Session 1: Goals (teaching notes)

Literature reviews in IS

  • Be prepared to illustrate the concept matrix
  • Mention that W&W offered more suggestions, but those are the most prominent ones

Goals

Task

Ask students whether anyone has a typical research question that fits to one of the four categories (write on the whiteboard)

  • Testing: How effective are chatbot interventions for behavioral outcomes?
  • Describing. What are the methods and contexts considered by TAM-research?
  • Explaining: Why is attentional control inefficient in context X?
  • Understanding: How do current research designs restrict our understanding of attention control theory?

Paré 2015: reading

PDF in VC - 25 min, take notes

Optional questions:

  • What is your review type?
  • Summarize the key characteristics
  • For which review type would grey literature be relevant? Which review type is the most/least structured?
  • If you were a journal editor/PhD student, which type would you prefer? (-> connect to frequency table: theoretical reviews are often pursued)

Before

  • Discuss reading strategy (skim headings/figures etc)
  • Ask students to take notes: which parts (figures/statements) led to your decisions?
  • Ask students to Fill out the table.

Exercise

  • Rotate papers to the next student every 5 min (set timer), colleting the batch at the end and moving it to the beginning of the line
  • Students: Classification exercise with classification exercise sheet

Solution:

Highlight particular pages/figures/goals

Maybe even include 1-2 papers that are not reviews?

Classification results

Take note of the central contributions (e.g., a figure / short summary)

Discuss results in groups of goals (testing - explaining, understanding, describing) Ask students about the differences between types in the groups (what are the key characteristics you noticed?)

Describing:

  • Shim2002: Narrative
  • Seuring2013: Descriptive

Understanding:

  • Powell2004: Scoping
  • Belanger2011: Critical - highlight that privacy is a multilevel construct but rarely studied as such

Explaining:

  • Melville2004: Theoretical
  • Otte-Trojel2016: Realist review

Testing:

  • King2006b: Meta-analysis
  • Kitsiou2017: Umbrella
  • Petter2008: Qualitative systematic

Possible additions:

  • Zhao2014: Scoping
  • Carillo2006: Theoretical (integrative)

Any item that you would use as an inspiration (for your proposal)?

Dimensions (Cooper’s taxonomy)

  • Mention my first project - classifying hundreds of papers / review types

  • Dimensions, including knowledge building activities

  • Outlook: 40+ methods/types. Anticipate: key question: how many types do we need (really distinct?) - anticipating Wagner et al. 2021.

Central aspect: Internal coherence

What would be most coherent with your review type? What would be the most incoherent combination?

Internal coherence

  • Requirement for the review protocol - need to study methods papers carefully, identify the characteristics, and justify your choices.

What can we publish from a review project

Highlight that open science is just getting started in the area of literature reviews

End of first session: take notes on your ideas and how to introduce your topic, take notes on questions you would need to research

Review protocols: Their purposes

Purpose of a protocol (registries like PROSPERO, feedback, show examples)

  • A review protocol is a formal document that outlines the plan for a review project.
  • It serves as the foundation for the entire review process.
  • It prompts researchers to consider all stages and potential challenges early in the project.
  • A detailed protocol ensures methodological decisions are well-justified, increasing the trustworthiness of findings.
  • It helps prevent “scope creep” — the uncontrolled expansion of a project’s scope.
  • Publishing the protocol informs others about the ongoing review, reducing duplication of effort and resource waste.