related literature of qualitative research

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Qualitative research: literature review .

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Exploring the literature review 

Literature review model: 6 steps.

Adapted from The Literature Review , Machi & McEvoy (2009, p. 13).

Your Literature Review

Step 2: search, boolean search strategies, search limiters, ★ ebsco & google drive.

1. Select a Topic

"All research begins with curiosity" (Machi & McEvoy, 2009, p. 14)

Selection of a topic, and fully defined research interest and question, is supervised (and approved) by your professor. Tips for crafting your topic include:

• Be specific. Take time to define your interest.
• Topic Focus. Fully describe and sufficiently narrow the focus for research.
• Academic Discipline. Learn more about your area of research & refine the scope.
• Avoid Bias. Be aware of bias that you (as a researcher) may have.
• Document your research. Use Google Docs to track your research process.
• Research apps. Consider using Evernote or Zotero to track your research.

Consider Purpose

What will your topic and research address?

In The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students , Ridley presents that literature reviews serve several purposes (2008, p. 16-17).  Included are the following points:

• Historical background for the research;
• Overview of current field provided by "contemporary debates, issues, and questions;"
• Theories and concepts related to your research;
• Introduce "relevant terminology" - or academic language - being used it the field;
• Connect to existing research - does your work "extend or challenge [this] or address a gap;" 
• Provide "supporting evidence for a practical problem or issue" that your research addresses.

★ Schedule a research appointment

At this point in your literature review, take time to meet with a librarian. Why? Understanding the subject terminology used in databases can be challenging. Archer Librarians can help you structure a search, preparing you for step two. How? Contact a librarian directly or use the online form to schedule an appointment. Details are provided in the adjacent Schedule an Appointment box.

2. Search the Literature

Collect & Select Data: Preview, select, and organize

AU Library is your go-to resource for this step in your literature review process. The literature search will include books and ebooks, scholarly and practitioner journals, theses and dissertations, and indexes. You may also choose to include web sites, blogs, open access resources, and newspapers. This library guide provides access to resources needed to complete a literature review.

Books & eBooks: Archer Library & OhioLINK

Databases: Scholarly & Practitioner Journals

Review the Library Databases tab on this library guide, it provides links to recommended databases for Education & Psychology, Business, and General & Social Sciences.

Expand your journal search; a complete listing of available AU Library and OhioLINK databases is available on the Databases  A to Z list . Search the database by subject, type, name, or do use the search box for a general title search. The A to Z list also includes open access resources and select internet sites.

Databases: Theses & Dissertations

Review the Library Databases tab on this guide, it includes Theses & Dissertation resources. AU library also has AU student authored theses and dissertations available in print, search the library catalog for these titles.

Did you know? If you are looking for particular chapters within a dissertation that is not fully available online, it is possible to submit an ILL article request . Do this instead of requesting the entire dissertation.

Newspapers:  Databases & Internet

Consider current literature in your academic field. AU Library's database collection includes The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Wall Street Journal .  The Internet Resources tab in this guide provides links to newspapers and online journals such as Inside Higher Ed , COABE Journal , and Education Week .

The Chronicle of Higher Education has the nation’s largest newsroom dedicated to covering colleges and universities.  Source of news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators

The Chronicle features complete contents of the latest print issue; daily news and advice columns; current job listings; archive of previously published content; discussion forums; and career-building tools such as online CV management and salary databases. Dates covered: 1970-present.

Offers in-depth coverage of national and international business and finance as well as first-rate coverage of hard news--all from America's premier financial newspaper. Covers complete bibliographic information and also subjects, companies, people, products, and geographic areas. 

Comprehensive coverage back to 1984 is available from the world's leading financial newspaper through the ProQuest database. 

Newspaper Source provides cover-to-cover full text for hundreds of national (U.S.), international and regional newspapers. In addition, it offers television and radio news transcripts from major networks.

Provides complete television and radio news transcripts from CBS News, CNN, CNN International, FOX News, and more.

Search Strategies & Boolean Operators

There are three basic boolean operators:  AND, OR, and NOT.

Used with your search terms, boolean operators will either expand or limit results. What purpose do they serve? They help to define the relationship between your search terms. For example, using the operator AND will combine the terms expanding the search. When searching some databases, and Google, the operator AND may be implied.

Overview of boolean terms

About the example: Boolean searches were conducted on November 4, 2019; result numbers may vary at a later date. No additional database limiters were set to further narrow search returns.

Database Search Limiters

Database strategies for targeted search results.

Most databases include limiters, or additional parameters, you may use to strategically focus search results.  EBSCO databases, such as Education Research Complete & Academic Search Complete provide options to:

• Limit results to full text;
• Limit results to scholarly journals, and reference available;
• Select results source type to journals, magazines, conference papers, reviews, and newspapers
• Publication date

Keep in mind that these tools are defined as limiters for a reason; adding them to a search will limit the number of results returned.  This can be a double-edged sword.  How? 

• If limiting results to full-text only, you may miss an important piece of research that could change the direction of your research. Interlibrary loan is available to students, free of charge. Request articles that are not available in full-text; they will be sent to you via email.
• If narrowing publication date, you may eliminate significant historical - or recent - research conducted on your topic.
• Limiting resource type to a specific type of material may cause bias in the research results.

Use limiters with care. When starting a search, consider opting out of limiters until the initial literature screening is complete. The second or third time through your research may be the ideal time to focus on specific time periods or material (scholarly vs newspaper).

★ Truncating Search Terms

Expanding your search term at the root.

Truncating is often referred to as 'wildcard' searching. Databases may have their own specific wildcard elements however, the most commonly used are the asterisk (*) or question mark (?).  When used within your search. they will expand returned results.

Asterisk (*) Wildcard

Using the asterisk wildcard will return varied spellings of the truncated word. In the following example, the search term education was truncated after the letter "t."

Explore these database help pages for additional information on crafting search terms.

• EBSCO Connect: Searching with Wildcards and Truncation Symbols
• EBSCO Connect: Searching with Boolean Operators
• EBSCO Connect: EBSCOhost Search Tips
• EBSCO Connect: Basic Searching with EBSCO
• ProQuest Help: Search Tips
• ERIC: How does ERIC search work?

★ EBSCO Databases & Google Drive

Tips for saving research directly to Google drive.

Researching in an EBSCO database?

It is possible to save articles (PDF and HTML) and abstracts in EBSCOhost databases directly to Google drive. Select the Google Drive icon, authenticate using a Google account, and an EBSCO folder will be created in your account. This is a great option for managing your research. If documenting your research in a Google Doc, consider linking the information to actual articles saved in drive.

EBSCO Databases & Google Drive

EBSCOHost Databases & Google Drive: Managing your Research

This video features an overview of how to use Google Drive with EBSCO databases to help manage your research. It presents information for connecting an active Google account to EBSCO and steps needed to provide permission for EBSCO to manage a folder in Drive.

About the Video:  Closed captioning is available, select CC from the video menu.  If you need to review a specific area on the video, view on YouTube and expand the video description for access to topic time stamps.  A video transcript is provided below.

• EBSCOhost Databases & Google Scholar

Defining Literature Review

What is a literature review.

A definition from the Online Dictionary for Library and Information Sciences .

A literature review is "a comprehensive survey of the works published in a particular field of study or line of research, usually over a specific period of time, in the form of an in-depth, critical bibliographic essay or annotated list in which attention is drawn to the most significant works" (Reitz, 2014). 

A systemic review is "a literature review focused on a specific research question, which uses explicit methods to minimize bias in the identification, appraisal, selection, and synthesis of all the high-quality evidence pertinent to the question" (Reitz, 2014).

Recommended Reading

About this page

EBSCO Connect [Discovery and Search]. (2022). Searching with boolean operators. Retrieved May, 3, 2022 from https://connect.ebsco.com/s/?language=en_US

EBSCO Connect [Discover and Search]. (2022). Searching with wildcards and truncation symbols. Retrieved May 3, 2022; https://connect.ebsco.com/s/?language=en_US

Machi, L.A. & McEvoy, B.T. (2009). The literature review . Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press: 

Reitz, J.M. (2014). Online dictionary for library and information science. ABC-CLIO, Libraries Unlimited . Retrieved from https://www.abc-clio.com/ODLIS/odlis_A.aspx

Ridley, D. (2008). The literature review: A step-by-step guide for students . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

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Educational resources and simple solutions for your research journey

How to Write Review of Related Literature (RRL) in Research

A review of related literature (a.k.a RRL in research) is a comprehensive review of the existing literature pertaining to a specific topic or research question. An effective review provides the reader with an organized analysis and synthesis of the existing knowledge about a subject. With the increasing amount of new information being disseminated every day, conducting a review of related literature is becoming more difficult and the purpose of review of related literature is clearer than ever.  

All new knowledge is necessarily based on previously known information, and every new scientific study must be conducted and reported in the context of previous studies. This makes a review of related literature essential for research, and although it may be tedious work at times , most researchers will complete many such reviews of varying depths during their career. So, why exactly is a review of related literature important?    

Table of Contents

Why a review of related literature in research is important  

Before thinking how to do reviews of related literature , it is necessary to understand its importance. Although the purpose of a review of related literature varies depending on the discipline and how it will be used, its importance is never in question. Here are some ways in which a review can be crucial.  

• Identify gaps in the knowledge – This is the primary purpose of a review of related literature (often called RRL in research ). To create new knowledge, you must first determine what knowledge may be missing. This also helps to identify the scope of your study.  
• Avoid duplication of research efforts – Not only will a review of related literature indicate gaps in the existing research, but it will also lead you away from duplicating research that has already been done and thus save precious resources.  
• Provide an overview of disparate and interdisciplinary research areas – Researchers cannot possibly know everything related to their disciplines. Therefore, it is very helpful to have access to a review of related literature already written and published.  
• Highlight researcher’s familiarity with their topic 1  – A strong review of related literature in a study strengthens readers’ confidence in that study and that researcher.

Tips on how to write a review of related literature in research

Given that you will probably need to produce a number of these at some point, here are a few general tips on how to write an effective review of related literature 2 .

• Define your topic, audience, and purpose: You will be spending a lot of time with this review, so choose a topic that is interesting to you. While deciding what to write in a review of related literature , think about who you expect to read the review – researchers in your discipline, other scientists, the general public – and tailor the language to the audience. Also, think about the purpose of your review of related literature .  
• Conduct a comprehensive literature search: While writing your review of related literature , emphasize more recent works but don’t forget to include some older publications as well. Cast a wide net, as you may find some interesting and relevant literature in unexpected databases or library corners. Don’t forget to search for recent conference papers.
• Review the identified articles and take notes: It is a good idea to take notes in a way such that individual items in your notes can be moved around when you organize them. For example, index cards are great tools for this. Write each individual idea on a separate card along with the source. The cards can then be easily grouped and organized.  
• Determine how to organize your review: A review of related literature should not be merely a listing of descriptions. It should be organized by some criterion, such as chronologically or thematically.  
• Be critical and objective: Don’t just report the findings of other studies in your review of related literature . Challenge the methodology, find errors in the analysis, question the conclusions. Use what you find to improve your research. However, do not insert your opinions into the review of related literature. Remain objective and open-minded.  
• Structure your review logically: Guide the reader through the information. The structure will depend on the function of the review of related literature. Creating an outline prior to writing the RRL in research is a good way to ensure the presented information flows well.  

As you read more extensively in your discipline, you will notice that the review of related literature appears in various forms in different places. For example, when you read an article about an experimental study, you will typically see a literature review or a RRL in research , in the introduction that includes brief descriptions of similar studies. In longer research studies and dissertations, especially in the social sciences, the review of related literature will typically be a separate chapter and include more information on methodologies and theory building. In addition, stand-alone review articles will be published that are extremely useful to researchers.  

The review of relevant literature or often abbreviated as, RRL in research , is an important communication tool that can be used in many forms for many purposes. It is a tool that all researchers should befriend.  

• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center. Literature Reviews.  https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/literature-reviews/  [Accessed September 8, 2022]
• Pautasso M. Ten simple rules for writing a literature review. PLoS Comput Biol. 2013, 9. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149.

Q:  Is research complete without a review of related literature?

A research project is usually considered incomplete without a proper review of related literature. The review of related literature is a crucial component of any research project as it provides context for the research question, identifies gaps in existing literature, and ensures novelty by avoiding duplication. It also helps inform research design and supports arguments, highlights the significance of a study, and demonstrates your knowledge an expertise.

Q: What is difference between RRL and RRS?

The key difference between an RRL and an RRS lies in their focus and scope. An RRL or review of related literature examines a broad range of literature, including theoretical frameworks, concepts, and empirical studies, to establish the context and significance of the research topic. On the other hand, an RRS or review of research studies specifically focuses on analyzing and summarizing previous research studies within a specific research domain to gain insights into methodologies, findings, and gaps in the existing body of knowledge. While there may be some overlap between the two, they serve distinct purposes and cover different aspects of the research process.

Q: Does review of related literature improve accuracy and validity of research?

Yes, a comprehensive review of related literature (RRL) plays a vital role in improving the accuracy and validity of research. It helps authors gain a deeper understanding and offers different perspectives on the research topic. RRL can help you identify research gaps, dictate the selection of appropriate research methodologies, enhance theoretical frameworks, avoid biases and errors, and even provide support for research design and interpretation. By building upon and critically engaging with existing related literature, researchers can ensure their work is rigorous, reliable, and contributes meaningfully to their field of study.

R Discovery is a literature search and research reading platform that accelerates your research discovery journey by keeping you updated on the latest, most relevant scholarly content. With 250M+ research articles sourced from trusted aggregators like CrossRef, Unpaywall, PubMed, PubMed Central, Open Alex and top publishing houses like Springer Nature, JAMA, IOP, Taylor & Francis, NEJM, BMJ, Karger, SAGE, Emerald Publishing and more, R Discovery puts a world of research at your fingertips.  

Try R Discovery Prime FREE for 1 week or upgrade at just US$72 a year to access premium features that let you listen to research on the go, read in your language, collaborate with peers, auto sync with reference managers, and much more. Choose a simpler, smarter way to find and read research – Download the app and start your free 7-day trial today !  

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Chapter 9. Reviewing the Literature

What is a “literature review”.

No researcher ever comes up with a research question that is wholly novel. Someone, somewhere, has asked the same thing. Academic research is part of a larger community of researchers, and it is your responsibility, as a member of this community, to acknowledge others who have asked similar questions and to put your particular research into this greater context. It is not simply a convention or custom to begin your study with a review of previous literature (the “ lit review ”) but an important responsibility you owe the scholarly community.

Too often, new researchers pursue a topic to study and then write something like, “No one has ever studied this before” or “This area is underresearched.” It may be that no one has studied this particular group or setting, but it is highly unlikely no one has studied the foundational phenomenon of interest. And that comment about an area being underresearched? Be careful. The statement may simply signal to others that you haven’t done your homework. Rubin ( 2021 ) refers to this as “free soloing,” and it is not appreciated in academic work:

The truth of the matter is, academics don’t really like when people free solo. It’s really bad form to omit talking about the other people who are doing or have done research in your area. Partly, I mean we need to cite their work, but I also mean we need to respond to it—agree or disagree, clarify for extend. It’s also really bad form to talk about your research in a way that does not make it understandable to other academics.…You have to explain to your readers what your story is really about in terms they care about . This means using certain terminology, referencing debates in the literature, and citing relevant works—that is, in connecting your work to something else. ( 51–52 )

A literature review is a comprehensive summary of previous research on a topic. It includes both articles and books—and in some cases reports—relevant to a particular area of research. Ideally, one’s research question follows from the reading of what has already been produced. For example, you are interested in studying sports injuries related to female gymnasts. You read everything you can find on sports injuries related to female gymnasts, and you begin to get a sense of what questions remain open. You find that there is a lot of research on how coaches manage sports injuries and much about cultures of silence around treating injuries, but you don’t know what the gymnasts themselves are thinking about these issues. You look specifically for studies about this and find several, which then pushes you to narrow the question further. Your literature review then provides the road map of how you came to your very specific question, and it puts your study in the context of studies of sports injuries. What you eventually find can “speak to” all the related questions as well as your particular one.

In practice, the process is often a bit messier. Many researchers, and not simply those starting out, begin with a particular question and have a clear idea of who they want to study and where they want to conduct their study but don’t really know much about other studies at all. Although backward, we need to recognize this is pretty common. Telling students to “find literature” after the fact can seem like a purposeless task or just another hurdle for completing a thesis or dissertation. It is not! Even if you were not motivated by the literature in the first place, acknowledging similar studies and connecting your own research to those studies are important parts of building knowledge. Acknowledgment of past research is a responsibility you owe the discipline to which you belong.

Literature reviews can also signal theoretical approaches and particular concepts that you will incorporate into your own study. For example, let us say you are doing a study of how people find their first jobs after college, and you want to use the concept of social capital . There are competing definitions of social capital out there (e.g., Bourdieu vs. Burt vs. Putnam). Bourdieu’s notion is of one form of capital, or durable asset, of a “network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition” ( 1984:248 ). Burt emphasizes the “brokerage opportunities” in a social network as social capital ( 1997:355 ). Putnam’s social capital is all about “facilitating coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” ( 2001:67 ). Your literature review can adjudicate among these three approaches, or it can simply refer to the one that is animating your own research. If you include Bourdieu in your literature review, readers will know “what kind” of social capital you are talking about as well as what kind of social scientist you yourself are. They will likely understand that you are interested more in how some people are advantaged by their social capital relative to others rather than being interested in the mechanics of how social networks operate.

The literature review thus does two important things for you: firstly, it allows you to acknowledge previous research in your area of interest, thereby situating you within a discipline or body of scholars, and, secondly, it demonstrates that you know what you are talking about. If you present the findings of your research study without including a literature review, it can be like singing into the wind. It sounds nice, but no one really hears it, or if they do catch snippets, they don’t know where it is coming from.

Examples of Literature Reviews

To help you get a grasp of what a good literature review looks like and how it can advance your study, let’s take a look at a few examples.

Reader-Friendly Example: The Power of Peers

The first is by Janice McCabe ( 2016 ) and is from an article on peer networks in the journal Contexts . Contexts presents articles in a relatively reader-friendly format, with the goal of reaching a large audience for interesting sociological research. Read this example carefully and note how easily McCabe is able to convey the relevance of her own work by situating it in the context of previous studies:

Scholars who study education have long acknowledged the importance of peers for students’ well-being and academic achievement. For example, in 1961, James Coleman argued that peer culture within high schools shapes students’ social and academic aspirations and successes. More recently, Judith Rich Harris has drawn on research in a range of areas—from sociological studies of preschool children to primatologists’ studies of chimpanzees and criminologists’ studies of neighborhoods—to argue that peers matter much more than parents in how children “turn out.” Researchers have explored students’ social lives in rich detail, as in Murray Milner’s book about high school students, Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids , and Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton’s look at college students, Paying for the Party . These works consistently show that peers play a very important role in most students’ lives. They tend, however, to prioritize social over academic influence and to use a fuzzy conception of peers rather than focusing directly on friends—the relationships that should matter most for student success. Social scientists have also studied the power of peers through network analysis, which is based on uncovering the web of connections between people. Network analysis involves visually mapping networks and mathematically comparing their structures (such as the density of ties) and the positions of individuals within them (such as how central a given person is within the network). As Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler point out in their book Connected , network structure influences a range of outcomes, including health, happiness, wealth, weight, and emotions. Given that sociologists have long considered network explanations for social phenomena, it’s surprising that we know little about how college students’ friends impact their experiences. In line with this network tradition, I focus on the structure of friendship networks, constructing network maps so that the differences we see across participants are due to the underlying structure, including each participant’s centrality in their friendship group and the density of ties among their friends. ( 23 )

What did you notice? In her very second sentence, McCabe uses “for example” to introduce a study by Coleman, thereby indicating that she is not going to tell you every single study in this area but is going to tell you that (1) there is a lot of research in this area, (2) it has been going on since at least 1961, and (3) it is still relevant (i.e., recent studies are still being done now). She ends her first paragraph by summarizing the body of literature in this area (after giving you a few examples) and then telling you what may have been (so far) left out of this research. In the second paragraph, she shifts to a separate interesting focus that is related to the first but is also quite distinct. Lit reviews very often include two (or three) distinct strands of literature, the combination of which nicely backgrounds this particular study . In the case of our female gymnast study (above), those two strands might be (1) cultures of silence around sports injuries and (2) the importance of coaches. McCabe concludes her short and sweet literature review with one sentence explaining how she is drawing from both strands of the literature she has succinctly presented for her particular study. This example should show you that literature reviews can be readable, helpful, and powerful additions to your final presentation.

