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Nadine Anderson, Behavioral Sciences and Women's & Gender Studies Librarian

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Steps for identifying research gaps in the literature

Your Master's thesis should make a significant, novel contribution to the field. Your thesis hypothesis should address a  research gap which you identify in the literature, a research question or problem that has not been answered in your research area of interest. This shows that you have developed expertise in the body of knowledge and theoretical issues in your chosen research area. 

Step 1: Focus Your Research Area

Before you start trying to identify gaps in the literature, you need to figure out what your area of interest is, and then focus and narrow that research area. If you don't narrow down your initial research area of interest, you'll end up wanting to research everything. You'll overwhelm yourself with all the research gaps you find because there are still a lot of unanswered research questions out there. 

  • Do some exploratory research  on your broad research idea in your course textbook, class notes, in meta-analysis, systematic, and literature reviews, and  PsycINFO  to identify more specific issues and arguments in your research area and possible relationships between them.
  • Read ebooks  to get the "big picture" about the research area you're interested in studying. Books and ebooks provide detailed information on your research area, put your research area in context, provide summaries of research, and help you identify major themes and relationships for your study.
  • Ask your advisors and other faculty  about possible topics or issues within your research area of interest. That being said, you're going to spend over a year immersed in work on your thesis, so make sure you  choose issues because you find them deeply interesting , not just because your advisor recommended them.

Step 2: Read, Read, and then Read Some More

Read (a lot of) research articles : this is going to be time-demanding, but you really do need to read through a lot of research articles in your research area to become an expert in it. That being said, what you use from the articles that you read should relate directly back to your focused research questions and hypothesis. Don't waste your time getting sidetracked by issues that don't relate to your research questions and hypothesis.

  • Go to  Start Finding Sources ,  Search Databases , and  Browse Journals  to find journal articles for your research area
  • Pay close attention to Introductions , in which authors explain why their research is important, and Suggestions for Future Research , in which authors point readers to areas which lack investigation or need future examination

Follow the research trails  of seminal articles and authors using Web of Science and Scopus:

  • In Scopus , click on Document Search , enter the article title, click on the article title in the list of search hits, then click on View all ~ citing documents link in the right sidebar for a list of articles that have cited this article
  • In Web of Science , enter the article title and choose Title from the right drop down menu , then click on the Times Cited number next to the article to see a list of articles that have cited this article
  • In Scopus , click on Author Search , enter the last name and first initial(s) of the author, click on the author's name in the list of search hits, then click on Cited By ~ documents for a list of articles that have cited this author
  • In Web of Science , enter the author name and choose Author from the right drop down menu , then click on the Times Cited number next to each article to see a list of articles that have cited this author's article

Read meta-analyses, literature reviews,  and  systematic reviews : these papers delve deep into the literature, examining the trends and changes over a long period of time in your research area and summaries of previous research findings.

  • In PsycINFO , click on literature review, systematic review, and  meta analysis  under the Methodologies heading in the sidebar to the right of the list of search hits 
  • In CINAHL , add systematic reviews to your search 
  • In Web Of Science , check the box beside Review under the Document Type heading in the sidebar to the right of the list of search hits

Step 3: Map out the Literature :

Keep track of what the authors told you and the questions that occur to you whenever you read anything - an article, a book, a book chapter, a dissertation, etc. This will also help you write your thesis introduction later on and help you avoid  unconscious plagiarism .Some more tips:

  • Use mind maps, tables, charts, pictures, post-it notes to map out the literature, whatever works for you. 
  • Research each of your questions to see if there are people out there who had the same questions and found answers to them
  • Science Direct , Web of Science , and Wiley Online Library databases help you follow the research trail by listing articles that have since cited the research article you're reading

If you find don't find any answers to one of your questions, you've probably found a research gap from which you can develop a thesis hypothesis and experimental project. Get feedback from your advisors before you get too carried away, though!

  • Get started by considering your central thesis question 
  • How do the sources you've found connect to that question and help you answer it?
  • How do the sources connect to and build off of one another?
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What is a Literature Review?

Description.

A literature review, also called a review article or review of literature, surveys the existing research on a topic. The term "literature" in this context refers to published research or scholarship in a particular discipline, rather than "fiction" (like American Literature) or an individual work of literature. In general, literature reviews are most common in the sciences and social sciences.

Literature reviews may be written as standalone works, or as part of a scholarly article or research paper. In either case, the purpose of the review is to summarize and synthesize the key scholarly work that has already been done on the topic at hand. The literature review may also include some analysis and interpretation. A literature review is  not  a summary of every piece of scholarly research on a topic.

