Step 6 Systematic Mapping Visualizations
VisualizationsDevelop Graphic Depiction of Trends Found in Research
This stage of synthesizing, blending, or bringing together, the relevant literature may be the most often overlooked and underperformed. It is imperative for the ideas and results you have discovered through creating the analysis of the literature be integrated into a composite picture of what is being studied regarding this particular question or issue.
In general, a literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. It is a very bad sign to scan a literature review and see every paragraph beginning with the name of a researcher. Instead, organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. You are not trying to list all the material published, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your thesis or research question. Through the analysis you’ve done with PowerNotes, you should begin to see trends and themes.
Before actually writing, you need to next create visuals of salient findings and big ideas from individual articles. The concept map format helps you see relationships between and among the literature you have collected. Below are three different types of visuals: 1) characteristics of the found articles, 2) themes and relationships identified in the found articles, and 3) a PRISMA flow diagram.
Need visuals from article
Figure 1. Characteristics of the analyzed literature
Characteristics of the literature reviewed can also be presented visually in charts or graphs. See these examples below:
Figure 2. Percentages of abstracts containing codes in the Methodology category
Figure 3. Percentages of abstracts containing codes in the Setting category
Figure 4. Percentages of abstracts containing codes in the Population category
Figure 5. Percentages of abstracts containing codes in the Data Source(s) category
Figure 6. Percentages of abstracts containing codes in the Intervention category
This second concept map arranges the same 45 articles by the concepts of learning, design and technology studied within aspects of Transformative Learning theory.
Figure 7. Themes and relationships identified in analyzed literature
Having these concept maps (particularly Figure 7) to start writing from helps you talk about the big ideas of your topic rather than just listing who studied what. I can’t overemphasize how much time this takes to go back through your found set of articles and your PowerNotes export and truly come up with what meaning you get out of it. The “whole” — your review of the literature — is much greater than the “sum of its parts” — research articles!
The final visual element you need in your literature review is a PRISMA flow diagram, a graphic depiction of the identification, screening, eligibility and inclusion or studies in systematic reviews. This diagram cannot be created until you finalize the process of exclusion and will be created from the data you collected in your Search Tracking Worksheet. Here’s an example:
Figure 8. PRISMA flow diagram
Visualizing Characteristics Activity
There are general characteristics across the found set of literature that help tell the story of what research has been published on a particular topic. The characteristics you want to track data on include:
- Publication dates – reveals trends in the “age” of this topic
- Methodology – quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, essay, literature review
- Population studied – students, teachers, nurses,
- Setting – ex: university, P12, high school, business, informal learning, etc.
- Data Source(s) – survey or questionnaire, interviews, observation, focus group, existing data
- Discipline – education, engineering, medical, agriculture, etc.
Create visuals to show the characteristics of your found set of literature. Excel is probably the easiest tool to use for this.
PRISMA Flow Diagram Activity
Create a PRISMA flow diagram using the information you have been collecting in your Search Tracking Worksheet and drawing tools or the Creately app: https://creately.com/diagram/example/iomm3thh1/Prisma.
Visualizing Themes Activity
Create a concept map of the themes generated from your data extraction. Here are some different tools you might be interested in trying. For the examples I shared with you in the Module content, I used Coggle for one and Powerpoint for the other (I like the amount of freedom with Powerpoint drawing tools).
https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/