Authoritative Academic Journal Example: Working Class Students’ College Expectations

The second example is more typical of academic journal writing. It is an article published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education by Wolfgang Lehmann ( 2009 ):

Although this increase in post-secondary enrolment and the push for university is evident across gender, race, ethnicity, and social class categories, access to university in Canada continues to be significantly constrained for those from lower socio-economic backgrounds (Finnie, Lascelles, and Sweetman 2005). Rising tuition fees coupled with an overestimation of the cost and an underestimation of the benefits of higher education has put university out of reach for many young people from low-income families (Usher 2005). Financial constraints aside, empirical studies in Canada have shown that the most important predictor of university access is parental educational attainment. Having at least one parent with a university degree significantly increases the likelihood of a young person to attend academic-track courses in high school, have high educational and career aspirations, and ultimately attend university (Andres et al. 1999, 2000; Lehmann 2007a). Drawing on Bourdieu’s various writing on habitus and class-based dispositions (see, for example, Bourdieu 1977, 1990), Hodkinson and Sparkes (1997) explain career decisions as neither determined nor completely rational. Instead, they are based on personal experiences (e.g., through employment or other exposure to occupations) and advice from others. Furthermore, they argue that we have to understand these decisions as pragmatic, rather than rational. They are pragmatic in that they are based on incomplete and filtered information, because of the social context in which the information is obtained and processed. New experiences and information can, however, also be allowed into one’s world, where they gradually or radically transform habitus, which in turn creates the possibility for the formation of new and different dispositions. Encountering a supportive teacher in elementary or secondary school, having ambitious friends, or chance encounters can spark such transformations. Transformations can be confirming or contradictory, they can be evolutionary or dislocating. Working-class students who enter university most certainly encounter such potentially transformative situations. Granfield (1991) has shown how initially dislocating feelings of inadequacy and inferiority of working-class students at an elite US law school were eventually replaced by an evolutionary transformation, in which the students came to dress, speak and act more like their middle-class and upper-class peers. In contrast, Lehmann (2007b) showed how persistent habitus dislocation led working-class university students to drop out of university. Foskett and Hemsley-Brown (1999) argue that young people’s perceptions of careers are a complex mix of their own experiences, images conveyed through adults, and derived images conveyed by the media. Media images of careers, perhaps, are even more important for working-class youth with high ambitions as they offer (generally distorted) windows into a world of professional employment to which they have few other sources of access. It has also been argued that working-class youth who do continue to university still face unique, class-specific challenges, evident in higher levels of uncertainty (Baxter and Britton 2001; Lehmann 2004, 2007a; Quinn 2004), their higher education choices (Ball et al. 2002; Brooks 2003; Reay et al. 2001) and fears of inadequacy because of their cultural outsider status (Aries and Seider 2005; Granfield 1991). Although the number of working-class university students in Canada has slowly increased, that of middle-class students at university has risen far more steeply (Knighton and Mizra 2002). These different enrolment trajectories have actually widened the participation gap, which in tum explains our continued concerns with the potential outsider status Indeed, in a study comparing first-generation working-class and traditional students who left university without graduating, Lehmann (2007b) found that first-generation working-class students were more likely to leave university very early in some cases within the first two months of enrollment. They were also more likely to leave university despite solid academic performance. Not “fitting in,” not “feeling university,” and not being able to “relate to these people” were key reasons for eventually withdrawing from university. From the preceding review of the literature, a number of key research questions arise: How do working-class university students frame their decision to attend university? How do they defy the considerable odds documented in the literature to attend university? What are the sources of information and various images that create dispositions to study at university? What role does their social-class background- or habitus play in their transition dispositions and how does this translate into expectations for university? ( 139 )

What did you notice here? How is this different from (and similar to) the first example? Note that rather than provide you with one or two illustrative examples of similar types of research, Lehmann provides abundant source citations throughout. He includes theory and concepts too. Like McCabe, Lehmann is weaving through multiple literature strands: the class gap in higher education participation in Canada, class-based dispositions, and obstacles facing working-class college students. Note how he concludes the literature review by placing his research questions in context.

Find other articles of interest and read their literature reviews carefully. I’ve included two more for you at the end of this chapter . As you learned how to diagram a sentence in elementary school (hopefully!), try diagramming the literature reviews. What are the “different strands” of research being discussed? How does the author connect these strands to their own research questions? Where is theory in the lit review, and how is it incorporated (e.g., Is it a separate strand of its own or is it inextricably linked with previous research in this area)?

One model of how to structure your literature review can be found in table 9.1. More tips, hints, and practices will be discussed later in the chapter.

Table 9.1. Model of Literature Review, Adopted from Calarco (2020:166)

Embracing Theory

A good research study will, in some form or another, use theory. Depending on your particular study (and possibly the preferences of the members of your committee), theory may be built into your literature review. Or it may form its own section in your research proposal/design (e.g., “literature review” followed by “theoretical framework”). In my own experience, I see a lot of graduate students grappling with the requirement to “include theory” in their research proposals. Things get a little squiggly here because there are different ways of incorporating theory into a study (Are you testing a theory? Are you generating a theory?), and based on these differences, your literature review proper may include works that describe, explain, and otherwise set forth theories, concepts, or frameworks you are interested in, or it may not do this at all. Sometimes a literature review sets forth what we know about a particular group or culture totally independent of what kinds of theoretical framework or particular concepts you want to explore. Indeed, the big point of your study might be to bring together a body of work with a theory that has never been applied to it previously. All this is to say that there is no one correct way to approach the use of theory and the writing about theory in your research proposal.

Students are often scared of embracing theory because they do not exactly understand what it is. Sometimes, it seems like an arbitrary requirement. You’re interested in a topic; maybe you’ve even done some research in the area and you have findings you want to report. And then a committee member reads over what you have and asks, “So what?” This question is a good clue that you are missing theory, the part that connects what you have done to what other researchers have done and are doing. You might stumble upon this rather accidentally and not know you are embracing theory, as in a case where you seek to replicate a prior study under new circumstances and end up finding that a particular correlation between behaviors only happens when mediated by something else. There’s theory in there, if you can pull it out and articulate it. Or it might be that you are motivated to do more research on racial microaggressions because you want to document their frequency in a particular setting, taking for granted the kind of critical race theoretical framework that has done the hard work of defining and conceptualizing “microaggressions” in the first place. In that case, your literature review could be a review of Critical Race Theory, specifically related to this one important concept. That’s the way to bring your study into a broader conversation while also acknowledging (and honoring) the hard work that has preceded you.

Rubin ( 2021 ) classifies ways of incorporating theory into case study research into four categories, each of which might be discussed somewhat differently in a literature review or theoretical framework section. The first, the least theoretical, is where you set out to study a “configurative idiographic case” ( 70 ) This is where you set out to describe a particular case, leaving yourself pretty much open to whatever you find. You are not expecting anything based on previous literature. This is actually pretty weak as far as research design goes, but it is probably the default for novice researchers. Your committee members should probably help you situate this in previous literature in some way or another. If they cannot, and it really does appear you are looking at something fairly new that no one else has bothered to research before, and you really are completely open to discovery, you might try using a Grounded Theory approach, which is a methodological approach that foregrounds the generation of theory. In that case, your “theory” section can be a discussion of “Grounded Theory” methodology (confusing, yes, but if you take some time to ponder, you will see how this works). You will still need a literature review, though. Ideally one that describes other studies that have ever looked at anything remotely like what you are looking at—parallel cases that have been researched.

The second approach is the “disciplined configurative case,” in which theory is applied to explain a particular case or topic. You are not trying to test the theory but rather assuming the theory is correct, as in the case of exploring microaggressions in a particular setting. In this case, you really do need to have a separate theory section in addition to the literature review, one in which you clearly define the theoretical framework, including any of its important concepts. You can use this section to discuss how other researchers have used the concepts and note any discrepancies in definitions or operationalization of those concepts. This way you will be sure to design your study so that it speaks to and with other researchers. If everyone who is writing about microaggressions has a different definition of them, it is hard for others to compare findings or make any judgments about their prevalence (or any number of other important characteristics). Your literature review section may then stand alone and describe previous research in the particular area or setting, irrespective of the kinds of theory underlying those studies.

The third approach is “heuristic,” one in which you seek to identify new variables, hypotheses, mechanisms, or paths not yet explained by a theory or theoretical framework. In a way, you are generating new theory, but it is probably more accurate to say that you are extending or deepening preexisting theory. In this case, having a single literature review that is focused on the theory and the ways the theory has been applied and understood (with all its various mechanisms and pathways) is probably your best option. The focus of the literature reviewed is less on the case and more on the theory you are seeking to extend.

The final approach is “theory testing,” which is much rarer in qualitative studies than in quantitative, where this is the default approach. Theory-testing cases are those where a particular case is used to see if an existing theory is accurate or accurate under particular circumstances. As with the heuristic approach, your literature review will probably draw heavily on previous uses of the theory, but you may end up having a special section specifically about cases very close to your own . In other words, the more your study approaches theory testing, the more likely there is to be a set of similar studies to draw on or even one important key study that you are setting your own study up in parallel to in order to find out if the theory generated there operates here.

If we wanted to get very technical, it might be useful to distinguish theoretical frameworks properly from conceptual frameworks. The latter are a bit looser and, given the nature of qualitative research, often fit exploratory studies. Theoretical frameworks rely on specific theories and are essential for theory-testing studies. Conceptual frameworks can pull in specific concepts or ideas that may or may not be linked to particular theories. Think about it this way: A theory is a story of how the world works. Concepts don’t presume to explain the whole world but instead are ways to approach phenomena to help make sense of them. Microaggressions are concepts that are linked to Critical Race Theory. One could contextualize one’s study within Critical Race Theory and then draw various concepts, such as that of microaggressions from the overall theoretical framework. Or one could bracket out the master theory or framework and employ the concept of microaggression more opportunistically as a phenomenon of interest. If you are unsure of what theory you are using, you might want to frame a more practical conceptual framework in your review of the literature.

Helpful Tips

How to maintain good notes for what your read.

Over the years, I have developed various ways of organizing notes on what I read. At first, I used a single sheet of full-size paper with a preprinted list of questions and points clearly addressed on the front side, leaving the second side for more reflective comments and free-form musings about what I read, why it mattered, and how it might be useful for my research. Later, I developed a system in which I use a single 4″ × 6″ note card for each book I read. I try only to use the front side (and write very small), leaving the back for comments that are about not just this reading but things to do or examine or consider based on the reading. These notes often mean nothing to anyone else picking up the card, but they make sense to me. I encourage you to find an organizing system that works for you. Then when you set out to compose a literature review, instead of staring at five to ten books or a dozen articles, you will have ten neatly printed pages or notecards or files that have distilled what is important to know about your reading.

It is also a good idea to store this data digitally, perhaps through a reference manager. I use RefWorks, but I also recommend EndNote or any other system that allows you to search institutional databases. Your campus library will probably provide access to one of these or another system. Most systems will allow you to export references from another manager if and when you decide to move to another system. Reference managers allow you to sort through all your literature by descriptor, author, year, and so on. Even so, I personally like to have the ability to manually sort through my index cards, recategorizing things I have read as I go. I use RefWorks to keep a record of what I have read, with proper citations, so I can create bibliographies more easily, and I do add in a few “notes” there, but the bulk of my notes are kept in longhand.

What kinds of information should you include from your reading? Here are some bulleted suggestions from Calarco ( 2020:113–114 ), with my own emendations:

• Citation . If you are using a reference manager, you can import the citation and then, when you are ready to create a bibliography, you can use a provided menu of citation styles, which saves a lot of time. If you’ve originally formatted in Chicago Style but the journal you are writing for wants APA style, you can change your entire bibliography in less than a minute. When using a notecard for a book, I include author, title, date as well as the library call number (since most of what I read I pull from the library). This is something RefWorks is not able to do, and it helps when I categorize.

I begin each notecard with an “intro” section, where I record the aims, goals, and general point of the book/article as explained in the introductory sections (which might be the preface, the acknowledgments, or the first two chapters). I then draw a bold line underneath this part of the notecard. Everything after that should be chapter specific. Included in this intro section are things such as the following, recommended by Calarco ( 2020 ):

• Key background . “Two to three short bullet points identifying the theory/prior research on which the authors are building and defining key terms.”
• Data/methods . “One or two short bullet points with information about the source of the data and the method of analysis, with a note if this is a novel or particularly effective example of that method.” I use [M] to signal methodology on my notecard, which might read, “[M] Int[erview]s (n-35), B[lack]/W[hite] voters” (I need shorthand to fit on my notecard!).
• Research question . “Stated as briefly as possible.” I always provide page numbers so I can go back and see exactly how this was stated (sometimes, in qualitative research, there are multiple research questions, and they cannot be stated simply).
• Argument/contributions . “Two to three short bullet points briefly describing the authors’ answer to the central research question and its implication for research, theory, and practice.” I use [ARG] for argument to signify the argument, and I make sure this is prominently visible on my notecard. I also provide page numbers here.

For me, all of this fits in the “intro” section, which, if this is a theoretically rich, methodologically sound book, might take up a third or even half of the front page of my notecard. Beneath the bold underline, I report specific findings or particulars of the book as they emerge chapter by chapter. Calarco’s ( 2020 ) next step is the following:

• Key findings . “Three to four short bullet points identifying key patterns in the data that support the authors’ argument.”

All that remains is writing down thoughts that occur upon finishing the article/book. I use the back of the notecard for these kinds of notes. Often, they reach out to other things I have read (e.g., “Robinson reminds me of Crusoe here in that both are looking at the effects of social isolation, but I think Robinson makes a stronger argument”). Calarco ( 2020 ) concludes similarly with the following:

• Unanswered questions . “Two to three short bullet points that identify key limitations of the research and/or questions the research did not answer that could be answered in future research.”

As I mentioned, when I first began taking notes like this, I preprinted pages with prompts for “research question,” “argument,” and so on. This was a great way to remind myself to look for these things in particular. You can do the same, adding whatever preprinted sections make sense to you, given what you are studying and the important aspects of your discipline. The other nice thing about the preprinted forms is that it keeps your writing to a minimum—you cannot write more than the allotted space, even if you might want to, preventing your notes from spiraling out of control. This can be helpful when we are new to a subject and everything seems worth recording!

After years of discipline, I have finally settled on my notecard approach. I have thousands of notecards, organized in several index card filing boxes stacked in my office. On the top right of each card is a note of the month/day I finished reading the item. I can remind myself what I read in the summer of 2010 if the need or desire ever arose to do so…those invaluable notecards are like a memento of what my brain has been up to!

Where to Start Looking for Literature

Your university library should provide access to one of several searchable databases for academic books and articles. My own preference is JSTOR, a service of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization that works to advance and preserve knowledge and to improve teaching and learning through the use of digital technologies. JSTOR allows you to search by several keywords and to narrow your search by type of material (articles or books). For many disciplines, the “literature” of the literature review is expected to be peer-reviewed “articles,” but some disciplines will also value books and book chapters. JSTOR is particularly useful for article searching. You can submit several keywords and see what is returned, and you can also narrow your search by a particular journal or discipline. If your discipline has one or two key journals (e.g., the American Journal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review are key for sociology), you might want to go directly to those journals’ websites and search for your topic area. There is an art to when to cast your net widely and when to refine your search, and you may have to tack back and forth to ensure that you are getting all that is relevant but not getting bogged down in all studies that might have some marginal relevance.

Some articles will carry more weight than others, and you can use applications like Google Scholar to see which articles have made and are continuing to make larger impacts on your discipline. Find these articles and read them carefully; use their literature review and the sources cited in those articles to make sure you are capturing what is relevant. This is actually a really good way of finding relevant books—only the most impactful will make it into the citations of journals. Over time, you will notice that a handful of articles (or books) are cited so often that when you see, say, Armstrong and Hamilton ( 2015 ), you know exactly what book this is without looking at the full cite. This is when you know you are in the conversation.

You might also approach a professor whose work is broadly in the area of your interest and ask them to recommend one or two “important” foundational articles or books. You can then use the references cited in those recommendations to build up your literature. Just be careful: some older professors’ knowledge of the literature (and I reluctantly add myself here) may be a bit outdated! It is best that the article or book whose references and sources you use to build your body of literature be relatively current.

Keep a List of Your Keywords

When using searchable databases, it is a good idea to keep a list of all the keywords you use as you go along so that (1) you do not needlessly duplicate your efforts and (2) you can more easily adjust your search as you get a better sense of what you are looking for. I suggest you keep a separate file or even a small notebook for this and you date your search efforts.

Here’s an example:

Table 9.2. Keep a List of Your Keywords

Think Laterally

How to find the various strands of literature to combine? Don’t get stuck on finding the exact same research topic you think you are interested in. In the female gymnast example, I recommended that my student consider looking for studies of ballerinas, who also suffer sports injuries and around whom there is a similar culture of silence. It turned out that there was in fact research about my student’s particular questions, just not about the subjects she was interested in. You might do something similar. Don’t get stuck looking for too direct literature but think about the broader phenomenon of interest or analogous cases.

Read Outside the Canon

Some scholars’ work gets cited by everyone all the time. To some extent, this is a very good thing, as it helps establish the discipline. For example, there are a lot of “Bourdieu scholars” out there (myself included) who draw ideas, concepts, and quoted passages from Bourdieu. This makes us recognizable to one another and is a way of sharing a common language (e.g., where “cultural capital” has a particular meaning to those versed in Bourdieusian theory). There are empirical studies that get cited over and over again because they are excellent studies but also because there is an “echo chamber effect” going on, where knowing to cite this study marks you as part of the club, in the know, and so on. But here’s the problem with this: there are hundreds if not thousands of excellent studies out there that fail to get appreciated because they are crowded out by the canon. Sometimes this happens because they are published in “lower-ranked” journals and are never read by a lot of scholars who don’t have time to read anything other than the “big three” in their field. Other times this happens because the author falls outside of the dominant social networks in the field and thus is unmentored and fails to get noticed by those who publish a lot in those highly ranked and visible spaces. Scholars who fall outside the dominant social networks and who publish outside of the top-ranked journals are in no way less insightful than their peers, and their studies may be just as rigorous and relevant to your work, so it is important for you to take some time to read outside the canon. Due to how a person’s race, gender, and class operate in the academy, there is also a matter of social justice and ethical responsibility involved here: “When you focus on the most-cited research, you’re more likely to miss relevant research by women and especially women of color, whose research tends to be under-cited in most fields. You’re also more likely to miss new research, research by junior scholars, and research in other disciplines that could inform your work. Essentially, it is important to read and cite responsibly, which means checking that you’re not just reading and citing the same white men and the same old studies that everyone has cited before you” ( Calarco 2020:112 ).

Consider Multiple Uses for Literature

Throughout this chapter, I’ve referred to the literature of interest in a rather abstract way, as what is relevant to your study. But there are many different ways previous research can be relevant to your study. The most basic use of the literature is the “findings”—for example, “So-and-so found that Canadian working-class students were concerned about ‘fitting in’ to the culture of college, and I am going to look at a similar question here in the US.” But the literature may be of interest not for its findings but theoretically—for example, employing concepts that you want to employ in your own study. Bourdieu’s definition of social capital may have emerged in a study of French professors, but it can still be relevant in a study of, say, how parents make choices about what preschools to send their kids to (also a good example of lateral thinking!).

If you are engaged in some novel methodological form of data collection or analysis, you might look for previous literature that has attempted that. I would not recommend this for undergraduate research projects, but for graduate students who are considering “breaking the mold,” find out if anyone has been there before you. Even if their study has absolutely nothing else in common with yours, it is important to acknowledge that previous work.