Why are literature reviews useful?

Literature reviews can be very helpful for newer researchers or those unfamiliar with a field by synthesizing the existing research on a given topic, providing the reader with connections and relationships among previous scholarship. Reviews can also be useful to veteran researchers by identifying potentials gaps in the research or steering future research questions toward unexplored areas. If a literature review is part of a scholarly article, it should include an explanation of how the current article adds to the conversation. (From: https://researchguides.drake.edu/englit/criticism)

How is a literature review different from a research article?

Research articles: "are empirical articles that describe one or several related studies on a specific, quantitative, testable research question....they are typically organized into four text sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion." Source: https://psych.uw.edu/storage/writing_center/litrev.pdf)

Steps for Writing a Literature Review

1. Identify and define the topic that you will be reviewing.

The topic, which is commonly a research question (or problem) of some kind, needs to be identified and defined as clearly as possible.  You need to have an idea of what you will be reviewing in order to effectively search for references and to write a coherent summary of the research on it.  At this stage it can be helpful to write down a description of the research question, area, or topic that you will be reviewing, as well as to identify any keywords that you will be using to search for relevant research.

2. Conduct a Literature Search

Use a range of keywords to search databases such as PsycINFO and any others that may contain relevant articles.  You should focus on peer-reviewed, scholarly articles . In SuperSearch and most databases, you may find it helpful to select the Advanced Search mode and include "literature review" or "review of the literature" in addition to your other search terms.  Published books may also be helpful, but keep in mind that peer-reviewed articles are widely considered to be the “gold standard” of scientific research.  Read through titles and abstracts, select and obtain articles (that is, download, copy, or print them out), and save your searches as needed. Most of the databases you will need are linked to from the Cowles Library Psychology Research guide .

3. Read through the research that you have found and take notes.

Absorb as much information as you can.  Read through the articles and books that you have found, and as you do, take notes.  The notes should include anything that will be helpful in advancing your own thinking about the topic and in helping you write the literature review (such as key points, ideas, or even page numbers that index key information).  Some references may turn out to be more helpful than others; you may notice patterns or striking contrasts between different sources; and some sources may refer to yet other sources of potential interest.  This is often the most time-consuming part of the review process.  However, it is also where you get to learn about the topic in great detail. You may want to use a Citation Manager to help you keep track of the citations you have found. 

4. Organize your notes and thoughts; create an outline.

At this stage, you are close to writing the review itself.  However, it is often helpful to first reflect on all the reading that you have done.  What patterns stand out?  Do the different sources converge on a consensus?  Or not?  What unresolved questions still remain?  You should look over your notes (it may also be helpful to reorganize them), and as you do, to think about how you will present this research in your literature review.  Are you going to summarize or critically evaluate?  Are you going to use a chronological or other type of organizational structure?  It can also be helpful to create an outline of how your literature review will be structured.

5. Write the literature review itself and edit and revise as needed.

The final stage involves writing.  When writing, keep in mind that literature reviews are generally characterized by a  summary style  in which prior research is described sufficiently to explain critical findings but does not include a high level of detail (if readers want to learn about all the specific details of a study, then they can look up the references that you cite and read the original articles themselves).  However, the degree of emphasis that is given to individual studies may vary (more or less detail may be warranted depending on how critical or unique a given study was).   After you have written a first draft, you should read it carefully and then edit and revise as needed.  You may need to repeat this process more than once.  It may be helpful to have another person read through your draft(s) and provide feedback.

6. Incorporate the literature review into your research paper draft. (note: this step is only if you are using the literature review to write a research paper. Many times the literature review is an end unto itself).

After the literature review is complete, you should incorporate it into your research paper (if you are writing the review as one component of a larger paper).  Depending on the stage at which your paper is at, this may involve merging your literature review into a partially complete Introduction section, writing the rest of the paper around the literature review, or other processes.

These steps were taken from: https://psychology.ucsd.edu/undergraduate-program/undergraduate-resources/academic-writing-resources/writing-research-papers/writing-lit-review.html#6.-Incorporate-the-literature-r

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Gaps in the literature.

Gaps in the literature are missing pieces or insufficient information in the published research on a topic. These are areas that have opportunities for further research because they are unexplored, under-explored, or outdated. 

