7.2: Your Next Trail

Quote

"by the time the end of it you have this incredible bond that you build you have done this thing you made these discoveries and you have a remarkable story to tell.” (Graduate student participant as cited in Droog et al. 2024, p. 835)

It's time for you to tell the story of what you've found in the literature.

Quote

"And I feel like research scientists take that and we’ll publish. You know, this is what we found, this does not mean that this is applicable to anybody else in any other context. That we’re not saying that this is how humans work. This is just what we found under the specific sets of circumstances and there’s always, you know, that section: opportunities for future research. You know, like I think social scientist researchers [emphasis on researchers] are really good about understanding the limits, but human beings are not. And so you have things that people pick up from data sets without really looking at the limitations or understanding the data well". (Graduate student participant as cited in Droog et al. 2024, p. 844)

Writing

You found sources, connected patterns, synthesized them, and considered where the gaps are. You wrote your research questions and drafted an outline. You're ready to write!

For support with the writing process, I highly recommend Efron & Ravid's book about writing the literature review. The first half of the book will be a review of what we already covered, but their tips on writing are excellent. This text was instrumental in helping me publish my first manuscript.

Efron, S.E. & Ravid, R. (2018). Writing the literature review: A practical guide. Guilford Press.

For a shorter explanation, check out the 4-minute video below:

Scribbr. (2020 May 29). 4 TIPS for writing a literature review's intro, body, & conclusion. [Video] YouTube. [4:29] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW6Uzn-8uMI

Supports

This is a great time to make an appointment with a writing tutor or coach at your university.

After the Literature Review

For some of you, the literature review is only the beginning of your research journey. If you are designing your methodology, collecting & analyzing data, I encourage you to continue to use your research journal. Use it to check-in with yourself about your emotions and how you'd represent research pictorially.

After I conducted and published my research, I continued to use the drawing activity in my classes. I always drew alongside students and each time, my drawing shifted. Often, I published with wonderful co-authors, and my drawing included them, showing the collaborative nature my research had taken. Most critically, once I started writing case studies, creating surveys, conducting interviews, I realized I thought of myself as a researcher. So check in with yourself, especially after you defend or publish - do you see yourself as a researcher now?

There are a myriad of resources available to you about all the next steps of this journey. Check in with your faculty, your university's learning support center for more resources. Additionally, the YouTube content creators I shared throughout this workbook have excellent videos on the additional aspects of research, so check those out too.

Whether you continue with further research or not, I hope the skills you practiced here will continue to support you throughout your academic journey. Outside academia, too, celebrate the small wins, build supports, and move forward one step at a time, even when life doesn't give you a map.