Describing Gaps in the Literature

First, be careful! Although it is common to explain how your research adds to, builds upon, and fills in gaps in the previous research (see all four literature review examples in this chapter for this), there is a fine line between describing the gaps and misrepresenting previous literature by failing to conduct a thorough review of the literature. A little humility can make a big difference in your presentation. Instead of “This is the first study that has looked at how firefighters juggle childcare during forest fire season,” say, “I use the previous literature on how working parents juggling childcare and the previous ethnographic studies of firefighters to explore how firefighters juggle childcare during forest fire season.” You can even add, “To my knowledge, no one has conducted an ethnographic study in this specific area, although what we have learned from X about childcare and from Y about firefighters would lead us to expect Z here.” Read more literature review sections to see how others have described the “gaps” they are filling.

Use Concept Mapping

Concept mapping is a helpful tool for getting your thoughts in order and is particularly helpful when thinking about the “literature” foundational to your particular study. Concept maps are also known as mind maps, which is a delightful way to think about them. Your brain is probably abuzz with competing ideas in the early stages of your research design. Write/draw them on paper, and then try to categorize and move the pieces around into “clusters” that make sense to you. Going back to the gymnasts example, my student might have begun by jotting down random words of interest: gymnasts * sports * coaches * female gymnasts * stress * injury * don’t complain * women in sports * bad coaching * anxiety/stress * careers in sports * pain. She could then have begun clustering these into relational categories (bad coaching, don’t complain culture) and simple “event” categories (injury, stress). This might have led her to think about reviewing literature in these two separate aspects and then literature that put them together. There is no correct way to draw a concept map, as they are wonderfully specific to your mind. There are many examples you can find online.

Ask Yourself, “How Is This Sociology (or Political Science or Public Policy, Etc.)?”

Rubin ( 2021:82 ) offers this suggestion instead of asking yourself the “So what?” question to get you thinking about what bridges there are between your study and the body of research in your particular discipline. This is particularly helpful for thinking about theory. Rubin further suggests that if you are really stumped, ask yourself, “What is the really big question that all [fill in your discipline here] care about?” For sociology, it might be “inequality,” which would then help you think about theories of inequality that might be helpful in framing your study on whatever it is you are studying—OnlyFans? Childcare during COVID? Aging in America? I can think of some interesting ways to frame questions about inequality for any of those topics. You can further narrow it by focusing on particular aspects of inequality (Gender oppression? Racial exclusion? Heteronormativity?). If your discipline is public policy, the big questions there might be, How does policy get enacted, and what makes a policy effective? You can then take whatever your particular policy interest is—tax reform, student debt relief, cap-and-trade regulations—and apply those big questions. Doing so would give you a handle on what is otherwise an intolerably vague subject (e.g., What about student debt relief?).

Sometimes finding you are in new territory means you’ve hit the jackpot, and sometimes it means you’ve traveled out of bounds for your discipline. The jackpot scenario is wonderful. You are doing truly innovative research that is combining multiple literatures or is addressing a new or under-examined phenomenon of interest, and your research has the potential to be groundbreaking. Congrats! But that’s really hard to do, and it might be more likely that you’ve traveled out of bounds, by which I mean, you are no longer in your discipline . It might be that no one has written about this thing—at least within your field— because no one in your field actually cares about this topic . ( Rubin 2021:83 ; emphases added)

Don’t Treat This as a Chore

Don’t treat the literature review as a chore that has to be completed, but see it for what it really is—you are building connections to other researchers out there. You want to represent your discipline or area of study fairly and adequately. Demonstrate humility and your knowledge of previous research. Be part of the conversation.

Supplement: Two More Literature Review Examples

Elites by harvey ( 2011 ).

In the last two decades, there has been a small but growing literature on elites. In part, this has been a result of the resurgence of ethnographic research such as interviews, focus groups, case studies, and participant observation but also because scholars have become increasingly interested in understanding the perspectives and behaviors of leaders in business, politics, and society as a whole. Yet until recently, our understanding of some of the methodological challenges of researching elites has lagged behind our rush to interview them.

There is no clear-cut definition of the term elite, and given its broad understanding across the social sciences, scholars have tended to adopt different approaches. Zuckerman (1972) uses the term ultraelites to describe individuals who hold a significant amount of power within a group that is already considered elite. She argues, for example, that US senators constitute part of the country’s political elite but that among them are the ultraelites: a “subset of particularly powerful or prestigious influentials” (160). She suggests that there is a hierarchy of status within elite groups. McDowell (1998) analyses a broader group of “professional elites” who are employees working at different levels for merchant and investment banks in London. She classifies this group as elite because they are “highly skilled, professionally competent, and class-specific” (2135). Parry (1998:2148) uses the term hybrid elites in the context of the international trade of genetic material because she argues that critical knowledge exists not in traditional institutions “but rather as increasingly informal, hybridised, spatially fragmented, and hence largely ‘invisible,’ networks of elite actors.” Given the undertheorization of the term elite, Smith (2006) recognizes why scholars have shaped their definitions to match their respondents . However, she is rightly critical of the underlying assumption that those who hold professional positions necessarily exert as much influence as initially perceived. Indeed, job titles can entirely misrepresent the role of workers and therefore are by no means an indicator of elite status (Harvey 2010).

Many scholars have used the term elite in a relational sense, defining them either in terms of their social position compared to the researcher or compared to the average person in society (Stephens 2007). The problem with this definition is there is no guarantee that an elite subject will necessarily translate this power and authority in an interview setting. Indeed, Smith (2006) found that on the few occasions she experienced respondents wanting to exert their authority over her, it was not from elites but from relatively less senior workers. Furthermore, although business and political elites often receive extensive media training, they are often scrutinized by television and radio journalists and therefore can also feel threatened in an interview, particularly in contexts that are less straightforward to prepare for such as academic interviews. On several occasions, for instance, I have been asked by elite respondents or their personal assistants what they need to prepare for before the interview, which suggests that they consider the interview as some form of challenge or justification for what they do.

In many cases, it is not necessarily the figureheads or leaders of organizations and institutions who have the greatest claim to elite status but those who hold important social networks, social capital, and strategic positions within social structures because they are better able to exert influence (Burt 1992; Parry 1998; Smith 2005; Woods 1998). An elite status can also change, with people both gaining and losing theirs over time. In addition, it is geographically specific, with people holding elite status in some but not all locations. In short, it is clear that the term elite can mean many things in different contexts, which explains the range of definitions. The purpose here is not to critique these other definitions but rather to highlight the variety of perspectives.

When referring to my research, I define elites as those who occupy senior-management- and board-level positions within organizations. This is a similar scope of definition to Zuckerman’s (1972) but focuses on a level immediately below her ultraelite subjects. My definition is narrower than McDowell’s (1998) because it is clear in the context of my research that these people have significant decision-making influence within and outside of the firm and therefore present a unique challenge to interview. I deliberately use the term elite more broadly when drawing on examples from the theoretical literature in order to compare my experiences with those who have researched similar groups.

”Changing Dispositions among the Upwardly Mobile” by Curl, Lareau, and Wu ( 2018 )

There is growing interest in the role of cultural practices in undergirding the social stratification system. For example, Lamont et al. (2014) critically assess the preoccupation with economic dimensions of social stratification and call for more developed cultural models of the transmission of inequality. The importance of cultural factors in the maintenance of social inequality has also received empirical attention from some younger scholars, including Calarco (2011, 2014) and Streib (2015). Yet questions remain regarding the degree to which economic position is tied to cultural sensibilities and the ways in which these cultural sensibilities are imprinted on the self or are subject to change. Although habitus is a core concept in Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction, there is limited empirical attention to the precise areas of the habitus that can be subject to change during upward mobility as well as the ramifications of these changes for family life.

In Bourdieu’s (1984) highly influential work on the importance of class-based cultural dispositions, habitus is defined as a “durable system of dispositions” created in childhood. The habitus provides a “matrix of perceptions” that seems natural while also structuring future actions and pathways. In many of his writings, Bourdieu emphasized the durability of cultural tastes and dispositions and did not consider empirically whether these dispositions might be changed or altered throughout one’s life (Swartz 1997). His theoretical work does permit the possibility of upward mobility and transformation, however, through the ability of the habitus to “improvise” or “change” due to “new experiences” (Friedman 2016:131). Researchers have differed in opinion on the durability of the habitus and its ability to change (King 2000). Based on marital conflict in cross-class marriages, for instance, Streib (2015) argues that cultural dispositions of individuals raised in working-class families are deeply embedded and largely unchanging. In a somewhat different vein, Horvat and Davis (2011:152) argue that young adults enrolled in an alternative educational program undergo important shifts in their self-perception, such as “self-esteem” and their “ability to accomplish something of value.” Others argue there is variability in the degree to which habitus changes dependent on life experience and personality (Christodoulou and Spyridakis 2016). Recently, additional studies have investigated the habitus as it intersects with lifestyle through the lens of meaning making (Ambrasat et al. 2016). There is, therefore, ample discussion of class-based cultural practices in self-perception (Horvat and Davis 2011), lifestyle (Ambrasat et al. 2016), and other forms of taste (Andrews 2012; Bourdieu 1984), yet researchers have not sufficiently delineated which aspects of the habitus might change through upward mobility or which specific dimensions of life prompt moments of class-based conflict.

Bourdieu (1999:511; 2004) acknowledged simmering tensions between the durable aspects of habitus and those aspects that have been transformed—that is, a “fractured” or “cleft” habitus. Others have explored these tensions as a “divided” or “fragmented” habitus (Baxter and Britton 2001; Lee and Kramer 2013). Each of these conceptions of the habitus implies that changes in cultural dispositions are possible but come with costs. Exploration of the specific aspects of one’s habitus that can change and generate conflict contributes to this literature.

Scholars have also studied the costs associated with academic success for working-class undergraduates (Hurst 2010; Lee and Kramer 2013; London 1989; Reay 2017; Rondini 2016; Stuber 2011), but we know little about the lasting effects on adults. For instance, Lee and Kramer (2013) point to cross-class tensions as family and friends criticize upwardly mobile individuals for their newly acquired cultural dispositions. Documenting the tension many working-class students experience with their friends and families of origin, they find that the source of their pain or struggle is “shaped not only by their interactions with non-mobile family and friends but also within their own minds, by their own assessments of their social positions, and by how those positions are interpreted by others” (Lee and Kramer 2013:29). Hurst (2010) also explores the experiences of undergraduates who have been academically successful and the costs associated with that success. She finds that decisions about “class allegiance and identity” are required aspects of what it means to “becom[e] educated” (4) and that working-class students deal with these cultural changes differently. Jack (2014, 2016) also argues that there is diversity among lower-income students, which yields varied college experiences. Naming two groups, the “doubly disadvantaged” and the “privileged poor,” he argues that previous experience with “elite environments” (2014:456) prior to college informs students’ ability to take on dominant cultural practices, particularly around engagement, such as help seeking or meeting with professors (2016). These studies shed light on the role college might play as a “lever for mobility” (2016:15) and discuss the pain and difficulty associated with upward mobility among undergraduates, but the studies do not illuminate how these tensions unfold in adulthood. Neither have they sufficiently addressed potential enduring tensions with extended family members as well as the specific nature of the difficulties.

Some scholars point to the positive outcomes upwardly mobile youth (Lehmann 2009) and adults (Stuber 2005) experience when they maintain a different habitus than their newly acquired class position, although, as Jack (2014, 2016) shows, those experiences may vary depending on one’s experience with elite environments in their youth. Researchers have not sufficiently explored the specific aspects of the habitus that upwardly mobile adults change or the conflicts that emerge with family and childhood friends as they reach adulthood and experience colliding social worlds. We contribute to this scholarship with clear examples of self-reported changes to one’s cultural dispositions in three specific areas: “horizons,” food and health, and communication. We link these changes to enduring tension with family members, friends, and colleagues and explore varied responses to this tension based on race.

Further Readings

Bloomberg, Linda Dale, and Marie F. Volpe. 2012. Completing Your Qualitative Dissertation: A Road Map from Beginning to End . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. In keeping with its general approach to qualitative research, includes a “road map” for conducting a literature review.

Hart, Chris. 1998. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . London: SAGE. A how-to book dedicated entirely to conducting a literature review from a British perspective. Useful for both undergraduate and graduate students.

Machi, Lawrence A., and Brenda T. McEvoy. 2022. The Literature Review: Six Steps to Success . 4th ed. Newbury Park, CA: Corwin. A well-organized guidebook complete with reflection sections to prompt successful thinking about your literature review.

Ridley, Diana. 2008. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . London: SAGE. A highly recommended companion to conducting a literature review for doctoral-level students.

The process of systematically searching through pre-existing studies (“literature”) on the subject of research; also, the section of a presentation in which the pre-existing literature is discussed.

Follow-up questions used in a semi-structured interview  to elicit further elaboration.  Suggested prompts can be included in the interview guide  to be used/deployed depending on how the initial question was answered or if the topic of the prompt does not emerge spontaneously.

A tool for identifying relationships among ideas by visually representing them on paper.  Most concept maps depict ideas as boxes or circles (also called nodes), which are structured hierarchically and connected with lines or arrows (also called arcs). These lines are labeled with linking words and phrases to help explain the connections between concepts.  Also known as mind mapping.

The people who are the subjects of an interview-based qualitative study. In general, they are also known as the participants, and for purposes of IRBs they are often referred to as the human subjects of the research.

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Criteria for Good Qualitative Research: A Comprehensive Review

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This review aims to synthesize a published set of evaluative criteria for good qualitative research. The aim is to shed light on existing standards for assessing the rigor of qualitative research encompassing a range of epistemological and ontological standpoints. Using a systematic search strategy, published journal articles that deliberate criteria for rigorous research were identified. Then, references of relevant articles were surveyed to find noteworthy, distinct, and well-defined pointers to good qualitative research. This review presents an investigative assessment of the pivotal features in qualitative research that can permit the readers to pass judgment on its quality and to condemn it as good research when objectively and adequately utilized. Overall, this review underlines the crux of qualitative research and accentuates the necessity to evaluate such research by the very tenets of its being. It also offers some prospects and recommendations to improve the quality of qualitative research. Based on the findings of this review, it is concluded that quality criteria are the aftereffect of socio-institutional procedures and existing paradigmatic conducts. Owing to the paradigmatic diversity of qualitative research, a single and specific set of quality criteria is neither feasible nor anticipated. Since qualitative research is not a cohesive discipline, researchers need to educate and familiarize themselves with applicable norms and decisive factors to evaluate qualitative research from within its theoretical and methodological framework of origin.

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Good Qualitative Research: Opening up the Debate

Beyond qualitative/quantitative structuralism: the positivist qualitative research and the paradigmatic disclaimer.

What is Qualitative in Research

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Introduction

“… It is important to regularly dialogue about what makes for good qualitative research” (Tracy, 2010 , p. 837)

To decide what represents good qualitative research is highly debatable. There are numerous methods that are contained within qualitative research and that are established on diverse philosophical perspectives. Bryman et al., ( 2008 , p. 262) suggest that “It is widely assumed that whereas quality criteria for quantitative research are well‐known and widely agreed, this is not the case for qualitative research.” Hence, the question “how to evaluate the quality of qualitative research” has been continuously debated. There are many areas of science and technology wherein these debates on the assessment of qualitative research have taken place. Examples include various areas of psychology: general psychology (Madill et al., 2000 ); counseling psychology (Morrow, 2005 ); and clinical psychology (Barker & Pistrang, 2005 ), and other disciplines of social sciences: social policy (Bryman et al., 2008 ); health research (Sparkes, 2001 ); business and management research (Johnson et al., 2006 ); information systems (Klein & Myers, 1999 ); and environmental studies (Reid & Gough, 2000 ). In the literature, these debates are enthused by the impression that the blanket application of criteria for good qualitative research developed around the positivist paradigm is improper. Such debates are based on the wide range of philosophical backgrounds within which qualitative research is conducted (e.g., Sandberg, 2000 ; Schwandt, 1996 ). The existence of methodological diversity led to the formulation of different sets of criteria applicable to qualitative research.

Among qualitative researchers, the dilemma of governing the measures to assess the quality of research is not a new phenomenon, especially when the virtuous triad of objectivity, reliability, and validity (Spencer et al., 2004 ) are not adequate. Occasionally, the criteria of quantitative research are used to evaluate qualitative research (Cohen & Crabtree, 2008 ; Lather, 2004 ). Indeed, Howe ( 2004 ) claims that the prevailing paradigm in educational research is scientifically based experimental research. Hypotheses and conjectures about the preeminence of quantitative research can weaken the worth and usefulness of qualitative research by neglecting the prominence of harmonizing match for purpose on research paradigm, the epistemological stance of the researcher, and the choice of methodology. Researchers have been reprimanded concerning this in “paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences” (Lincoln & Guba, 2000 ).

In general, qualitative research tends to come from a very different paradigmatic stance and intrinsically demands distinctive and out-of-the-ordinary criteria for evaluating good research and varieties of research contributions that can be made. This review attempts to present a series of evaluative criteria for qualitative researchers, arguing that their choice of criteria needs to be compatible with the unique nature of the research in question (its methodology, aims, and assumptions). This review aims to assist researchers in identifying some of the indispensable features or markers of high-quality qualitative research. In a nutshell, the purpose of this systematic literature review is to analyze the existing knowledge on high-quality qualitative research and to verify the existence of research studies dealing with the critical assessment of qualitative research based on the concept of diverse paradigmatic stances. Contrary to the existing reviews, this review also suggests some critical directions to follow to improve the quality of qualitative research in different epistemological and ontological perspectives. This review is also intended to provide guidelines for the acceleration of future developments and dialogues among qualitative researchers in the context of assessing the qualitative research.

The rest of this review article is structured in the following fashion: Sect.  Methods describes the method followed for performing this review. Section Criteria for Evaluating Qualitative Studies provides a comprehensive description of the criteria for evaluating qualitative studies. This section is followed by a summary of the strategies to improve the quality of qualitative research in Sect.  Improving Quality: Strategies . Section  How to Assess the Quality of the Research Findings? provides details on how to assess the quality of the research findings. After that, some of the quality checklists (as tools to evaluate quality) are discussed in Sect.  Quality Checklists: Tools for Assessing the Quality . At last, the review ends with the concluding remarks presented in Sect.  Conclusions, Future Directions and Outlook . Some prospects in qualitative research for enhancing its quality and usefulness in the social and techno-scientific research community are also presented in Sect.  Conclusions, Future Directions and Outlook .

For this review, a comprehensive literature search was performed from many databases using generic search terms such as Qualitative Research , Criteria , etc . The following databases were chosen for the literature search based on the high number of results: IEEE Explore, ScienceDirect, PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science. The following keywords (and their combinations using Boolean connectives OR/AND) were adopted for the literature search: qualitative research, criteria, quality, assessment, and validity. The synonyms for these keywords were collected and arranged in a logical structure (see Table 1 ). All publications in journals and conference proceedings later than 1950 till 2021 were considered for the search. Other articles extracted from the references of the papers identified in the electronic search were also included. A large number of publications on qualitative research were retrieved during the initial screening. Hence, to include the searches with the main focus on criteria for good qualitative research, an inclusion criterion was utilized in the search string.

From the selected databases, the search retrieved a total of 765 publications. Then, the duplicate records were removed. After that, based on the title and abstract, the remaining 426 publications were screened for their relevance by using the following inclusion and exclusion criteria (see Table 2 ). Publications focusing on evaluation criteria for good qualitative research were included, whereas those works which delivered theoretical concepts on qualitative research were excluded. Based on the screening and eligibility, 45 research articles were identified that offered explicit criteria for evaluating the quality of qualitative research and were found to be relevant to this review.

Figure  1 illustrates the complete review process in the form of PRISMA flow diagram. PRISMA, i.e., “preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses” is employed in systematic reviews to refine the quality of reporting.

PRISMA flow diagram illustrating the search and inclusion process. N represents the number of records

Criteria for Evaluating Qualitative Studies

Fundamental criteria: general research quality.

