll share—if any talking to yourself as you leave. Um, I believe yes. Should we just answer that one more question then? Yeah, I'll do one more question, then Brian can jump in with um a little bit more housekeeping.

Okay, and um, so there's a couple of questions. Um, Nicole's question about the difference between systematic literature of a scoping review: I, I, I what I'd like to say to that question is that people sometimes tag on the term "systematic" that in front of other, so is a scoping review isn't generally called a systematic scoping review, but quite sometimes people put that term on to sort of emphasize that the reviews being done in a comprehensive systematic fashion. You might see a systematic integrated review; well, really it's an integrative review, but people add on that that term. So I think the most important point there is identifying what type of literature review you're doing and sticking to the method for doing it.

I've written quite a lot on the sort of confusion and sometimes merging of the different methods for doing a literature review, and I think sadly because there are so many different types, people can get confused. And I think it's important to find a method, go to the people who've undertaken that method and and have written about it, and um, stick to it. And if you don't agree with what the editor says, uh, have a conversation with the editor.

Be mindful of the time before I pass a mic over to Brian. I wanted to say, Helen, that you know, as academics we were supposed to produce work that has an impact, and your books have had phenomenal impact. And I just want to say a big thank you for all people like myself out there who've been using these books over the years, and to just say yeah, so thank you. That's what I want to say: thank you, Helen, for you know, coming up with this idea and producing all these high-quality books. And I'm going to pass the mic over to to Bryony, and I'll be quiet now.

Wonderful, thank you. I don't know if you can see my screen at all. Yep. Excuse me. I just wanted to show you some information about Helen's book, um, because we're here ready to celebrate this this new publication, this fifth edition. Thank you all so much for joining, and thank you so much to Helen and for Nicola for your time and for sharing your expertise today. Um, there will be detailed circulates to everybody that's registered. Um, if you want to get a copy of the book, um, there will be a promotion code to give you a discount if you want to get a hold of a copy through our website. If you're involved in teaching students, you'd like to have a look at a copy and to evaluate for your course, there'll be details of how to do that too. So thank you.