Finding Gaps

Gaps can be missing or incomplete:

  • Population or sample: size, type, location etc…
  • Research methods: qualitative, quantitative, or mixed
  • Data collection or analysis
  • Research variables or conditions

Conduct a thorough literature search to find a broad range of research articles on your topic. Search research databases ;  you can find recommended databases for your subject area in  research by subject  for your course or program.

Identifying Gaps

If you do not find articles in your literature search, this may indicate a gap.

If you do find articles, the goal is to find a gap for contributing new research. Authors signal that there is a gap using words such as:

  • Has not been clarified, studied, reported, or elucidated
  • Further research is required or needed
  • Is not well reported
  • Suggestions for further research
  • Key question is or remains
  • It is important to address
  • Poorly understood or known
  • Lack of studies
  • These findings provide valuable insights into the potential benefits of mindfulness-based interventions for stress management,however, further study is needed to address several limitations and extend our understanding in this area .
  • While this study provides preliminary evidence of the potential efficacy of VRET in reducing PTSD symptoms, several aspects related to its implementation and specific treatment outcomes  remain inadequately clarified, highlighting the need for further research .
  • Although the studies reviewed provide valuable insights into the potential effects of climate change on species composition and ecosystem functioning.  The question of how climate change will interact with other anthropogenic stressors to influence the resilience and adaptive capacity of tropical rainforest ecosystems remains unanswered, highlighting the need for further research .

Questions & Help

If you have questions on this, or another, topic, contact a librarian for help!

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Closing the Gap: From Research to Practice in Mental Health Interventions

Lena lipskaya-velikovsky.

1 School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 9124001, Israel

Terry Krupa

2 School of Rehabilitation Therapy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada

Associated Data

The data will be available upon the request from the corresponding author.

Evidence-based practice is critical but challenging in mental health. Rigorous research-proven interventions often do not yield expected results in the clinical practice. This study aimed to explore factors contributing to the effectiveness of Occupational Connections (OC)—an intervention for promotion of engagement in meaningful occupations in serious mental illness (SMI)—based on case series study of three quasi-experimental studies. The studies focused on people with SMI, admitted to intensive mental health services participated in the OC, as well as on a control condition group. Similar evaluation procedures throughout these studies addressed primary outcomes of participation dimensions and recovery orientation, as well as secondary outcomes of functional capacity, cognition, and symptom severity. Patterns of changes in outcome measures varied between the three studies as to direction and extension. In the OC groups, 29–60% of the outcome measurements were changed, in comparison to 29–43% of measurements in the control groups. The secondary outcomes were consistently improved in the OC (18–100% of measurements) in comparison to the control (18–67%). The analysis of the studies revealed that clinical effectiveness of participation-oriented intervention varied dependent on interplay between the clinical context, clinician actions, served persons’ characteristics, and evidence-building process. These factors should be considered to maximize research benefits for practice.

1. Introduction

Recovery vision guides mental health services, which should be supportive of individuals in the multidimensional process of change toward living a self-directed life and reaching their full potential with mental health conditions [ 1 , 2 ]. Following that, one of the key tenets of professional practice is providing respective, flexible, and responsive services to client needs, values, and beliefs. In other words, a personally-centered and individually-tailored intervention is needed to support a personal journey of recovery [ 1 , 2 ]. At the same time, for a decade, there has been an expectation for the integration of research-based practices into this process in order to ensure high-quality, effective service [ 3 , 4 ]. However, there has been continuing debate regarding what this integration would mean and how it can be done, both in general and in the field of mental health services guided by recovery vision in particular.

Service providers/clinicians may feel conflicted working in accordance with basic philosophical principles of person-centered and individually tailored practices to meet a person’s unique needs and preferences while also trying to adhere to research-grounded intervention procedures in a specific practice context or service [ 5 ]. Practically, they may find themselves facing substantial questions, e.g., whether interventions should be applied rigorously, exactly as performed—frequently under laboratory conditions, in research—or a flexible implementation might still be acceptable. If so, to what extent or under what conditions is flexibility admissible? To what extent might the intervention undergo changes and still be considered the same (in order to be supported by evidence and be potentially reproducible) [ 5 ]?

Rigorous implementation of research-grounded procedures was one of the Achilles’ heels of early conceptualization of evidence-based (EB) practice. Today’s vision of EB practice is an integration of research evidence, clinical expertise and experience, using client preferences to best tailor interventions to every person [ 3 ]. This vision supplies conceptual answers to questions while still providing little tools for practice. Furthermore, the literature has focused on describing productive processes for evidence establishment [ 5 ], referring less often to issues and tensions of future non-research-related implementations of interventions. There are few guidelines and tools to help clinicians skillfully utilize research-based evidence in practice [ 6 ]. In other words, the current definition of EB has left a gulf in translation of research into practical implementation—known as the research-to-practice gap—which is particularly prominent in mental health.