Various researchers have put forward criteria for evaluating qualitative research, which have been summarized in Table 3 . Also, the criteria outlined in Table 4 effectively deliver the various approaches to evaluate and assess the quality of qualitative work. The entries in Table 4 are based on Tracy’s “Eight big‐tent criteria for excellent qualitative research” (Tracy, 2010 ). Tracy argues that high-quality qualitative work should formulate criteria focusing on the worthiness, relevance, timeliness, significance, morality, and practicality of the research topic, and the ethical stance of the research itself. Researchers have also suggested a series of questions as guiding principles to assess the quality of a qualitative study (Mays & Pope, 2020 ). Nassaji ( 2020 ) argues that good qualitative research should be robust, well informed, and thoroughly documented.

Qualitative Research: Interpretive Paradigms

All qualitative researchers follow highly abstract principles which bring together beliefs about ontology, epistemology, and methodology. These beliefs govern how the researcher perceives and acts. The net, which encompasses the researcher’s epistemological, ontological, and methodological premises, is referred to as a paradigm, or an interpretive structure, a “Basic set of beliefs that guides action” (Guba, 1990 ). Four major interpretive paradigms structure the qualitative research: positivist and postpositivist, constructivist interpretive, critical (Marxist, emancipatory), and feminist poststructural. The complexity of these four abstract paradigms increases at the level of concrete, specific interpretive communities. Table 5 presents these paradigms and their assumptions, including their criteria for evaluating research, and the typical form that an interpretive or theoretical statement assumes in each paradigm. Moreover, for evaluating qualitative research, quantitative conceptualizations of reliability and validity are proven to be incompatible (Horsburgh, 2003 ). In addition, a series of questions have been put forward in the literature to assist a reviewer (who is proficient in qualitative methods) for meticulous assessment and endorsement of qualitative research (Morse, 2003 ). Hammersley ( 2007 ) also suggests that guiding principles for qualitative research are advantageous, but methodological pluralism should not be simply acknowledged for all qualitative approaches. Seale ( 1999 ) also points out the significance of methodological cognizance in research studies.

Table 5 reflects that criteria for assessing the quality of qualitative research are the aftermath of socio-institutional practices and existing paradigmatic standpoints. Owing to the paradigmatic diversity of qualitative research, a single set of quality criteria is neither possible nor desirable. Hence, the researchers must be reflexive about the criteria they use in the various roles they play within their research community.

Improving Quality: Strategies

Another critical question is “How can the qualitative researchers ensure that the abovementioned quality criteria can be met?” Lincoln and Guba ( 1986 ) delineated several strategies to intensify each criteria of trustworthiness. Other researchers (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016 ; Shenton, 2004 ) also presented such strategies. A brief description of these strategies is shown in Table 6 .

It is worth mentioning that generalizability is also an integral part of qualitative research (Hays & McKibben, 2021 ). In general, the guiding principle pertaining to generalizability speaks about inducing and comprehending knowledge to synthesize interpretive components of an underlying context. Table 7 summarizes the main metasynthesis steps required to ascertain generalizability in qualitative research.

Figure  2 reflects the crucial components of a conceptual framework and their contribution to decisions regarding research design, implementation, and applications of results to future thinking, study, and practice (Johnson et al., 2020 ). The synergy and interrelationship of these components signifies their role to different stances of a qualitative research study.

Essential elements of a conceptual framework

In a nutshell, to assess the rationale of a study, its conceptual framework and research question(s), quality criteria must take account of the following: lucid context for the problem statement in the introduction; well-articulated research problems and questions; precise conceptual framework; distinct research purpose; and clear presentation and investigation of the paradigms. These criteria would expedite the quality of qualitative research.

How to Assess the Quality of the Research Findings?

The inclusion of quotes or similar research data enhances the confirmability in the write-up of the findings. The use of expressions (for instance, “80% of all respondents agreed that” or “only one of the interviewees mentioned that”) may also quantify qualitative findings (Stenfors et al., 2020 ). On the other hand, the persuasive reason for “why this may not help in intensifying the research” has also been provided (Monrouxe & Rees, 2020 ). Further, the Discussion and Conclusion sections of an article also prove robust markers of high-quality qualitative research, as elucidated in Table 8 .

Quality Checklists: Tools for Assessing the Quality

Numerous checklists are available to speed up the assessment of the quality of qualitative research. However, if used uncritically and recklessly concerning the research context, these checklists may be counterproductive. I recommend that such lists and guiding principles may assist in pinpointing the markers of high-quality qualitative research. However, considering enormous variations in the authors’ theoretical and philosophical contexts, I would emphasize that high dependability on such checklists may say little about whether the findings can be applied in your setting. A combination of such checklists might be appropriate for novice researchers. Some of these checklists are listed below:

The most commonly used framework is Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) (Tong et al., 2007 ). This framework is recommended by some journals to be followed by the authors during article submission.

Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) is another checklist that has been created particularly for medical education (O’Brien et al., 2014 ).

Also, Tracy ( 2010 ) and Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP, 2021 ) offer criteria for qualitative research relevant across methods and approaches.

Further, researchers have also outlined different criteria as hallmarks of high-quality qualitative research. For instance, the “Road Trip Checklist” (Epp & Otnes, 2021 ) provides a quick reference to specific questions to address different elements of high-quality qualitative research.

Conclusions, Future Directions, and Outlook

This work presents a broad review of the criteria for good qualitative research. In addition, this article presents an exploratory analysis of the essential elements in qualitative research that can enable the readers of qualitative work to judge it as good research when objectively and adequately utilized. In this review, some of the essential markers that indicate high-quality qualitative research have been highlighted. I scope them narrowly to achieve rigor in qualitative research and note that they do not completely cover the broader considerations necessary for high-quality research. This review points out that a universal and versatile one-size-fits-all guideline for evaluating the quality of qualitative research does not exist. In other words, this review also emphasizes the non-existence of a set of common guidelines among qualitative researchers. In unison, this review reinforces that each qualitative approach should be treated uniquely on account of its own distinctive features for different epistemological and disciplinary positions. Owing to the sensitivity of the worth of qualitative research towards the specific context and the type of paradigmatic stance, researchers should themselves analyze what approaches can be and must be tailored to ensemble the distinct characteristics of the phenomenon under investigation. Although this article does not assert to put forward a magic bullet and to provide a one-stop solution for dealing with dilemmas about how, why, or whether to evaluate the “goodness” of qualitative research, it offers a platform to assist the researchers in improving their qualitative studies. This work provides an assembly of concerns to reflect on, a series of questions to ask, and multiple sets of criteria to look at, when attempting to determine the quality of qualitative research. Overall, this review underlines the crux of qualitative research and accentuates the need to evaluate such research by the very tenets of its being. Bringing together the vital arguments and delineating the requirements that good qualitative research should satisfy, this review strives to equip the researchers as well as reviewers to make well-versed judgment about the worth and significance of the qualitative research under scrutiny. In a nutshell, a comprehensive portrayal of the research process (from the context of research to the research objectives, research questions and design, speculative foundations, and from approaches of collecting data to analyzing the results, to deriving inferences) frequently proliferates the quality of a qualitative research.

Prospects : A Road Ahead for Qualitative Research

Irrefutably, qualitative research is a vivacious and evolving discipline wherein different epistemological and disciplinary positions have their own characteristics and importance. In addition, not surprisingly, owing to the sprouting and varied features of qualitative research, no consensus has been pulled off till date. Researchers have reflected various concerns and proposed several recommendations for editors and reviewers on conducting reviews of critical qualitative research (Levitt et al., 2021 ; McGinley et al., 2021 ). Following are some prospects and a few recommendations put forward towards the maturation of qualitative research and its quality evaluation:

In general, most of the manuscript and grant reviewers are not qualitative experts. Hence, it is more likely that they would prefer to adopt a broad set of criteria. However, researchers and reviewers need to keep in mind that it is inappropriate to utilize the same approaches and conducts among all qualitative research. Therefore, future work needs to focus on educating researchers and reviewers about the criteria to evaluate qualitative research from within the suitable theoretical and methodological context.

There is an urgent need to refurbish and augment critical assessment of some well-known and widely accepted tools (including checklists such as COREQ, SRQR) to interrogate their applicability on different aspects (along with their epistemological ramifications).

Efforts should be made towards creating more space for creativity, experimentation, and a dialogue between the diverse traditions of qualitative research. This would potentially help to avoid the enforcement of one's own set of quality criteria on the work carried out by others.

Moreover, journal reviewers need to be aware of various methodological practices and philosophical debates.

It is pivotal to highlight the expressions and considerations of qualitative researchers and bring them into a more open and transparent dialogue about assessing qualitative research in techno-scientific, academic, sociocultural, and political rooms.

Frequent debates on the use of evaluative criteria are required to solve some potentially resolved issues (including the applicability of a single set of criteria in multi-disciplinary aspects). Such debates would not only benefit the group of qualitative researchers themselves, but primarily assist in augmenting the well-being and vivacity of the entire discipline.

To conclude, I speculate that the criteria, and my perspective, may transfer to other methods, approaches, and contexts. I hope that they spark dialog and debate – about criteria for excellent qualitative research and the underpinnings of the discipline more broadly – and, therefore, help improve the quality of a qualitative study. Further, I anticipate that this review will assist the researchers to contemplate on the quality of their own research, to substantiate research design and help the reviewers to review qualitative research for journals. On a final note, I pinpoint the need to formulate a framework (encompassing the prerequisites of a qualitative study) by the cohesive efforts of qualitative researchers of different disciplines with different theoretic-paradigmatic origins. I believe that tailoring such a framework (of guiding principles) paves the way for qualitative researchers to consolidate the status of qualitative research in the wide-ranging open science debate. Dialogue on this issue across different approaches is crucial for the impending prospects of socio-techno-educational research.

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Review of Related Literature: Format, Example, & How to Make RRL

A review of related literature is a separate paper or a part of an article that collects and synthesizes discussion on a topic. Its purpose is to show the current state of research on the issue and highlight gaps in existing knowledge. A literature review can be included in a research paper or scholarly article, typically following the introduction and before the research methods section.

This article will clarify the definition, significance, and structure of a review of related literature. You’ll also learn how to organize your literature review and discover ideas for an RRL in different subjects.

🔤 What Is RRL?

• ❗ Significance of Literature Review
• 🔎 How to Search for Literature
• 🧩 Literature Review Structure
• 📋 Format of RRL — APA, MLA, & Others
• ✍️ How to Write an RRL
• 📚 Examples of RRL

🔗 References

A review of related literature (RRL) is a part of the research report that examines significant studies, theories, and concepts published in scholarly sources on a particular topic. An RRL includes 3 main components:

• A short overview and critique of the previous research.
• Similarities and differences between past studies and the current one.
• An explanation of the theoretical frameworks underpinning the research.

❗ Significance of Review of Related Literature

Although the goal of a review of related literature differs depending on the discipline and its intended use, its significance cannot be overstated. Here are some examples of how a review might be beneficial:

• It helps determine knowledge gaps .
• It saves from duplicating research that has already been conducted.
• It provides an overview of various research areas within the discipline.
• It demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the topic.

🔎 How to Perform a Literature Search

Including a description of your search strategy in the literature review section can significantly increase your grade. You can search sources with the following steps:

🧩 Literature Review Structure Example

The majority of literature reviews follow a standard introduction-body-conclusion structure. Let’s look at the RRL structure in detail.

Introduction of Review of Related Literature: Sample

An introduction should clarify the study topic and the depth of the information to be delivered. It should also explain the types of sources used. If your lit. review is part of a larger research proposal or project, you can combine its introductory paragraph with the introduction of your paper.

Here is a sample introduction to an RRL about cyberbullying:

Bullying has troubled people since the beginning of time. However, with modern technological advancements, especially social media, bullying has evolved into cyberbullying. As a result, nowadays, teenagers and adults cannot flee their bullies, which makes them feel lonely and helpless. This literature review will examine recent studies on cyberbullying.

Sample Review of Related Literature Thesis

A thesis statement should include the central idea of your literature review and the primary supporting elements you discovered in the literature. Thesis statements are typically put at the end of the introductory paragraph.

Look at a sample thesis of a review of related literature:

This literature review shows that scholars have recently covered the issues of bullies’ motivation, the impact of bullying on victims and aggressors, common cyberbullying techniques, and victims’ coping strategies. However, there is still no agreement on the best practices to address cyberbullying.

Literature Review Body Paragraph Example

The main body of a literature review should provide an overview of the existing research on the issue. Body paragraphs should not just summarize each source but analyze them. You can organize your paragraphs with these 3 elements:

• Claim . Start with a topic sentence linked to your literature review purpose.
• Evidence . Cite relevant information from your chosen sources.
• Discussion . Explain how the cited data supports your claim.

Here’s a literature review body paragraph example:

Scholars have examined the link between the aggressor and the victim. Beran et al. (2007) state that students bullied online often become cyberbullies themselves. Faucher et al. (2014) confirm this with their findings: they discovered that male and female students began engaging in cyberbullying after being subject to bullying. Hence, one can conclude that being a victim of bullying increases one’s likelihood of becoming a cyberbully.

Review of Related Literature: Conclusion

A conclusion presents a general consensus on the topic. Depending on your literature review purpose, it might include the following:

• Introduction to further research . If you write a literature review as part of a larger research project, you can present your research question in your conclusion .
• Overview of theories . You can summarize critical theories and concepts to help your reader understand the topic better.
• Discussion of the gap . If you identified a research gap in the reviewed literature, your conclusion could explain why that gap is significant.

Check out a conclusion example that discusses a research gap:

There is extensive research into bullies’ motivation, the consequences of bullying for victims and aggressors, strategies for bullying, and coping with it. Yet, scholars still have not reached a consensus on what to consider the best practices to combat cyberbullying. This question is of great importance because of the significant adverse effects of cyberbullying on victims and bullies.

📋 Format of RRL — APA, MLA, & Others

In this section, we will discuss how to format an RRL according to the most common citation styles: APA, Chicago, MLA, and Harvard.

Writing a literature review using the APA7 style requires the following text formatting:

• When using APA in-text citations , include the author’s last name and the year of publication in parentheses.
• For direct quotations , you must also add the page number. If you use sources without page numbers, such as websites or e-books, include a paragraph number instead.
• When referring to the author’s name in a sentence , you do not need to repeat it at the end of the sentence. Instead, include the year of publication inside the parentheses after their name.
• The reference list should be included at the end of your literature review. It is always alphabetized by the last name of the author (from A to Z), and the lines are indented one-half inch from the left margin of your paper. Do not forget to invert authors’ names (the last name should come first) and include the full titles of journals instead of their abbreviations. If you use an online source, add its URL.

The RRL format in the Chicago style is as follows:

• Author-date . You place your citations in brackets within the text, indicating the name of the author and the year of publication.
• Notes and bibliography . You place your citations in numbered footnotes or endnotes to connect the citation back to the source in the bibliography.
• The reference list, or bibliography , in Chicago style, is at the end of a literature review. The sources are arranged alphabetically and single-spaced. Each bibliography entry begins with the author’s name and the source’s title, followed by publication information, such as the city of publication, the publisher, and the year of publication.

Writing a literature review using the MLA style requires the following text formatting:

• In the MLA format, you can cite a source in the text by indicating the author’s last name and the page number in parentheses at the end of the citation. If the cited information takes several pages, you need to include all the page numbers.
• The reference list in MLA style is titled “ Works Cited .” In this section, all sources used in the paper should be listed in alphabetical order. Each entry should contain the author, title of the source, title of the journal or a larger volume, other contributors, version, number, publisher, and publication date.

The Harvard style requires you to use the following text formatting for your RRL:

• In-text citations in the Harvard style include the author’s last name and the year of publication. If you are using a direct quote in your literature review, you need to add the page number as well.
• Arrange your list of references alphabetically. Each entry should contain the author’s last name, their initials, the year of publication, the title of the source, and other publication information, like the journal title and issue number or the publisher.

✍️ How to Write Review of Related Literature – Sample

Literature reviews can be organized in many ways depending on what you want to achieve with them. In this section, we will look at 3 examples of how you can write your RRL.

Thematic Literature Review

A thematic literature review is arranged around central themes or issues discussed in the sources. If you have identified some recurring themes in the literature, you can divide your RRL into sections that address various aspects of the topic. For example, if you examine studies on e-learning, you can distinguish such themes as the cost-effectiveness of online learning, the technologies used, and its effectiveness compared to traditional education.

Chronological Literature Review

A chronological literature review is a way to track the development of the topic over time. If you use this method, avoid merely listing and summarizing sources in chronological order. Instead, try to analyze the trends, turning moments, and critical debates that have shaped the field’s path. Also, you can give your interpretation of how and why specific advances occurred.

Methodological Literature Review

A methodological literature review differs from the preceding ones in that it usually doesn’t focus on the sources’ content. Instead, it is concerned with the research methods . So, if your references come from several disciplines or fields employing various research techniques, you can compare the findings and conclusions of different methodologies, for instance:

• empirical vs. theoretical studies;
• qualitative vs. quantitative research.

📚 Examples of Review of Related Literature and Studies

We have prepared a short example of RRL on climate change for you to see how everything works in practice!

Climate change is one of the most important issues nowadays. Based on a variety of facts, it is now clearer than ever that humans are altering the Earth's climate. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, causing sea level rise, a significant loss of Arctic ice, and other climate-related changes. This literature review provides a thorough summary of research on climate change, focusing on climate change fingerprints and evidence of human influence on the Earth's climate system.

Physical Mechanisms and Evidence of Human Influence

Scientists are convinced that climate change is directly influenced by the emission of greenhouse gases. They have carefully analyzed various climate data and evidence, concluding that the majority of the observed global warming over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural factors alone. Instead, there is compelling evidence pointing to a significant contribution of human activities, primarily the emission of greenhouse gases (Walker, 2014). For example, based on simple physics calculations, doubled carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere can lead to a global temperature increase of approximately 1 degree Celsius. (Elderfield, 2022). In order to determine the human influence on climate, scientists still have to analyze a lot of natural changes that affect temperature, precipitation, and other components of climate on timeframes ranging from days to decades and beyond.

Fingerprinting Climate Change

Fingerprinting climate change is a useful tool to identify the causes of global warming because different factors leave unique marks on climate records. This is evident when scientists look beyond overall temperature changes and examine how warming is distributed geographically and over time (Watson, 2022). By investigating these climate patterns, scientists can obtain a more complex understanding of the connections between natural climate variability and climate variability caused by human activity.

Modeling Climate Change and Feedback

To accurately predict the consequences of feedback mechanisms, the rate of warming, and regional climate change, scientists can employ sophisticated mathematical models of the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice (the cryosphere). These models are grounded in well-established physical laws and incorporate the latest scientific understanding of climate-related processes (Shuckburgh, 2013). Although different climate models produce slightly varying projections for future warming, they all will agree that feedback mechanisms play a significant role in amplifying the initial warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. (Meehl, 2019).

In conclusion, the literature on global warming indicates that there are well-understood physical processes that link variations in greenhouse gas concentrations to climate change. In addition, it covers the scientific proof that the rates of these gases in the atmosphere have increased and continue to rise fast. According to the sources, the majority of this recent change is almost definitely caused by greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities. Citizens and governments can alter their energy production methods and consumption patterns to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, thus, the magnitude of climate change. By acting now, society can prevent the worst consequences of climate change and build a more resilient and sustainable future for generations to come.

Have you ever struggled with finding the topic for an RRL in different subjects? Read the following paragraphs to get some ideas!

Nursing Literature Review Example

Many topics in the nursing field require research. For example, you can write a review of literature related to dengue fever . Give a general overview of dengue virus infections, including its clinical symptoms, diagnosis, prevention, and therapy.

Another good idea is to review related literature and studies about teenage pregnancy . This review can describe the effectiveness of specific programs for adolescent mothers and their children and summarize recommendations for preventing early pregnancy.

📝 Check out some more valuable examples below:

• Hospital Readmissions: Literature Review .
• Literature Review: Lower Sepsis Mortality Rates .
• Breast Cancer: Literature Review .
• Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Literature Review .
• PICO for Pressure Ulcers: Literature Review .
• COVID-19 Spread Prevention: Literature Review .
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Literature Review .
• Hypertension Treatment Adherence: Literature Review .
• Neonatal Sepsis Prevention: Literature Review .
• Healthcare-Associated Infections: Literature Review .
• Understaffing in Nursing: Literature Review .

Psychology Literature Review Example

If you look for an RRL topic in psychology , you can write a review of related literature about stress . Summarize scientific evidence about stress stages, side effects, types, or reduction strategies. Or you can write a review of related literature about computer game addiction . In this case, you may concentrate on the neural mechanisms underlying the internet gaming disorder, compare it to other addictions, or evaluate treatment strategies.

A review of related literature about cyberbullying is another interesting option. You can highlight the impact of cyberbullying on undergraduate students’ academic, social, and emotional development.

📝 Look at the examples that we have prepared for you to come up with some more ideas:

• Mindfulness in Counseling: A Literature Review .
• Team-Building Across Cultures: Literature Review .
• Anxiety and Decision Making: Literature Review .
• Literature Review on Depression .
• Literature Review on Narcissism .
• Effects of Depression Among Adolescents .
• Causes and Effects of Anxiety in Children .

Literature Review — Sociology Example

Sociological research poses critical questions about social structures and phenomena. For example, you can write a review of related literature about child labor , exploring cultural beliefs and social norms that normalize the exploitation of children. Or you can create a review of related literature about social media . It can investigate the impact of social media on relationships between adolescents or the role of social networks on immigrants’ acculturation .

📝 You can find some more ideas below!

• Single Mothers’ Experiences of Relationships with Their Adolescent Sons .
• Teachers and Students’ Gender-Based Interactions .
• Gender Identity: Biological Perspective and Social Cognitive Theory .
• Gender: Culturally-Prescribed Role or Biological Sex .
• The Influence of Opioid Misuse on Academic Achievement of Veteran Students .
• The Importance of Ethics in Research .
• The Role of Family and Social Network Support in Mental Health .

Education Literature Review Example

For your education studies , you can write a review of related literature about academic performance to determine factors that affect student achievement and highlight research gaps. One more idea is to create a review of related literature on study habits , considering their role in the student’s life and academic outcomes.

You can also evaluate a computerized grading system in a review of related literature to single out its advantages and barriers to implementation. Or you can complete a review of related literature on instructional materials to identify their most common types and effects on student achievement.

📝 Find some inspiration in the examples below:

• Literature Review on Online Learning Challenges From COVID-19 .
• Education, Leadership, and Management: Literature Review .
• Literature Review: Standardized Testing Bias .
• Bullying of Disabled Children in School .
• Interventions and Letter & Sound Recognition: A Literature Review .
• Social-Emotional Skills Program for Preschoolers .
• Effectiveness of Educational Leadership Management Skills .

Business Research Literature Review

If you’re a business student, you can focus on customer satisfaction in your review of related literature. Discuss specific customer satisfaction features and how it is affected by service quality and prices. You can also create a theoretical literature review about consumer buying behavior to evaluate theories that have significantly contributed to understanding how consumers make purchasing decisions.

📝 Look at the examples to get more exciting ideas:

• Leadership and Communication: Literature Review .
• Human Resource Development: Literature Review .
• Project Management. Literature Review .
• Strategic HRM: A Literature Review .
• Customer Relationship Management: Literature Review .
• Literature Review on International Financial Reporting Standards .
• Cultures of Management: Literature Review .

To conclude, a review of related literature is a significant genre of scholarly works that can be applied in various disciplines and for multiple goals. The sources examined in an RRL provide theoretical frameworks for future studies and help create original research questions and hypotheses.

When you finish your outstanding literature review, don’t forget to check whether it sounds logical and coherent. Our text-to-speech tool can help you with that!

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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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• v.56(1); 2023 Jan

Qualitative Research in Healthcare: Necessity and Characteristics

1 Department of Preventive Medicine, Ulsan University Hospital, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Ulsan, Korea

2 Ulsan Metropolitan City Public Health Policy’s Institute, Ulsan, Korea

3 Department of Nursing, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea

Eun Young Choi

4 College of Nursing, Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul, Korea

Seung Gyeong Jang

5 Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Quantitative and qualitative research explore various social phenomena using different methods. However, there has been a tendency to treat quantitative studies using complicated statistical techniques as more scientific and superior, whereas relatively few qualitative studies have been conducted in the medical and healthcare fields. This review aimed to provide a proper understanding of qualitative research. This review examined the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research to help researchers select the appropriate qualitative research methodology. Qualitative research is applicable in following cases: (1) when an exploratory approach is required on a topic that is not well known, (2) when something cannot be explained fully with quantitative research, (3) when it is necessary to newly present a specific view on a research topic that is difficult to explain with existing views, (4) when it is inappropriate to present the rationale or theoretical proposition for designing hypotheses, as in quantitative research, and (5) when conducting research that requires detailed descriptive writing with literary expressions. Qualitative research is conducted in the following order: (1) selection of a research topic and question, (2) selection of a theoretical framework and methods, (3) literature analysis, (4) selection of the research participants and data collection methods, (5) data analysis and description of findings, and (6) research validation. This review can contribute to the more active use of qualitative research in healthcare, and the findings are expected to instill a proper understanding of qualitative research in researchers who review qualitative research reports and papers.

Graphical abstract

INTRODUCTION

The definition of research varies among studies and scholars, and it is difficult to devise a single definition. The Oxford English Dictionary defines research as “a careful study of a subject, especially in order to discover new facts or information about it” [ 1 ], while Webster’s Dictionary defines research as “studious inquiry or examination - especially: investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws” [ 2 ]. Moreover, research is broadly defined as the process of solving unsolved problems to broaden human knowledge [ 3 ]. A more thorough understanding of research can be gained by examining its types and reasons for conducting it.

The reasons for conducting research may include practical goals, such as degree attainment, job promotion, and financial profit. Research may be based on one’s own academic curiosity or aspiration or guided by professors or other supervisors. Academic research aims can be further divided into the following: (1) accurately describing an object or phenomenon, (2) identifying general laws and establishing well-designed theories for understanding and explaining a certain phenomenon, (3) predicting future events based on laws and theories, and (4) manipulating causes and conditions to induce or prevent a phenomenon [ 3 ].

The appropriate type of research must be selected based on the purpose and topic. Basic research has the primary purpose of expanding the existing knowledge base through new discoveries, while applied research aims to solve a real problem. Descriptive research attempts to factually present comparisons and interpretations of findings based on analyses of the characteristics, progression, or relationships of a certain phenomenon by manipulating the variables or controlling the conditions. Experimental or analytical research attempts to identify causal relationships between variables through experiments by arbitrarily manipulating the variables or controlling the conditions [ 3 ]. In addition, research can be quantitative or qualitative, depending on the data collection and analytical methods. Quantitative research relies on statistical analyses of quantitative data obtained primarily through investigation and experiment, while qualitative research uses specific methodologies to analyze qualitative data obtained through participant observations and in-depth interviews. However, as these types of research are not polar opposites and the criteria for classifying research types are unclear, there is some degree of methodological overlap.

What is more important than differentiating types of research is identifying the appropriate type of research to gain a better understanding of specific questions and improve problems encountered by people in life. An appropriate research type or methodology is essential to apply findings reliably. However, quantitative research based on the philosophical ideas of empiricism and positivism has been the mainstay in the field of healthcare, with academic advancement achieved through the application of various statistical techniques to quantitative data [ 4 ]. In particular, there has been a tendency to treat complicated statistical techniques as more scientific and superior, with few qualitative studies in not only clinical medicine, but also primary care and social medicine, which are relatively strongly influenced by the social sciences [ 5 , 6 ].

Quantitative and qualitative research use different ways of exploring various social phenomena. Both research methodologies can be applied individually or in combination based on the research topic, with mixed quantitative and qualitative research methodologies becoming more widespread in recent years [ 7 ]. Applying these 2 methods through a virtuous cycle of integration from a complementary perspective can provide a more accurate understanding of human phenomena and solutions to real-world problems.

This review aimed to provide a proper understanding of qualitative research to assist researchers in selecting the appropriate research methodology. Specifically, this review examined the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research, the applicability of qualitative research, and the data sources collected and analyzed in qualitative research.

COMPARISON OF QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

A clearer understanding of qualitative research can be obtained by comparing qualitative and quantitative research, with which people are generally familiar [ 8 , 9 ]. Quantitative research focuses on testing the validity of hypotheses established by the researcher to identify the causal relationships of a specific phenomenon and discovering laws to predict that phenomenon ( Table 1 ). Therefore, it emphasizes controlling the influence of variables that may interfere with the process of identifying causality and laws. In contrast, qualitative research aims to discover and explore new hypotheses or theories based on a deep understanding of the meaning of a specific phenomenon. As such, qualitative research attempts to accept various environmental factors naturally. In quantitative research, importance is placed on the researcher acting as an outsider to take an objective view by keeping a certain distance from the research subject. In contrast, qualitative research encourages looking inside the research subjects to understand them deeply, while also emphasizing the need for researchers to take an intersubjective view that is formed and shared based on a mutual understanding with the research subjects.

Comparison of methodological characteristics between quantitative research and qualitative research

The data used in quantitative research can be expressed as numerical values, and data accumulated through questionnaire surveys and tests are often used in analyses. In contrast, qualitative research uses narrative data with words and images collected through participant observations, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions used in the analyses. Quantitative research data are measured repeatedly to enhance their reliability, while the analyses of such data focus on superficial aspects of the phenomenon of interest. Qualitative research instead focuses on obtaining deep and rich data and aims to identify the specific contents, dynamics, and processes inherent within the phenomenon and situation.

There are clear distinctions in the advantages, disadvantages, and goals of quantitative and qualitative research. On one hand, quantitative research has the advantages of reliability and generalizability of the findings, and advances in data collection and analysis methods have increased reliability and generalizability. However, quantitative research presents difficulties with an in-depth analysis of dynamic phenomena that cannot be expressed by numbers alone and interpreting the results analyzed in terms numbers. On the other hand, qualitative research has the advantage of validity, which refers to how accurately or appropriately a phenomenon was measured. However, qualitative research also has the disadvantage of weak generalizability, which determines whether an observed phenomenon applies to other cases.

APPLICATIONS OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AND ITS USEFULNESS IN THE HEALTHCARE FIELD

Qualitative research cannot be the solution to all problems. A specific methodology should not be applied to all situations. Therefore, researchers need to have a good understanding of the applicability of qualitative research. Generally, qualitative research is applicable in following cases: (1) when an exploratory approach is required on a topic that is not well known, (2) when something cannot be explained fully with quantitative research, (3) when it is necessary to newly present a specific view on a research topic that is difficult to explain with existing views, (4) when it is inappropriate to present the rationale or theoretical proposition for designing hypotheses, as in quantitative research, and (5) when conducting research that requires detailed descriptive writing with literary expressions [ 7 ]. In particular, qualitative research is useful for opening new fields of research, such as important topics that have not been previously examined or whose significance has not been recognized. Moreover, qualitative research is advantageous for examining known topics from a fresh perspective.

In the healthcare field, qualitative research is conducted on various topics considering its characteristics and strengths. Quantitative research, which focuses on hypothesis validation, such as the superiority of specific treatments or the effectiveness of specific policies, and the generalization of findings, has been the primary research methodology in the field of healthcare. Qualitative research has been mostly applied for studies such as subjective disease experiences and attitudes with respect to health-related patient quality of life [ 10 - 12 ], experiences and perceptions regarding the use of healthcare services [ 13 - 15 ], and assessments of the quality of care [ 16 , 17 ]. Moreover, qualitative research has focused on vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, children, disabled [ 18 - 20 ], minorities, and socially underprivileged with specific experiences [ 21 , 22 ].

For instance, patient safety is considered a pillar of quality of care, which is an aspect of healthcare with increasing international interest. The ultimate goal of patient safety research should be the improvement of patient safety, for which it is necessary to identify the root causes of potential errors and adverse events. In such cases, qualitative rather than quantitative research is often required. It is also important to identify whether there are any barriers when applying measures for enhancing patient safety to clinical practice. To identify such barriers, qualitative research is necessary to observe healthcare workers directly applying the solutions step-by-step during each process, determine whether there are difficulties in applying the solutions to relevant stakeholders, and ask how to improve the process if there are difficulties.

Patient safety is a very broad topic, and patient safety issues could be categorized into preventing, recognizing, and responding to patient safety issues based on related metrics [ 23 ]. Responding to issues that pertain to the handling of patient safety incidents that have already occurred has received relatively less interest than other categories of research on this topic, particularly in Korea. Until 2017, almost no research was conducted on the experiences of and difficulties faced by patients and healthcare workers who have been involved in patient safety incidents. This topic can be investigated using qualitative research.

A study in Korea investigated the physical and mental suffering experienced during the process of accepting disability and medical litigation by a patient who became disabled due to medical malpractice [ 21 ]. Another qualitative case study was conducted with participants who lost a family member due to a medical accident and identified psychological suffering due to the incident, as well as secondary psychological suffering during the medical litigation process, which increased the expandability of qualitative research findings [ 24 ]. A quantitative study based on these findings confirmed that people who experienced patient safety incidents had negative responses after the incidents and a high likelihood of sleep or eating disorders, depending on their responses [ 25 ].

A study that applied the grounded theory to examine the second victim phenomenon, referring to healthcare workers who have experienced patient safety incidents, and presented the response stages experienced by second victims demonstrated the strength of qualitative research [ 26 ]. Subsequently, other studies used questionnaire surveys on physicians and nurses to quantify the physical, mental, and work-related difficulties experienced by second victims [ 27 , 28 ]. As such, qualitative research alone can produce significant findings; however, combining quantitative and qualitative research produces a synergistic effect. In the healthcare field, which remains unfamiliar with qualitative research, combining these 2 methodologies could both enhance the validity of research findings and facilitate open discussions with other researchers [ 29 ].

In addition, qualitative research has been used for diverse sub-topics, including the experiences of patients and guardians with respect to various diseases (such as cancer, myocardial infarction, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression, falls, and dementia), awareness of treatment for diabetes and hypertension, the experiences of physicians and nurses when they come in contact with medical staff, awareness of community health environments, experiences of medical service utilization by the general public in medically vulnerable areas, the general public’s awareness of vaccination policies, the health issues of people with special types of employment (such as delivery and call center workers), and the unmet healthcare needs of persons with vision or hearing impairment.

GENERAL WORKFLOW OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Rather than focusing on deriving objective information, qualitative research aims to discern the quality of a specific phenomenon, obtaining answers to “why” and “how” questions. Qualitative research aims to collect data multi-dimensionally and provide in-depth explanations of the phenomenon being researched. Ultimately, the purpose of qualitative research is set to help researchers gain an understanding of the research topic and reveal the implications of the research findings. Therefore, qualitative research is generally conducted in the following order: (1) selection of a research topic and question, (2) selection of a theoretical framework and methods, (3) literature analysis, (4) selection of the research participants (or participation target) and data collection methods, (5) data analysis and description of findings, and (6) research validation ( Figure 1 ) [ 30 ]. However, unlike quantitative research, in which hypothesis setting and testing take place unidirectionally, a major characteristic of qualitative research is that the process is reversible and research methods can be modified. In other words, the research topic and question could change during the literature analysis process, and theoretical and analytical methods could change during the data collection process.

General workflow of qualitative research.

Selection of a Research Topic and Question

As with any research, the first step in qualitative research is the selection of a research topic and question. Qualitative researchers can select a research topic based on their interests from daily life as a researcher, their interests in issues within the healthcare field, and ideas from the literature, such as academic journals. The research question represents a more specific aspect of the research topic. Before specifically starting to conduct research based on a research topic, the researcher should clarify what is being researched and determine what research would be desirable. When selecting a research topic and question, the research should ask: is the research executable, are the research topic and question worth researching, and is this a research question that a researcher would want to research?

Selection of Theoretical Framework and Methods

A theoretical framework refers to the thoughts or attitudes that a researcher has about the phenomenon being researched. Selecting the theoretical framework first could help qualitative researchers not only in selecting the research purpose and problem, but also in carrying out various processes, including an exploration of the precedent literature and research, selection of the data type to be collected, data analysis, and description of findings. In qualitative research, theoretical frameworks are based on philosophical ideas, which affect the selection of specific qualitative research methods. Representative qualitative research methods include the grounded theory, which is suitable for achieving the goal of developing a theory that can explain the processes involved in the phenomenon being researched; ethnographic study, which is suitable for research topics that attempt to identify and interpret the culture of a specific group; phenomenology, which is suitable for research topics that attempt to identify the nature of research participants’ experiences or the phenomenon being researched; case studies, which aim to gain an in-depth understanding of a case that has unique characteristics and can be differentiated from other cases; action research, which aims to find solutions to problems faced by research participants, with the researchers taking the same position as the participants; and narrative research, which is suitable for research topics that attempt to interpret the entire life or individual experiences contained within the stories of research participants. Other methodologies include photovoice research, consensual qualitative research, and auto-ethnographic research.

Literature Analysis

Literature analysis results can be helpful in specifically selecting the research problem, theoretical framework, and research methods. The literature analysis process compels qualitative researchers to contemplate the new knowledge that their research will add to the academic field. A comprehensive literature analysis is encouraged both in qualitative and quantitative research, and if the prior literature related to the subject to be studied is insufficient, it is sometimes evaluated as having low research potential or research value. Some have claimed that a formal literature review should not be performed before the collection of field data, as it could create bias, thereby interfering with the investigation. However, as the qualitative research process is cyclic rather than unidirectional, the majority believes that a literature review can be performed at any time. Moreover, an ethical review prior to starting the research is a requirement; therefore, the research protocol must be prepared and submitted for review and approval prior to conducting the research. To prepare research protocols, the existing literature must be analyzed at least to a certain degree. Nonetheless, qualitative researchers must keep in mind that their emotions, bias, and expectations may interject themselves during the literature review process and should strive to minimize any bias to ensure the validity of the research.

Selection of the Research Participants and Data Collection Methods

The subjects of qualitative research are not necessarily humans. It is more important to find the research subject(s) from which the most in-depth answers to the research problem can be obtained. However, the subjects in most qualitative studies are humans, as most research question focus on humans. Therefore, it is important to obtain research participants with sufficient knowledge, experience, and attitudes to provide the most appropriate answers to the research question. Quantitative research, which views generalizability as a key research goal, emphasizes the selection of research participants (i.e., the research sample that can represent the study’s population of interest), whereas qualitative research emphasizes finding research participants who can best describe and demonstrate the phenomenon of interest.

In qualitative research, the participant selection method is referred to as purposeful sampling (or purposive sampling), which can be divided into various types. Sampling methods have various advantages, disadvantages, and characteristics. For instance, unique sampling (extreme case sampling) has the advantage of being able to obtain interesting research findings by researching phenomena that have previously received little or no interest, and the disadvantage of deriving research findings that are interesting to only some readers if the research is conducted on an overly unique situation. Maximum variation sampling, also referred to as theoretical sampling, is commonly used in qualitative research based on the grounded theory. Selecting the appropriate participant sampling method that suits the purpose of research is crucial ( Table 2 ).

Sampling methods of selecting research participants in qualitative research

Once the researcher has decided how to select study participants, the data collection methods must be determined. Just as with participant sampling, various data collection methods are available, all of which have various advantages and disadvantages; therefore, the method must be selected based on the research question and circumstances. Unlike quantitative research, which usually uses a single data source and data collection method, the use of multiple data sources and data collection methods is encouraged in qualitative research [ 30 ]. Using a single data source and data collection method could cause data collection to be skewed by researcher bias; therefore, using multiple data sources and data collection methods is ideal. In qualitative research, the following data types are commonly used: (1) interview data obtained through one-on-one in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, (2) observational data from various observation levels, (3) documented data collected from personal or public documents, and (4) image data, such as photographs and videos.