Issues of the research-to-practice gap are intensively discussed under the umbrella of the knowledge translation (KT) process, which is dedicated to maximizing research benefits for practice by providing relevant information for clinical decision-making [ 7 , 8 , 9 ]. The discussion in the field of KT may be divided into two components: (1) knowledge creation and (2) action-in-practice, based on the knowledge-to-action (KTA) process conceptual framework [ 8 ]. Each component includes several phases, with no definite boundaries between the two components and among their phases. The process of KT is complex and dynamic, depending on multiple factors which mutually influence one another [ 8 , 10 ]. In this way, the KT process involves, essentially, all stakeholders (researchers, policy makers, funds, clinicians, clients, and so on), requiring exchanges between those who create new knowledge and those who use it to improve health outcomes [ 9 , 10 ]. Even though the KT process has been discussed, there is little in the literature relating to the field of mental health. The purpose of this work was to examine the impact of various factors, across different phases of knowledge creation and action-in-practice processes, on clinical effectiveness, using examples of an intervention known as Occupational Connections (OC). OC [ 11 , 12 ] is intended to meet the occupation-related and recovery-promoting needs of people with mental health conditions in intensive care, with respect to their unique interests, values, needs, and experiences. This type of intervention is under-investigated in psychiatric in-patient settings. An important role of the psychiatric inpatient setting is support of reintegration into community life, including involvement in everyday occupations. The effectiveness of that role was estimated through changes in primary and secondary outcomes of the following aspects: participation, experience of the service as recovery-oriented, functional capacity, cognitive functioning, and symptom severity.

2. Materials and Methods

To meet our aim, we used three quasi-experimental, single-blind studies with convenience sampling on the effectiveness of the OC intervention developed for psychiatric inpatient settings as a case study. The first two studies were of the pre-post, comparative design, with study groups participating in the OC intervention in addition to receiving treatment as usual (TAU) in the hospital and control groups receiving TAU with the addition of one psychoeducational or informative group. The design of the third study was a crossover. The evaluations addressed similar constructs throughout the studies, with complete equivalence in the first and second ones. All three studies were designed based on the results of the pilot study [ 11 ]. To determine the impacts of different factors on KTA processes, we compared patterns of change in outcome measurements that were observed through the studies.

2.1. Participants

All three studies included participants with serious mental illness (for further details see Table 1 ), aged 18–60, who received intensive mental health services (in-patient stays or a five-day-a-week ambulatory program) and experienced subjective and/or objective restrictions in participation in a range of daily life activities. The exclusion criteria for the studies were co-occurring developmental and/or acquired neurological conditions, physical disabilities, and current substance/alcohol abuse.

Summary of the descriptive parameters by the studies (N = 82).

2.1.1. Study 1

This study involved mostly women in their 30s, all of whom had prolonged experience living with serious mental illness, mainly schizophrenia, and had been hospitalized in acute wards of a regional mental health center (N = 33) ( Table 1 ). No differences were found between the study and the control groups in the demographic- and illness-related variables, except for the number of previous hospital admissions, which was significantly higher for the study group [ 12 ].

2.1.2. Study 2

The study’s participants were mostly men. Like the first study’s participants, they were in their 30s, had prolonged experience of living with serious mental illness (mainly schizophrenia), and had been hospitalized in acute wards (N = 30) ( Table 1 ). There were no statistically significant differences between the study and the control groups in the demographic and illness-related data [ 13 ].

2.1.3. Study 3

In this study, more than half of the participants were women in their 30s. Differing from the previous studies, prevalent diagnoses in this study were affective and anxiety disorders. The participants were admitted to day-care programs throughout the study, and had less prolonged illness in comparison to participants of the other two studies (N = 19) ( Table 1 ).

2.2. Context

The studies were approved by an Institutional Review Board of the Ministry of Health (BY-280; SHA-13-0009; RMB-14-0575, in accordance with the study’s number) and were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All the studies’ participants provided written informed consent. Each study was conducted in different mental health regional centers, operated by 3 different health organizations, which varied as to regulations, policies, staff positions, etc., and covered different geographical and socioeconomical regions. The first study took place in the mental health center where the intervention was originally developed. The evidence for the intervention’s effectiveness in this context was previously reported [ 12 ]. The studies were performed with a single-blind procedure by licensed occupational therapists (OTs). Different OTs, through the sites, delivered the intervention.