Interview data are the most commonly used data source in qualitative research [ 31 ]. In qualitative research, an interview refers to communication that takes place based on a clear sense of purpose of acquiring certain information, unlike conversations that typically take place in daily life. The level of data acquired through interviews varies significantly depending on the researcher’s personal qualifications and abilities, as well as his or her level of interest and knowledge regarding the research topic. Therefore, interviewers must be trained to go beyond simply identifying the clearly expressed experiences of research participants to exploring their inner experiences and emotions [ 32 ]. Interview data can be classified based on the level of structuralization of the data collection method, sample size, and interview method. The characteristics of each type of interview are given in Table 3 .

Detailed types of interview methods according to the characteristics of in-depth interviews and focus group discussion

Observations, which represent a key data collection method in anthropology, refer to a series of actions taken by the researcher in search of a deep understanding by systematically examining the appearances of research participants that take place in natural situations [ 33 ]. Observations can be categorized as participant and non-participant, insider and outsider, disguised and undisguised, short- and long-term, and structured and unstructured. However, a line cannot be drawn clearly to differentiate these categories, and the degree of each varies along a single spectrum. Therefore, it is necessary for a qualitative researcher to select the appropriate data collection method based on the circumstances and characteristics of the research topic.

Various types of document data can be used in qualitative research. Personal documents include diaries, letters, and autobiographies, while public documents include legal documents, public announcements, and civil documents. Online documents include emails and blog or bulletin board postings, while other documents include graffiti. All these document types may be used as data sources in qualitative research. In addition, image data acquired by the research participant or researcher, such as photographs and videos, serve as useful data sources in qualitative research. Such data sources are relatively objective and easily accessible, while they contain a significant amount of qualitative meaning despite the low acquisition cost. While some data may have been collected for research purposes, other data may not have been originally produced for research. Therefore, the researcher must not distort the original information contained in the data source and must verify the accuracy and authenticity of the data source in advance [ 30 ].

This review examined the characteristics of qualitative research to help researchers select the appropriate qualitative research methodology and identify situations suitable for qualitative research in the healthcare field. In addition, this paper analyzed the selection of the research topic and problem, selection of the theoretical framework and methods, literature analysis, and selection of the research participants and data collection methods. A forthcoming paper will discuss more specific details regarding other qualitative research methodologies, such as data analysis, description of findings, and research validation. This review can contribute to the more active use of qualitative research in the healthcare field, and the findings are expected to instill a proper understanding of qualitative research in researchers who review and judge qualitative research reports and papers.

Ethics Statement

Since this study used secondary data source, we did not seek approval from the institutional review board. We also did not have to ask for the consent of the participants.

Acknowledgments

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors have no conflicts of interest associated with the material presented in this paper.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Conceptualization: Pyo J, Lee W, Choi EY, Jang SG, Ock M. Data curation: Pyo J, Ock M. Formal analysis: Pyo J, Ock M. Funding acquisition: None. Validation: Lee W, Choi EY, Jang SG. Writing - original draft: Pyo J, Ock M. Writing - review & editing: Pyo J, Lee W, Choi EY, Jang SG, Ock M.

Literature review on qualitative methods and standards for engaging and studying independent children in the developing world

• January 2009

• San Diego State University
• This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.

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Developing community-based physical activity interventions and recreational programming for children in rural and smaller urban centres: a qualitative exploration of service provider and parent experiences

• Emma Ostermeier 1 ,
• Jason Gilliland 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ,
• Jennifer D. Irwin 7 ,
• Jamie A. Seabrook 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 8 &
• Patricia Tucker 5 , 6 , 9  

BMC Health Services Research volume  24 , Article number:  1017 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Children’s physical inactivity is a persisting international public health concern. While there is a large body of literature examining physical activity interventions for children, the unique physical activity context of low-density communities in rural areas and smaller urban centres remains largely underexplored. With an influx of families migrating to rural communities and small towns, evaluations of health promotion efforts that support physical activity are needed to ensure they are meeting the needs of the growing populations in these settings. The aim of this community-based research was to explore service providers’ and parents’ perspectives on physical activity opportunities available in their community and recommendations toward the development and implementation of efficacious physical activity programming for children in rural communities and smaller urban centres.

Three in-person community forums with recreation service providers ( n  = 37 participants) and 1 online community forum with the parents of school-aged children ( n  = 9 participants) were hosted. An online survey and Mentimeter activity were conducted prior to the community forums to gather participants’ views on the barriers and facilitators to physical activities and suggestions for activity-promoting programs. The service provider and parent discussions were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed following a deductive approach guided by Hseih and Shannon’s (2005) procedure for direct content analysis. A code list developed from the responses to the pre-forum survey and Mentimeter activity was used to guide the analysis and category development.

Seven distinct categories related to the existing physical activity opportunities and recommendations for programs in rural communities and smaller urban centres were identified during the analysis: (1) Recovery from Pandemic-Related Measures, (2) Knowledge and Access to Programs, (3) Availability, (4) Personnel Support, (5) Quality of Programs and Facilities, (6) Expenses and Subsidies, and (7) Inclusivity and Preferences.

To improve the health and well-being of children who reside in low-density areas, the results of this study highlight service provider and parent recommendations when developing and implementing community-based physical activity programs and interventions in rural and smaller urban settings, including skill development programs, non-competitive activity options, maximizing existing spaces for activities, and financial support.

Peer Review reports

Physical activity is an important behaviour for children’s development, health, and well-being [ 1 ]. The World Health Organization’s guidelines for physical activity and sedentary behaviour recommend that children 5–17 years of age accumulate an average of 60 min of daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity to attain physical, mental, and cognitive health benefits, including improved quality of life [ 2 ]; however, most children are not meeting the recommendations [ 3 , 4 ]. The high rates of physical inactivity have been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the literature reporting considerable declines in children’s physical activity during stay-at-home orders [ 5 ] and activity levels remaining low following the reopening of recreational facilities [ 6 ]. In Canada, only 28% of children aged 5 to 17 years met the recommended amount of physical activity during the early years of the pandemic [ 7 ], an 11% decrease from the reported activity levels prior to the pandemic [ 8 ]. This is particularly troubling as sedentary lifestyles during childhood can cultivate unhealthy habits that will continue as they transition into adolescence [ 9 ] and persist into adulthood [ 10 ]. To help engage children in more physical activity as the public health precautions were lifted, parents highlighted the need for a variety of accessible, affordable programs that offered children the opportunity to be active outside of school [ 11 , 12 ]. Therefore, tailored and feasible health promotion interventions and initiatives are essential in preventing the persistent rise in physical inactivity.

Although there has been increasing support for interventions to promote physical activity in children, low-density areas – including dispersed rural communities (i.e., rural areas with a low population density and low population size), villages (i.e., small, semi-dense, rural settlements with a small population size), and smaller urban centres (i.e., semi-dense areas with a moderate population size) – have been underexplored [ 13 , 14 , 15 ], even though thinly populated communities have higher rates of obesity, chronic conditions (e.g., asthma and developmental delays) and mortality among children [ 16 , 17 ]. Due to the lower densities of development in rural and smaller urban settings, children in these areas commonly experience issues related to limited local resources and program options, reduced access to health-related services, and greater need for vehicular transportation to activities [ 18 , 19 ]. With the recent rise in migration of Canadians to rural areas [ 20 ], finding ways to help children from smaller communities overcome the barriers to physical activity participation is valuable. As Canada has the fastest-growing rural communities of the G7 countries [ 20 ], it can serve as an ideal location for additional research on children’s physical activity in less densely populated settings.

The Grade 5 ACT-i-Pass Program is a community-based physical activity intervention originally developed for London, Ontario, Canada that offers children in grade 5 free organized and drop-in activities at participating recreational facilities for the school year [ 21 ]. As previous evaluations of the program have indicated that the pass improved children’s physical activity [ 22 ], expanding the program to additional communities may be a promising approach to address children’s low physical activity levels; therefore, plans for offering the program in the neighbouring rural and smaller urban areas are underway.

Despite community-based interventions having the potential to foster much-needed population-level changes in physical activity [ 23 ], the effective implementation and intended outputs of these programs are vulnerable to the context and can be hindered by a variety of complex individual, social, and environmental conditions [ 24 ]. Durlak and Dupre [ 25 ] suggest that understanding the factors that influence program uptake and adoption by a specific community can help close the gap between an evidence-based intervention plan and its effectiveness in a real-world context. Thus, prior to investing the funds necessary to scale-up this program to rural and smaller urban settings, the extent to which community members would find programs like the ACT-i-Pass suitable needs to be determined to ensure a tailored version of the program that is most likely to be used by the target population is offered.

As an initial step of the program development phase, a needs assessment provides context into the factors associated with children’s engagement in physical activity and service providers’ capacity to offer recreation programs [ 26 ]. Specifically, a multisector approach to physical activity promotion can improve the quality and implementation of interventions in real-world settings by allowing families and community organizations to advise on the development and design of interventions based on their experiences and knowledge of the area [ 27 ]. Gaining input from the target audience during the planning stages of interventions can be used to highlight strategies to address the various social and environmental factors that influence physical activity participation, help align components of interventions with the needs and preferences of the target audience, generate buy-in from the community, and incentivize organizations to promote and adopt programs [ 28 , 29 ]. Notably, studies have shown that multi-disciplinary collaborations that integrate partners during the design stage of interventions can lead to more effective and sustainable health promotion initiatives [ 29 , 30 , 31 ].

The aim of this study was to host discussions with service providers and parents in Oxford, Elgin and Middlesex Counties to understand their experiences with the physical activity opportunities available in rural communities and smaller urban centres and gather their recommendations toward the development and implementation of efficacious physical activity programming for children in dispersed, resource-limited areas. To achieve this aim, this study explored factors which positively or negatively influence children’s physical activity participation in rural communities and smaller urban centres. Moreover, this study gathered parents’ and service providers’ perspectives about the design and/or implementation of health promotion initiatives in their community, specifically, the ACT-i-Pass Program and physical activity interventions targeting children.

Study design

This naturally-unfolding experiment is part of a larger study exploring the adaptation, implementation, and evaluation of the Grade 5 ACT-i-Pass Program expansion. As a case study, this research focuses on a predominantly rural region in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Oxford, Elgin, and Middlesex counties are made up of farmland, outdoor attractions including conservation areas and beaches, and a variety of smaller urban centres (i.e., towns and small cities) and rural settlements (i.e., villages and dispersed communities) with populations of 22,015, 17,030, and 83,160 children ages 0 to 14 years, respectively [ 32 , 33 , 34 ]. To achieve the aim of this study, we hosted community forums, a group information collection technique that empowers members of the target area to use their knowledge and lived experiences to identify community-level impacts of interventions and provide locally derived strategies that can support beneficial behaviour changes while minimizing potential harms [ 35 ]. This study protocol was approved by Western University’s Non-Medical Research Ethics Board (REB #103954).

Participants and recruitment

Service providers and parents were recruited to participate in this study. Service providers were identified through an online search of recreational facilities, which was reviewed for missing organizations with program partners at the two health units and the municipal governments that attend to the residents of Oxford, Elgin, and Middlesex Counties in an effort to produce a comprehensive list of potential participants. Identified service providers were contacted via email and phone and provided details about the community forum, including an overview of the study. Potential parent participants were identified via the ACT-i-Pass registration form. For year 1 of the expanded program, information was distributed earlier than previous program years, including early access to the registration form, as part of a promotional effort to inform families that the program was now available to children in the counties. An extended pre-program promotion timeline also offered the project team time to recruit parents for the community forums and integrate their feedback into the program design for the upcoming year. Of those who consented to be contacted about research activities, parents were emailed an invitation to participate in the community forum, which included a brief overview of the study and the pre-forum survey.

Service providers were defined as any business, organization or community group that works with children and their families in the counties. To be eligible to participate in this study, service providers had to: (1) offer programs related to physical activity or have mandates that aimed to improve the health and well-being of children (i.e., physical activity program providers, municipal recreation representatives, small business owners who offered activities for children, government employees from family service branches, health unit representatives, and not-for-profit organizations); (2) provide services for families in Oxford County, Elgin County (including the City of St. Thomas), or Middlesex County; (3) speak and understand English; and (4) provided written and oral consent to participate in the study and to be audio-recorded.

Parents were eligible to participate in a community forum if they were the parent or guardian of a grade 5 child(ren) in Oxford, Elgin or Middlesex County who enrolled their child in the ACT-i-Pass during the early registration stage and consented to participate in the research study.

Data collection

Pre-forum survey.

As part of the invitation email for the community forum, service providers and parents were asked to complete an online (via Qualtrics) pre-forum survey. The service provider survey gathered details about their organization, key barriers and facilitators to physical activity opportunities, and the extent to which community members would find the ACT-i-Pass program appropriate for children in their area. Parents were posed similar survey questions as service providers except the parent survey asked to provide socio-demographic information instead of organization details.

Mentimeter activity

Before the start of the community forum conversations, service providers and parents were asked to engage in a brainwriting activity using Mentimeter interactive presentation software ( https://www.mentimeter.com/ ). Brainwriting is a form of idea generation where participants silently and independently record their ideas [ 36 ]. As an alternative to collaborative group-sharing sessions, brainwriting can be an effective way to gain a greater variety of unique ideas by engaging more participants in an activity while minimizing group conflicts, social pressure to conform to the group, and dominance of a few participants’ perspectives [ 37 , 38 ]. Participants could provide an unlimited number of responses to two questions: (1) What are the factors that influence children’s physical activity participation?; and (2) What program components or strategies can lead to successful physical activity programs and interventions in your community? Service provider and parent responses to the Mentimeter activity and the pre-forum survey, including their frequency counts, were amalgamated into a single list.

Community forum discussions

In total, 4 community forums were hosted for service providers ( n  = 3 forums) and parents ( n  = 1 forum) in Spring 2023. Community forums were organized and hosted separately for parents and service providers to acquire the perspective of those trying to access the activities as well as those trying to develop and run programs. In-person community forums with service providers were hosted at local community centres and libraries. Separate community forums were offered in Oxford, Elgin, and Middlesex Counties to improve geographic accessibility. The agenda of the community forums was organized in two parts. The first hour of the forum served as a promotional event for the health units to educate and recruit organizations to the ACT-i-Pass Program. Following a short break, the second hour was a research effort conducted by the research team to gather perspectives from community stakeholders about the physical activity opportunities that exist in the area.

Parent community forums were planned to be in-person, but the research team experienced issues with geographic accessibility, scheduling conflicts, and commitments impacting attendance; consequently, parent community forums were hosted online via Microsoft Teams. Differing from the service provider agenda, the first half hour consisted of an overview of the ACT-i-Pass and a question and answer session, following an hour of discussion guided by the research team about the physical activity opportunities for children in their community. The perspectives of children were not collected for this study as their input will be most valuable after completing a year of the program. By collecting children’s perspectives once they have used the pass, they can offer the research team insight into their experiences and propose adaptations to the ACT-i-Pass design that can improve the quality of the program.

The discussions lasted between 50 and 75 min ( \(\bar x\) = 61 min). Two members of the research team attended each community forum. One member acted as the moderator for all community forum discussions to ensure consistency. The second member took notes to capture all key ideas and thoughts from the participants. Prior to the questions, participants were provided an overview of the topics being discussed and asked if they still consented to be recorded.

The community forum conversations followed a semi-structured interview guide (Additional Files 1 & 2) developed by the research team. The guides for service providers and parents consisted of 7 and 6 questions respectively and a series of prompts. The questions were related to the recreational spaces and activity options available in their community (i.e., What organizations in your community provide physical activity programming for children?), the characteristics of the community that positively or negatively influence physical activity participation (i.e., What characteristics of Oxford/Elgin/Middlesex would you describe as factors that positively or negatively influence children’s physical activity participation?), and the adoption of the community-based programs into their communities (i.e., Do you have any recommendations for the ACT-i-Pass as we begin offering activities in Oxford/Elgin/Middlesex?). Conversations with service providers and parents were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim via Microsoft Streams. A member of the research team de-identified and reviewed the transcripts for accuracy.

Data analysis

All transcripts were imported into QSR NVivo 12 and analyzed following the steps outlined in Hseih and Shannon’s [ 39 ] procedure for direct content analysis. A deductive approach to the content analysis was deemed appropriate for this study as the responses generated during the pre-forum survey and Mentimeter activity offered a participant-directed list of codes related to children’s physical activity participation, recreation programs, and health promotion interventions in the 3 counties [ 40 ].

The analysis started with the preparation of the coding list by developing the initial coding categories. A list of 119 codes was derived from the service provider- and parent-generated responses in the pre-forum survey and Mentimeter activity. As similar words and terms were used to describe the same phenomena, the responses were refined into a universal term, resulting in 102 unique codes. Subsequently, the codes were grouped into initial categories based on key concepts and a definition for each category was generated. The initial categories were developed by members of the research team who attended the community forums as they had more in-depth knowledge of the data and the nuances associated with statements made by the participants [ 41 ]. An audit trail with a detailed record of the research process was developed to add trustworthiness to the findings [ 42 , 43 ]. The list of pre-determined categories and their definitions were reviewed by an auditor to increase their accuracy and relevance to the responses provided by community forum participants [ 39 ].

Two reviewers analyzed the transcripts independently and collaborated to identify the final categories. Using multiple reviewers during coding can add reliability to the findings and improve the quality of the analysis by introducing various perspectives and lived experiences that can produce a deep, thorough exploration of the data [ 44 ]. The researchers first reviewed the transcripts to familiarize themselves with the data and note any initial patterns or thoughts on the discussions. To isolate the nuances in the topics discussed during the service provider and parent discussions, the data were organized by adding attribute codes to each transcript to identify the study population (i.e., parents or service providers) and location (i.e., Oxford, Elgin, or Middlesex) [ 45 ]. The reviewers then went through the transcript a second time and coded categories using the pre-determined code list. As some factors could be perceived as beneficial or a hindrance in different circumstances, reviewers included a second code, when applicable, to identify if the quote referred to a positive or negative experience. Statements that did not fit into one of the pre-determined codes were highlighted and reviewed to see if a new data-driven code was required.

Recommendations presented by Elo et al. [ 46 ] and Smith et al. [ 47 ] were integrated into the methodology of the study to add trustworthiness (i.e., credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability [ 48 ]) and rigour to the findings [ 49 ]. Transferability was introduced to the study by gathering direct testimony from service providers and parents in the counties and providing descriptions of the community and participant characteristics, which allows the reader to make a judgement if the findings are applicable to their settings [ 49 , 50 ]. To establish dependability to the analysis, reviewers engaged in memoing throughout the analysis process, which involved recording thoughts of the transcripts or possible answers to the research question to improve the transparency of the findings [ 45 ]. This process included a critical analysis of the transcripts to identify the potential influence of the focus group facilitators on participants’ responses and to identify potential leading or vague questions [ 46 ]. The reviewers met at various points throughout the analysis to discuss coding and to share notes. Following the categories being finalized by the two reviewers, the research team engaged in the process of “critical friends” to add credibility and conformability to the findings [ 47 ]. As an alternative to inter-rater reliability where the aim is to reach a consensus, this is a reflexive activity that encourages in-depth discussions amongst the research team, where the reviewers offer their interpretations of the data and others present critical feedback that can challenge the reviewers’ biases, pre-conceived ideas and knowledge of the subject matter that may have influenced the findings [ 47 ].

Participants

In total, 94 physical activity service providers and community organizations from across the counties of Oxford, Elgin and Middlesex were contacted. From the invited organizations, 42 representatives from 38 organizations attended one of the community forums, with 37 representatives (39.36%) consenting to participate in the research study (with time constraints noted as the primary reason for not staying for the community forum group discussion). Additionally, 79 parents consented to be contacted about ACT-i-Pass research projects. Of those who consented, 9 parents participated in the community forum (11.39%). Participants were dispersed across the counties, with most parents characterizing themselves as white ( n  = 8; 88.89%) and female ( n  = 9; 100%). See participant characteristics for both the service provider and parent community forums in Table  1 .

Category development

The positive and negative factors related to children’s physical activity participation and physical activity programs identified by service providers and parents during the Mentimeter activity and the pre-forum survey are visually represented in Fig.  1 A and B respectively.

Positive and negative factors related to children’s physical activity in rural and smaller urban centres. Positive factors are represented in blue ( A ) and negative factors are represented in red ( B ). The words represent service provider and parent responses to the pre-forum survey and Mentimeter questions related to children’s barriers and facilitators to physical activity participation, the design and implementation of physical activity programs, and recommendations for physical activity programs in their community

The synthesis of the service provider and parent responses to the Mentimeter activity and pre-forum survey resulted in 10 initial coding categories. Following the analysis of the transcripts and discussion amongst the research team, 1 new category was added and 4 categories were integrated into other existing categories due to similarities in content. This resulted in 7 unique categories. Further details on the categories and their definitions can be found in Fig.  2 .

Categories developed and adapted from the pre-forum survey, Mentimeter activity and community forum discussions. Yellow codes represent ideas discussed during service provider community forums, blue codes represent the ideas from the parent community forum, and green codes represent the ideas discussed by both groups

Recovery from pandemic-related measures

Conversations in all the community forums highlighted the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s physical activity. Specifically, service providers and parents believed the public health protections introduced to reduce transmission of the virus were associated with lower physical activity levels that have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

Despite both groups describing the barriers and challenges created by the pandemic, the focus of the discussions differed between parents and service providers. The community forum discussions with parents were directed toward their child’s quality of life. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, all the parents agreed that children lacked access to activities, resulting in, “two years or so of limited access to everything and they didn’t even do it for an entire summer”. Without their regular opportunities during the closure of recreational facilities and gyms, some parents expressed concerns about the physical activity-related skills their children may lack, with one parent explaining, “they [gyms] had to modify a lot longer than other places due to the fact that they were known as potential super spreader locations”. As a result, some parents felt that “it’s unfortunate for our kids now who didn’t get that opportunity that you didn’t realize at the time was such a big developmental stage that they were in”. Without the opportunity for children to try different activities and develop their physical activity-related skills, parents worried about the long-term influence the early years of the pandemic may have had on their children’s physical activity participation.

Alternatively, service providers were focused on the influence of the pandemic-related protocols on program attendance and the consequential changes to the current program offerings and schedules. Following the re-opening of gyms and recreational spaces after the removal of COVID-19 protocols, many service providers felt that enrollment rates had not returned to pre-pandemic numbers. As one service provider mentioned, “getting kids to sign up for anything is difficult. Getting them to register for anything is impossible”. Another service provider expanded on this topic, discussing their experience recruiting children after they re-opened: “Pre-pandemic, all our programs were full. We were bursting at the seams March 2020. We are just slowly trying to figure out what people want right now. Our membership base is really changed and we’re not seeing the kids in the drop-in programs like we used to”. As a result, service providers had to adapt their programming options and scheduling. This includes “I would say at 6 out of our 10 branches we’ve changed our hours” and “trying to figure out what works and we’re hoping in the next session [Summer] to add a few more programs”.

Knowledge and access to programs

Both service providers and parents noted the concept of accessibility of activities for children in their communities; specifically, discussions were focused on the knowledge of and ability to partake in physical activity programs. One of the primary topics explored during the community forums was the unique aspects of the rural environment that influence children’s ability to get to the recreational facilities or small businesses offering activities. In addition to physical accessibility, service providers and parents discussed families’ awareness of the local physical activity opportunities.

Rural environments were described as low-density and dispersed spaces that, “if you live in a rural community, there’s no option if you don’t have a car” (Service Provider). The dispersed organization of these communities limits children’s ability to get to activities by themselves. Service providers and parents both described safety concerns with children travelling to activities by themselves, referring to “they’re [recreation facilities] a distance away and it’s the time of the year that’s dark” (Parent), and “there’s no bike paths leading to here [our facility], so those are barriers for that age” (Service Provider). Public transportation is non-existent in rural areas, placing pressure on parents to get their children to activities. As described by one parent, “I think it’s just access is a really big one, so like physically getting into the program and getting to London isn’t going to work for a lot of the community because there’s no public transportation between here and there.” This is a particularly large issue in small rural communities that lack resource availability and require families to travel to other municipalities or towns to access services, as mentioned by one parent: “I live in a town where we piggyback off the other town, so I have to travel only because my town doesn’t offer sports”. One challenge service providers can encounter is families’ unwillingness to travel to activities. Rural communities can cover a large area and it can be difficult to come up with programs that are accessible to all families within the region. As one service provider explained, “when we do county-wide scavenger hunts or something like that, if they live in the Far East they’re not going to [go]. Absolutely not. They might go to St. Thomas, but they’re not going from one end [of the county] to the other”.

In addition, many parents highlighted having difficulties finding programs for children, describing that it requires time and research on multiple platforms: “I think there’s programs all over the place. Some are private. Some are public. Some are invite only. Some of them are on Facebook and some of them are word of mouth.” As a result, one parent believed that they needed to be self-reliant to find their child after school activities and “sometimes we have to seek the questions and ask ourselves and not wait for the information to come to us”. One parent noted that access to information also differs among different socio-demographic groups in their region, with those from “the lower income side … [they] don’t have a lot of access to the information that gets sent out and be educated on things so there’s certainly a barrier of almost classism.”

One of the obstacles for service providers is figuring out how to best promote programs. While deliberating about effective ways to get information to parents, service providers indicated that the ultimate difficulty is that “there’s so much information out there that everything just gets bogged down, right? Gets lost in Facebook walls or Instagram or whatever”. Some service providers attributed promotion challenges to the popularity of different media platforms, specifically highlighting previously used modes of promotion now have limited effectiveness. Some examples provided by service providers included, “a newsletter every quarter of what’s going on and the newsprint in our area, people don’t read it anymore”, “FM radio is there and that’s supposed to be our local news for all that and most people don’t listen”, and “internet out in the rural areas is not always easy”.

Recommendations

To alleviate the issues associated with the physical accessibility of programs, parents and service providers recommended that interventions take the environment into greater consideration when developing programs for rural and smaller urban centres. Service providers encouraged more efforts to be focused on smaller communities that lack local recreational facilities and programs, including boosting the community’s use of outdoor spaces.

To better support parents’ understanding of the recreational opportunities available to their children, several parents spoke of the need for an online repository where the information for all physical activity programs can be found in one location, as emphasized by one who said, “it would be nice if there was a central spot where all of that [recreation programs] could be held and not necessarily relying on Facebook to find all that… ”.

Availability

A large portion of the community forum conversations centred around the availability of physical activity opportunities related to the programs, facilities, and resources in the community that can be used by children. Primarily, service providers and parents focused on the variety of activity options available to children.

In the counties, the activity options offered by municipalities can vary between communities, with some places not having programs, services and/or spaces for children to play. As one parent described:

They have the space, but they don’t have necessarily the programs. I’ll give you an example. We have a tennis court, but there’s nobody to run a tennis program. We don’t have the trained athlete or adult to run the programs. There’s badminton areas and volleyball areas, but there’s no one to run the program in our area again.

When trying to enrol in programs, some parents mentioned having difficulties getting a space for their child, with one parent highlighting, “show up two minutes late [to register] and now they can’t get in [the program]. Yeah, it really feels like if you already know then you’re good, but if it’s something new you’re trying to try out, good luck”. By not being able to enrol their child in local physical activity opportunities, parents struggle to get their children active outside of school.

In response to parents’ concerns about activities not being available or programs having insufficient spaces, service providers explained that limited activity offerings may be a consequence of previous attendance rates. As one service provider explained, “it gives you that justification to run the program that the numbers [participants] are there and it[s] driving revenue into your pocket, then you could say yeah let’s drive it forward”. Attendance is especially important in smaller, rural communities that have limited recreation budgets as underscored by one service provider who said, “[our municipality] does have a community center, but I know that they have been struggling to get people, so that’s affecting their offerings”. Consequently, local private organizations and small businesses are critical resources for physical activity in non-urban areas.

In addition to the activities, service providers referred to the available spaces for physical activity in rural and smaller urban centres. Predominantly, service providers focused on dispersed rural communities as they do not have local indoor recreational facilities. One service provider detailed, “again, it comes down to amenities and facilities. There aren’t really any there. It’s the rural part. There’s no facilities so there’s no programs”. While there may be a lack of indoor facilities for physical activity, a variety of outdoor spaces do exist in the counties; however, children can encounter challenges when trying to use these spaces. For instance, the definitions linked to specific places can limit children’s use of outdoor recreational facilities. One service provider referred to the definition of a space in terms of the associated activity: “Yeah, so if you have a big open park that is a soccer field, you can’t do anything else there but soccer. You can’t go and run around or do stuff because then they think you get kicked off”. In addition, service providers believed demographics, particularly age, influenced the places children felt they were allowed to use to play. For example, one service provider discussed older children’s experiences playing on the local playgrounds:

The facilities seem to be claimed by another group. It’s like your sense of belonging, like ‘well, I can’t go there’, and I hear it quite regularly by youth that are in that transitional age that they don’t feel like they could even go to the playground facility because it’s for younger kids and they’re deemed troublemakers if they’re there… so the facility might be there, but they’re not welcomed there.

Parents requested additional spaces in organized recreation programs to help alleviate their current frustrations. Conversely, based on the conversations with service providers, capacity can vary across community types and resource availability, as one service provider described, “if you look at what the capacity of the City of London compared to the capacity of the county and the capacity of each municipality is very different”. Service providers suggested that the development of seasonal programming should be influenced by the available spaces in the community, prioritizing activities that they can offer consistently and sustainably.

For service providers, particularly municipal recreation departments, to maximize the available spaces in the community and increase their capacity for additional programming, non-traditional locations for physical activity programs were suggested. This includes offering activities in any large, open room that is available such as a church, school, or library. The discussions also highlighted the large number of outdoor spaces in their communities. However, some parents noted that outdoor spaces were being underutilized, “you’re not just going to meet a bunch of kids at the park for a few hours. It’s rare that we just find random kids on the street that they can go play with… Yeah, my kids don’t have the internal appetite to just go outside and play”. Thus, parents believed additional outdoor organized activities, particularly during the summer, would be an advantageous way to increase the number of physical activity options and encourage more children to be active. Service providers did note that children may perceive certain outdoor locations as unwelcoming and unavailable and emphasized the importance of educating and redefining the way children view the spaces in their community.

Personnel support

There are multiple levels of support required for children to engage in physical activity. Service providers and parents highlighted four groups: friends and peers, parents/guardians, schools, and governments and municipalities.

Both service providers and parents discussed the difficulties parents/guardians face when trying to engage their children in physical activity. The discussions with service providers indicated that many families in rural communities “have to travel… My town is close enough to bigger centers, but, and as I hate to say, behind the times so there’s nothing”. Consequently, it can be difficult for parents who live in rural communities who drive longer distances to work. As one parent mentioned, “parents that work outside of their community have to drive all the way home at the end of the workday to pick up their child, and then to drive an hour back into [the city] is a lot of hours in a car. That is a lot of time consumed that is difficult for families and gas”. An additional issue service providers mentioned about parents’ ability to support active lifestyles was their knowledge of physical activity expectations for children. Some service providers felt, “the parents that I talked to in training have very little idea of physical activity guidelines, but they have an idea of what their child looks like. There are a lot of barriers and to kind of make sense of what’s out there and how it applies to raising a child”. As a result, service providers believed that low registration rates were potentially attributed to inadequate physical activity literacy.

While peers were primarily described as a positive influence on children’s physical activity, peer pressure was recognized by parents. If friends exhibit dislike for, or remove themselves from, an activity, this may discourage a child from participating. As one parent noted, “depending on who’s in their class, my daughter would definitely choose to sit on the sideline with her friend than try dodgeball”.

Governments and municipality officials were also highlighted by service providers as a group that has hindered children’s ability to be physically active. As one service provider describes, “a lot of policies in these small towns… I know that’s an issue in a lot of small communities, the liability issues”. Specifically, the safety protocols that need to be enforced at their facilities have led to inequities in activity access. As one service provider mentioned, “A lot of street hockey going on right now and the powers that be shutting it down… Hard getting their kids out to let them do anything because there’s always somebody watching saying ‘no, no, no you can’t’”. Similarly, another service provider talked about their skating programs and the new helmet regulations:

It was felt really hard this year with the new board policy for skating at the arenas. The school board implemented a policy of CSA-approved helmets, so children that only had a bicycle helmet could no longer participate in the school field trip for skating unless their families could pay to get them a hockey helmet or ice hockey helmet. Very limiting policy for those children to be able to participate.

While the government’s efforts aim to create a safety measure that protects children, they have also led to greater inequities in physical activity participation.

Facilitators

Peers were characterized as key influencers in children’s lives, with parents and service providers describing how they can encourage each other to be active. For example, parents highlighted, “if you can bring a friend with you they’re more than likely to go with a buddy or two or a couple people instead of by themselves”, and “you both can kind of support each other on the [basketball] court and it’ll be great and they had a great time, but it was only because her friend was joining that she joined”. Some service providers have also seen the benefits of peers encouraging participation in recreation programs, explaining, “our badminton program almost didn’t run this past season because we had one kid signed up for the first month and then within probably a week or so of us cancelling the program, we had 15 kids sign up because one kid told his friends”. Overall, peers were viewed as an important driver of physical activity for children by acting as a key support system during activities.

Besides peers, parents and guardians have a pivotal role in their children’s health and are “key to their child’s physical activity” (Parent). Many parents felt that it was their responsibility to encourage their children to be active: “I guess it also at the grade 5 level, it’s really the parent that needs to push it [physical activity]. The parent is the one that has to drive them. The parent has to free time up in the afternoon, not to be cooking or cleaning or picking up from the week, but let’s pause and do physical activity”. Some of the service providers believed parents demonstrated they recognized the relationship between physical activity and their children’s health and well-being: “I have parents emailing me every day right now about stuff, so I think parents are starting to see what we are seeing, that their kids aren’t active enough”. Many parents described being happy to take their children to activities, stating, “it’s a choice, but you also see the joy in the kid, your kid’s eyes and you wanna keep going because they just love it so much”.

In addition, schools were described as key settings for physical activity, with staff playing an important role in physical activity promotion. Parents believed schools, specifically physical education classes, are responsible for introducing children to activities:

The other thing with sports is that you have to sign up for a period of time and we were just saying, if they’re not introduced to it in school, how would they know if they like it? And then why would a parent pay $300 for them to try something that they might absolutely hate? So, something like school can help introduce sports.

Similarly, many service providers viewed schools as advantageous places for physical activity, specifically for afterschool programs as “schools can provide space after hours and the kids are already there”. Schools were also labelled as a central location for program promotion, with one service provider stating, “schools are actually sending their papers home. They send their newsletter home once a week, electronically”. In terms of staff, teachers can be ambassadors and advocates for children’s participation in physical activity. As one parent explains, “if you get it to the right teachers, they interact with parents all the time. I know that they will send like a video or something”.

Based on the conversations with service providers and parents, creating partnerships is important for community-based interventions and recreation programs. Some service providers believed that talking with “established organizations that have the audience has been a driver of success for programs especially”. Teachers and administrative staff at schools were key collaborators identified during the community forums as they are constantly in contact with parents and can easily share information about recreation programs with their classes. Service providers have talked about the benefits of teacher advocates for physical activity interventions like the ACT-i-Pass Program, with one recommending, “put it in some of the teachers’ brains that ‘hey, guess what? We got this ACT-i-Pass thing’. They can physically talk to a parent instead of just a paper or something that gets missed”. Additionally, service providers recommended that parents be provided more education about the national movement guidelines to reinforce the amount of physical activity children should be acquiring.

Quality of programs and facilities

The quality of the physical activity offerings and facilities was discussed during the service provider community forums. By quality, service providers referred to the facilities being in good condition and programs being led by trained personnel who are skilled in the activity.

A few service providers noted changes to the composition of the counties over the last few years, including the growing population, changing demographics and redevelopment, as one of the underlying reasons for lower program quality. This has been particularly difficult in rural and smaller urban centres, with one service provider explaining, “everyone’s moving out of the city into the smaller towns so it makes sense to expand them now, establish them now, but [my community] hasn’t done anything”. As a result, service providers stressed that the internal migration “changes the dynamic of how you look at programming too because you could have a group you catered to for a while and then you have a line of families that are coming in from other places. They are expecting a lot of different standards of smaller areas which forces us to grow too”.

To offer a quality program, many service providers emphasized the demand for qualified staff that are knowledgeable about the activity and “skilled enough to be able to actually provide the program”. As mentioned by one of the service providers, “finding that instructor is definitely the hardest part when you’re trying to either start or restart a program, because if you don’t have that person to lead it or you don’t have the right person to lead it, your program doesn’t work no matter whether you had 1500 kids interested in that program if you don’t have someone excited and skilled to run it”. Due to the low population size of rural and smaller urban centres, finding community members who are proficient in an activity and willing to teach the skills to children is one of the service providers’ key obstacles in offering recreation programs.

When offering new programs, service providers stressed the time needed to gain community buy-in, as recreation programs are a “community service, it’s a service that you’re offering the community, so their interest is important”. The challenge highlighted by service providers is the time and effort required to gain awareness and secure regular enrollment in programs, which is necessary for their longevity:

It doesn’t happen overnight that people will come … It’s building the consistency, so families know that’s what’s gonna happen, whether they have 3 people show up for open basketball or whether there’s 20 people show up. If you don’t have the consistency, I think it’s really hard to be able to keep programming and families close within that area to participate in it.

To encourage community engagement, service providers have found that partnerships can help provide useful insight into the program models that work and the different approaches that have been unsuccessful. For instance, some service providers believed that sharing their experiences with other organizations can improve the quality of physical activity offerings across the community. One service provider referred to their experience meeting with the recreation programmers across their county:

I mentioned earlier how the municipalities who are in recreation are more than willing to talk to each other and share information with each other about what works and what doesn’t work. We started to try to open a membership option with some of our recreation programs and we reached out to a couple [of organizations], like, ‘hey, have you seen that this is a good thing or not?’

Consulting families was also viewed as vital for higher-quality programs. One service provider found that “a big piece, if you wanted to utilize those spaces, would be to engage with the youth to understand, like, if we open the gym or do we have a structured basketball tournament or badminton tournament or whatever that be”. By talking with potential users, this provides “validation that if they are going to pay staffing to be there and that people are going to show up”.

To account for the rising population, a service provider suggested that municipalities need to account for physical activity-related facilities and staffing during the development of rural communities and smaller urban centres: “we need to be able to provide the programs and amenities that come with that [the county growing], but until other things grow, whether it’s facilities or staffing or availability or whatever it is, you won’t grow with the population”. Service providers from rural communities also noted that it takes time to gain awareness among families when they introduce new program offerings, recommending that fellow program coordinators “… keep in mind with timing, it’ll take time. The population is lower, but we find things take longer and you have to build over time. Be patient”.

Expenses and subsidies

The expenses related to physical activity programming were a predominant topic among all community forums; however, the focus of expenses for parents was related to the cost of attending activities, while service providers were associated with the cost of managing programs.

For parents, the topic of expenses was related to the cost of their child attending and participating in activities. Ultimately, many parents felt that the price of organized physical activity is too high, with some describing sports as unfeasible opportunities for their children. As one parent described her son’s hockey season, “we’ll be in at $5000 by the time the season’s done and that’s just local league. That is cheap hockey. Now, if he wants to go competitive, some of my friends are saying they’re spending $7,000 to $10,000 for them to play competitive”. Families attributed the challenges associated with expenses to the cost of living “getting worse. We had a conversation at our dinner table about the cost of living. Everyone’s talking about it increasing”. Due to the high prices, parents felt that it can be difficult for children to try a variety of activities and find what they enjoy as one parent reported, “we’d be more than willing to sign our kids up for a bunch of programs if they had them, if we could… I can maybe pick one and then that’s all you can get this year because it’s all financially I can do”, meaning that “the cost of certain programs are just not attainable for some people… there’s a much larger cost to getting into the programs, so that negates it for some people”.