2.3. Measurements

The intervention’s effectiveness was investigated in accordance with its theoretical background. The primary outcomes were set with a focus on participation and recovery dimensions that were addressed with (I) the Intention to Participate Scale for evaluation of the intention to participate in meaningful activities, (II) the Impact on Participation and Autonomy tool (IPA), assessing experience of autonomy in activities and occupations, and (III) the Recovery Self-Assessment for evaluation of the experience of service as recovery-oriented. The secondary outcomes addressed personal factors and included measurement of (I) dimensions of participation in daily occupations, as assessed with the Adults Subjective Assessment of Participation, (II) functional capacity in the IADL (assessed with the Observed Tasks of Daily Living-Revised, (III) aspects of cognitive functioning (evaluated using the Neurobehavioral State Cognitive Assessment; Trail Making Test, Part A and Part B; Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure test; and Category Fluency Test) or general cognitive status (evaluated with Modified Mini-Mental State Examination), and (IV) the severity of the illness’ symptoms (the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale), for first and second studies only. The detailed description of the evaluation procedures and tools can be found in our previous publications [ 11 , 12 ] and are attached in the Supplementary Materials, File S1 . The summary of the studies’ procedures is presented in Table 1 .

2.4. Intervention

Occupational Connections OC [ 11 , 12 ] was designed to promote engagement in occupations with personal and social meaning, to encourage understanding of occupational experiences, and to expand positive aspects of the experience of people with mental illness. As it was grounded on the Canadian Model of Occupational Performance and Engagement and the recovery model, one of the basic assumptions of OC is that participation in personally- and communally-meaningful occupations is an important dimension of the recovery journey [ 1 ]. OC was developed for an inpatient setting and further expanded for additional types of intensive psychiatric care. OC was implemented as a cyclic open group, with 10 sessions in each cycle, once or twice a week. Each session focused on a specific topic (such as experience of meaning in occupation, identification of possibilities for participation, finances, and participation) that was fully processed in the same session. The sessions lasted about 45 min and had a similar structure to support the group format. For example, every session began with individual narratives of occupational experience and ended with building an individual plan for work outside of the group sessions to enable attainment of personal aims related to meaningful occupations and participation patterns. The intervention was delivered based on a detailed manual, providing theoretical and practical materials for work and guidelines for enhancing the relevance of sessions for each participant. In addition, the intervention included an information kit for the multidisciplinary staff of inpatient settings to encourage their involvement in the promotion of positive occupational patterns [ 12 ]. In the third study, the protocol of the intervention was adapted to the structure of the service and the clients’ characteristics, through the standard procedure, using focus groups. In the process of adaptation, two sessions were omitted from the original manual. However, all participants completed all eight sessions.

The OTs who provided the intervention (different ones for each study) received supervision in different formats, based upon their availability ( Table 1 ). The fidelity registration table was developed for the intervention and was completed after each session in all studies. We assumed that, within 5–8 weeks of the intervention, the results would be reflected in subjective dimensions of participation and experience of the service as recovery-oriented. Thus, these measures were set as the primary outcomes. We expected little change in the secondary outcomes of functional capacity, cognition, and symptoms, since no direct training was done on these skills. In addition, we did not assume extensive changes in the objective participation dimensions because of restrictive features of the in-patient environment and the intensive day-care program.

2.5. Analysis

The data were analyzed using SPSS 27. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the participants. The control was done for demographic- and illness-related parameters that were found to be different at the baseline. The distribution of continuous data was estimated first using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov Test, and was reapproved for the purposes of this study with the Shapiro–Wilks test. The data from the first and second study were analyzed as follows: pre/post differences were analyzed using the Paired-samples t -test for data with normal distribution—otherwise, the Wilcoxon test was used. Between-group differences were analyzed using the Independent Samples t -test for data with normal distribution and with the Mann–Whitney test for data with other than normal distribution. The data from the third study were analyzed using ANOVA repeated measures. We used the Benjamini–Hochberg correction for assumptions, which included several comparisons. For the purpose of this work, we presented trends of change in the outcome measures based on statistical analysis, after controlling for the impact of the demographic- and illness-related data and the percentage of outcome measures that reached a statistically significant change (either improvement or decrease). The percent was calculated based on the following information. The primary outcomes addressed participation dimensions and recovery orientation of the service and included a total of 7 measures for studies 1 and 2, and 5 measures for study 3. The secondary outcomes addressed cognition (12 measures for studies 1 and 2, 1 measure for study 3), symptom severity (3 measures for studies 1 and 2), functional capacity (1 measure for all studies) and current participation patterns (4 measures for all studies).