In addition to the registration fee, parents attributed transportation and unplanned expenses as challenging supplemental costs. Parents described the cost of gas accumulating quickly throughout the season, “now I’m driving him every day, not every day, but to his practices and his games. Well, that’s gas money, that’s another thousand dollars”. There are also team events that can lead to activities being more expensive than planned. For instance, one parent discussed the extra costs they noticed as their child engaged in more team sports:

It’s not only just the cost of equipment, but people go out for dinner after or they go out for ice cream. It’s all those things that if you can’t afford to bring your child, pay for it, the child might just decide ‘I don’t wanna be the one who’s going and I can’t go out for a meal after or get that ice cream cone with the group because I don’t have the $4’, so it’s a lot.

In contrast, service providers were focused on the expenses of managing physical activity programs. Service providers described having to limit the types of activities they can offer due to their available funds. Service providers supporting rural communities believed that it “might be easier for cities and towns to run them [recreation programs] because maybe they have that built into their budget that they can have money to give a program. We don’t, unfortunately”. Also, due to limited funds, they may not be able to offer some free and low-cost programs, with one service provider explaining, “there’s pickleball nets and they get so many people out of that but it’s free and that’s not something that I can do with our programs”.

Service providers also discussed the available resources in their communities. Due to budgets, service providers reported issues getting access to the necessary equipment and the need to borrow supplies from partners or schools. For those who have the equipment, service providers experienced time and cost challenges of transporting their equipment to facilities: “We have our equipment because we have our own space… we can bring it there [to the school] but we can’t store it there, which means there’s an extra amount of time and money that goes into that transportation every week for each day”.

Finally, a lack of funds influences the type of staff working at service providers. As one service provider expressed, “getting actual programmers for us, ‘cause we don’t have the Y budget that would provide a programmer to us, so that is a challenge”. In order to recruit the necessary staff, many service providers have to counter the extra costs by increasing the price of their activities: “So then you start paying that that main instructor that price needs to go up in order for us to continue”. Either the price goes up or you don’t run the program”.

To improve access to resources, one suggestion offered by service providers involved partnering with other publicly-funded organizations, such as community centres or libraries, to supply children with equipment that they can borrow and bring home: “Through the Y[MCA] or a program like that where you could come and get sports equipment or things so they can try a sport whether it be a hockey stick or a baseball glove or a soccer ball or a basketball. To have a sports lending library there”.

To help fund activities, a few service providers found that gaining sponsorships from organizations was a beneficial way to acquire additional funds. As described by one service provider, “maybe there would be another business that might be willing to provide funding so if a child wanted to sign up or to be able to help out businesses that are keen to help but maybe just can’t afford it financially”. External funding partners can also subsidize activity fees for children by acting as a “sponsor a dance class or a Taekwondo class or a something like that”. As offering free programming was deemed difficult or impractical for service providers, it was suggested that grants and subsidy programs be used to help improve families’ access to recreation programs. Funding support offerings can provide opportunities related to “their income level and if they were under a certain level then they received 50% funding for all the registration fees”, or “a necessity program so money is just for low-income families to help cover the cost of activities”.

Inclusion and preferences

Offering a variety of activity types and levels to make service providers more welcoming to all children was another frequently discussed topic during the community forums. As stated by one service provider, “inclusivity is crucial to youth right now, right? So, if you’re not inclusive you’re not being positive and allowing everyone to participate and then you’re not gonna be successful and kids aren’t gonna participate”. The discussions concentrated on service providers having a diverse number of activity types and levels within each activity to consider children’s abilities and preferences.

Some service providers and parents credited children’s low engagement in physical activity to the confidence or skillset to participate in a specific activity. As one service provider discussed, “I have noticed a huge confidence issue. Not picking things up that they aren’t fantastic at right off the bat… ‘I’m not good, I’m outta here, everyone’s better than me’”. A few parents reported seeing confidence issues in their children, with one parent describing, “it’s so tricky, especially when you think about that confidence. The ability to do sport, especially hitting that grade 7, that 13-year-old where you’re very self-conscious.” An explanation for confidence issues is the pressure they feel from their peers when they “size themselves up. It’s a natural thing people do. The ‘am I better than you? Are you better than me?’ mentality” (Parent). To help grow children’s confidence, children are looking for “proper skills and drills, it’s very popular” (Service Provider).

The appropriateness of the available activities may also be lacking with the current program options. Specifically, children have different needs and a greater variety of activities will help offer programs suitable to the different skill sets and ages of children. One characteristic highlighted throughout the conversations was the competitive spirit of children. Some of the parents attributed the lack of participation in organized programs to the absence of non-competitive options for sports. As one parent mentioned, “I find that there’s kind of a gap between like rec hockey players and just base recreation players… They don’t like high levels.” Parents felt that many activities were “the team sport atmosphere. My child’s not competitive, so knowing that she wants to learn, she wants to be better, but she has her own internal competitiveness, not external”. A problem many parents encountered was trying to find programs for their children to try and learn activities, as underscored by one parent while discussing an introductory hockey program in their community:

Now, one thing I don’t know is having those same kids on the ice at the same time as those who have been playing the sport for years because if that’s the case, that’s gonna fail immediately. They almost need their own ice time or their own space that they’re learning at their level.

In addition to the activity options for non-competitive children, the activities need to be age-appropriate. For instance, children can be embarrassed when “my child who is 10 is doing say beginner hockey, but then there’s also 5-year-olds in that group. Even if she’s at the same level as them, she is not going back. She’s like ‘I’m at the same level as a 5-year-old. No, thank you’” (Parent). The financial and personnel constraints service providers experience have also affected the program offerings by prompting more co-ed activities that combine both boys and girls; however, one parent said this has negatively impacted her daughter’s participation in team sports as, “at her age, they’re often both male and female combined, so co-ed. What I’m seeing as a parent is that the boys are becoming bigger and more aggressive as in they’re competitive and she is not, so therefore, she gets intimidated”.

Offering children activities they want to participate in and are passionate about was described as critical for continued physical activity participation. Ultimately, parents cannot force their child to want to take part in an activity. As one service provider highlighted, “you know we have parents bringing kids 3 or 4 years old to take martial arts. The parents are making them do something that doesn’t really draw [their] interest, but after 11 years old they seem to make their own choices”. As one parent noted, providing children with the opportunity to try various activities can be beneficial “if you want them to stay active in the long run, they need to find something they enjoy”.

Moving forward, it will be important to offer activities for various skill levels. As noted by one service provider, “building people’s confidence up, giving them an opportunity—a safe space to try a sport or try an activity with people with the same skill level as them”. In order to develop children’s self-efficacy and increase program uptake, there needs to be a variety of program offerings to account for “the diversity in who the kids are, the ages of the kids and interests” (Service Provider). This can also be done by offering flexible activities where the programs are “something more that evolves and keeps them interested” and they can be adapted by “asking them if they feel good and you’re teaching them to help structure play” (Service Provider). In addition, offering non-competitive and entry-level programs can encourage children to join activities where “everybody that joined it was just kind of trying it. Nothing serious and it made it easier to attend those things as opposed to going with a group of kids who have been playing that sport for 7 years and you’re trying it for the first time” (Parent).

One strategy to alleviate the issue of activity options for all children is offering non-traditional activities. For instance, service providers reported, “people get bogged down with the traditional programming like soccer and basketball. There’s so many other programs that are out there” and “dodgeball’s huge right now. Just those off the cuff programs that aren’t traditional… just doing something that they don’t have the opportunity to do and just being creative with that”. Similarly, service providers suggested that program offerings should integrate trending activities among youth: Working on some trends in certain sports. Like, who would’ve thought pickleball? Cornholes replaced horseshoes. You know what I mean? You gotta kind of recognize it’s replacing something in a more modernizing way.

Through a series of community forums with service providers and parents, this study aimed to explore the physical activity opportunities in rural communities and smaller urban centres and to understand how to develop and implement community-based physical activity programs for children in areas with low resource availability. The discussions with service providers and parents highlighted a variety of barriers and facilitators to physical activity participation. Some examples of barriers included the distance to activities, the expenses related to physical activity programs, and limited resources to meet the population growth. In contrast, flexible activities, promoting programs through schools, and outdoor spaces were described as facilitators. In addition, recommendations for the development and implementation of physical activity programs for children in low-density and minimally resourced areas were noted. Recommendations covered a range of topics such as developing physical activity-related skills, utilizing non-traditional physical activity spaces, and centring program offerings around equipment and personnel capacities.

When asked about the factors that influence children’s physical activity, service providers and parents believed that the loss of organized programs and the closure of recreational facilities due to the government-regulated COVID-19 public health protections had a negative effect on their child(ren)’s physical activity. Children’s preference for organized recreational opportunities and limited involvement in active play is consistent with the evaluations of Canadian children’s physical activity participation [ 7 , 8 ], For instance, Sharp et al. [ 52 ] found that most rural children were looking for structured after school or weekend activities and would enrol in a wide variety of organized programs, such as physical activities, music, clubs, and tutoring. However, children’s desire to engage in organized activities conflicts with the body of literature asserting that there is a lack of resources in non-urban communities [ 53 , 54 ]. In a comparison of rural and urban Canadians, participants from rural communities are more likely to report barriers to accessing recreational facilities [ 55 ]. Due to the interest in more structured activities, implementing community-wide programs and finding strategies to improve recreation offerings can be a beneficial way to promote physical activity participation in resource-limited communities.

Accessibility was noted as a common barrier throughout the community forums, consistent with the literature on rural physical activity [ 56 ]. Poor accessibility was associated with the community structure and resources varying between communities. For instance, Gilbert et al. [ 19 ] found smaller rural communities with a population size of less than 6,000 residents had fewer resources and less infrastructure than larger communities, which may require a tailored intervention plan. Due to the longer distances between home and program offerings, transportation is one of the main barriers to physical activity in rural and smaller urban centres. In non-urban communities, public transportation is non-existent or unreliable, and active transportation is not available to children as parents may be concerned about the lack of bicycle lanes and sidewalks, their children travelling on underutilized routes, and wild animals [ 57 ]. Consequently, children cannot attend programs without a parent or family member acting as a driver. As a result, researchers and program coordinators need to understand the unique characteristics of the different communities in their jurisdiction when developing community-based programs and create an implementation plan that best meets the needs of the whole target population.

Outdoor spaces were also identified as a beneficial method for improving children’s physical activity. Both parents and service providers highlighted the variety of outdoor spaces that are unused by children without organized activities. In addition to engaging children in more physical activity, outdoor spaces have been found to provide various other health-related benefits, including increased self-esteem, problem-solving abilities, social behaviours, and motor skills [ 58 ]. While outdoor spaces can provide additional recreational opportunities when programs and facilities are limited, they may target those who are sufficiently active. For instance, children from rural and remote communities who reported being involved in a higher number of organized activities also reported greater involvement in unstructured leisure activities; this refutes the ‘over-scheduling hypothesis’ that proposes those who participate in more organized activities face time constraints that inhibit participation in unstructured forms of physical activity such as outdoor play [ 52 ]. As the outdoors can provide an open space for imagination and creative activities, offering non-traditional activities in these settings can help engage children who are not interested in sport-focused activity offerings.

In addition, parents and service providers described select individual-level factors as barriers to physical activity participation. Consistent across evaluations of urban and non-urban communities, children are potentially not participating in any programs due to their lack of interest in physical activity options [ 59 ]. Parents and service providers presented conflicting accounts for why there are issues with the current program offerings. Consequently, it is difficult to conclude if service providers’ limited capacity or families’ low uptake has led to a reduced variety of activity options, but they both likely play a role in children’s physical activity opportunities. With the rising internal migration to rural communities on account of the transition to virtual and hybrid work options available during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 20 ], there is an increasing demand for resources and services in these areas. As there are difficulties associated with recruiting staff and the capacity for communities to build more recreational facilities, program offerings should prioritize the resources that currently exist in the community, including integrating the land use and development plans for the municipality to account for the growing population [ 60 ].

One finding highlighted in the current study by both service providers and parents was the cost of recreation programs. Due to the high cost of extracurricular activities, family income is an important factor in physical activity participation for children [ 61 ]. For example, Kellstedt and colleagues [ 62 ] found that children’s chances of partaking in sports were 4 times more likely when they lived in a higher-income household. This aligns with the idea that socioeconomic-based health inequalities increase across the life course because of the cumulative advantage or disadvantage associated with differential access to health-promoting resources, much of which is rooted in early life exposures [ 63 ]. While many recommendations for reducing the economic accessibility of physical activity surround affordable programs, one frequently reported barrier among rural populations is the shortage of free and low-cost physical activity opportunities [ 55 ]. The high cost of activities was also noted as a challenge for service providers. Local governments in smaller communities tend to face financial challenges with limited revenue, minimal financial capacity, and a high cost of living [ 15 ]. As a result, service providers have difficulties maintaining their facilities and creating environments that better support physical activity, which means regular free activity offerings are not a viable solution in many communities.

Recommendations for physical activity interventions and recreation programs

In response to the identified facilitators and barriers related to recreation programs, service providers and parents offered recommendations to integrate into the expansion of the ACT-i-Pass Program and future physical activity interventions. Recognizing that the number of physical activity providers declines as the ACT-i-Pass shifts from a densely-populated city to more dispersed, resource-limited settings, the recommendations provide valuable adaptations to the intervention’s design and implementation that can offer physical activity opportunities tailored to the needs of families in rural and smaller urban communities. For instance, due to the range of conditions that exist in non-urban areas (e.g., population size, resources), the unique characteristics of the different communities and available resources need to be incorporated into community-based programs to ensure activities are accessible to all children, particularly those in low-density rural areas [ 64 ]. For example, the transportation options in dispersed communities differ from urban environments; therefore, additional attention needs to be placed on creating more programs in a variety of neighbourhoods or reducing transportation barriers by offering busing from schools to service providers or encouraging carpooling with other families.

Primarily, creating additional structured activity options for children was deemed a beneficial strategy for engaging children in greater amounts of physical activity. One suggestion included utilizing the abundance of outdoor spaces available in the area. Encouraging outdoor play and creating more outdoor programs in a variety of communities can help children be more active [ 65 ]. In addition, increasing the program offerings to service a greater variety of activity preferences and skill levels can allow programs and interventions to have a greater impact on the health behaviours of children. Traditional activity offerings are not reaching all children, particularly those not interested in sports or competitive environments; therefore, providing unique and fluid programs may help gain their interest in activities and engage them in more physical activity. Program coordinators were encouraged to integrate trending activities (e.g., pickleball) and flexible programs into their offerings. Flexible programs, alternatively termed scaffold play, are child-directed activities that are guided by an adult [ 66 ]. The objective of these activities is to foster children’s development and creativity as they work towards a specified objective outlined by the adult [ 67 ]. While this strategy is primarily used in a preschool context [ 68 ], it may continue to have benefits among older children.

Additionally, partnerships were a key recommendation from service providers, reinforcing the importance of collaborations in successful community-based interventions [ 69 ]. Specifically, it was stressed that community organizations and families are valuable sources of information and support when creating programs for children. Community organizations, such as government agencies and businesses, can assist in the administration of programs and interventions by offering financial support via subsidies or grants that reduce the financial strain of registration fees for families or facility management costs for service providers [ 70 ]. Other partners, such as schools, can also improve awareness of programs and interventions by acting as promoters [ 71 ]. Alternatively, engaging with families can give greater context to the community and help set priorities for interventions based on the interests and the supports needed by the target population [ 72 ].

As COVID-19 continues to influence the physical activity context, there are additional recommendations that need to be integrated into health promotion efforts. For instance, children missed pivotal years of physical education due to the closure of schools and recreational facilities. Perceptions of athletic ability, self-efficacy, and motivation to be active are all factors that can have a significant influence on physical activity behaviours [ 73 ]. Thus, interventions should integrate programs with a greater focus directed toward building children’s physical activity confidence by teaching skill sets and movement competence [ 74 ]. In addition, with many small businesses closing during the pandemic, redefining what qualifies as a setting for physical activity is important. In rural communities, children do take advantage of existing afterschool program opportunities (e.g., church youth groups) when school athletics programs, sports leagues, and recreation activities are limited or unavailable [ 52 ]. As the findings indicate that children are hesitant to use spaces without the guidance of an adult, creating structured programs will make non-conventional physical activity spaces more accessible for children. A full list of the recommendations provided by service provider and parent community forum participants is provided in Fig.  3 .

Service provider and parent-derived recommendations for physical activity programs and interventions in rural and smaller urban centres

Limitations

While this study provides valuable insights into rural and smaller urban centres and physical activity programs, there are limitations that must be considered. The parent community forums exclusively involved responses from mothers. While it is common that parental perspectives on their children’s health behaviours tend to come from mothers [ 75 ], we are missing the paternal perspective that may offer different experiences with their child(ren)’s physical activity. Additionally, our study consisted of families and service providers from Elgin (including the City of St. Thomas), Oxford, and Middlesex Counties. Based on responses to the Census Profile, the populations of these three communities consist primarily of English speakers and non-immigrants and have a lack of racial and ethnic diversity [ 32 , 33 , 34 ]. Due to the similarities between participants, we are unable to make conclusions about the influence of demographic characteristics on the experiences of families from our study area. While efforts were made to produce a thorough list of service providers, the perspectives of some organizations may have been missed if they did not have an online presence or if our community partners were unaware of their existence. Finally, rural communities and smaller urban centres are contextually diverse based on population size and physical activity-specific resources [ 19 ]. There are multiple definitions used to differentiate between urban, suburban, and rural areas that vary based on one or more community characteristic(s), such as population density, population size, distance from an urban area or distance to an essential service [ 76 ]. As a result, the applicability of findings to other non-urban spaces can be challenging and may only relate to the experiences of service providers and families who reside in rural communities, villages and small urban centres that are within an hour’s drive of a large urban centre.

To counter the rise in physical inactivity associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, developing and implementing interventions that can encourage children to live more active lifestyles are critical. To improve the quality and effectiveness of community-based interventions, researchers and program developers should collaborate with community members and organizations to adapt interventions to meet the needs of their target community. This is particularly important for small, dispersed communities that have unique characteristics based on their population size, number of recreational facilities, and activity options. Service providers and parents emphasized the need for interventions and programs that offer accessible, diverse, high-quality program options that are inclusive and meet the needs of all children in the community. To account for the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, interventions need to integrate additional opportunities for children to develop their confidence and physical activity-related skills and find resources that can reduce the economic strain associated with recreation programs. While a variety of suggestions from parents and strategies used by service providers were noted, further studies are needed to evaluate the impact of the recommendations on the effectiveness of interventions and recreation programs in rural and smaller urban centres with a focus on fidelity, uptake, use and changes to physical activity levels.

Data availability

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to research ethics board requirements but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Southwestern Public Health for their support in administering and organizing the ACT-i-Pass community forums. We also thank program service providers and local school boards (the London District Catholic School Board, Thames Valley District School Board, Conseil Scolaire Viamonde and Conseil Scolaire Catholique Providence) for their continued support of the ACT-i-Pass Program. We also thank the parents and organization representatives who took the time to attend the community forum and participate in a community forum discussion. Finally, we thank our research assistant, Samantha Lotzkar, who reviewed the transcripts for accuracy and acted as a secondary analyst.

This research was funded by the Lawson Foundation Miggsie Fund’s Community Grants (GRT 2022-49).

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E.O., J.G., J.I., J.S. and P.T. conceptualized the study. E.O. and P.T. developed the community forum guides. E.O. recruited study participants, moderated the community forums, conducted the analysis, and wrote the original manuscript draft. J.G., J.I., J.S. and P.T. reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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The study was approved by Western University’s Non-Medical Research Ethics Board (REB #103954). Written and oral informed consent was obtained from all service providers and parents who participated in this study. All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.

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Ostermeier, E., Gilliland, J., Irwin, J.D. et al. Developing community-based physical activity interventions and recreational programming for children in rural and smaller urban centres: a qualitative exploration of service provider and parent experiences. BMC Health Serv Res 24 , 1017 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11418-w

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Received : 22 April 2024

Accepted : 09 August 2024

Published : 03 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11418-w

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