Different patterns of change in pre- and post-measurements were observed through the studies in the primary and secondary outcomes. These will be a subject for further discussion of KT processes.

3.1. Study 1

Following the OC intervention, improvement was found in primary outcomes of intention for participation in meaningful activities (IP) and experience of the inpatient service as recovery-oriented (RSA), but not in the experience of autonomy (IPA). Altogether, 29% of primary outcomes were improved in the study group, but no changes in primary outcomes were found in the control group. In addition, in this study group, improvements were observed for secondary outcomes of cognitive functioning (27% of the cognitive measurements), all types of symptoms (100%), functional capacity (100%), and participation diversity (25% of the participation dimensions’ scores). Little improvement was found in the secondary outcome measures in the control group (8% of cognitive measurements and 33% of the symptoms) [ 12 ] ( Table 2 ).

Summary of the results from the effectiveness studies: patterns of change (N = 82) *.

* Notes: The number of arrows indicates a number of measurements where the change was found; “↑”—statistical significant improvement in pre-post evaluation; “↓”—statistical significant decline in pre-post evaluation; “-”—no statistical significant change in pre-post evaluation; NA—parameters that were not measured in the study; RSA—Recovery Self-Assessment; IPA—the Impact on Participation and Autonomy.

3.2. Study 2

A decline was found in this study group in primary outcomes of intention to participate and experience of autonomy in family role-related activities (29% of primary outcomes measurement). However, in the control group, we found an increase in experience of the service as recovery oriented, and in experience of autonomy in indoor activities and social life-related activities (43% of the outcomes). As for the secondary outcomes, both groups improved on cognitive functions (18% of all cognitive measures for each group), even though the improved skills differed between groups. A similar extent of improvement in symptom severity was found in the two groups (67% of measures). However, only the study group improved in functional capacity (100%). No improvement in participation dimension was found in either group [ 13 ] ( Table 2 ).

3.3. Study 3

Following the OC intervention, improvement was noted in primary outcomes of experience of autonomy in outdoor activities, work, and education activities and in social life-related activities (60% of outcome measures). No changes in primary outcomes were found in the control condition. Among secondary outcomes, participation in the intervention contributed to improvement of functional capacity (100%) and participation diversity and enjoyment (50% of participation dimensions’ scores), but not to general cognitive status. No improvements in secondary outcomes were found in the control condition ( Table 2 ).

4. Discussion

Today, decades after establishing the EB practice concept, a knowledge-to-practice gap exists [ 8 , 10 ]. This situation is even more complicated in the field of mental health, since (1) recovery-supportive intervention should be personally centered and flexible [ 1 , 2 ] and (2) the evidence on outcomes of many interventions is not binary (i.e., whether the intervention is effective or ineffective). These factors, taken together, suggest that a more nuanced approach is needed for interpretation and skilled implementation of the knowledge [ 10 ]. This case series of three effectiveness studies of occupation- and recovery-oriented intervention for intensive mental health settings was used to elaborate on the impact of various factors throughout the process of research, evidence creation, and practical implementation procedures, and the extent to which the planned outcomes may be obtained in practice. The insights were discussed, focusing on different issues relating to knowledge creation and action.

4.1. Action for the Knowledge Implementation

The findings demonstrated that the OC intervention could be used in various settings with different groups of populations having target characteristics. However, the patterns of change in primary and secondary outcomes could be seen as different throughout the three studies. These findings further supported the notion of effectiveness of previously established interventions in a new context. Still, a thorough consideration of a range of intervention qualities and contextual factors (in terms of settings, clinician, and client) are needed to obtain the planned outcomes [ 6 ].

One factor that has a strong impact on multiple aspects of the intervention implementation and should be addressed is setting features [ 6 , 14 ]. Indeed, based on the descriptively-presented trends, it could be concluded that the three presented studies produced different outcomes, occurring in different settings, e.g., service structures, policies, OT staff actions, etc. We learned that the similarity of the settings, as judged by a basic definition such as “inpatient acute setting”, did not ensure similarity between the settings in characteristics deemed relevant for the intervention. These findings implied that complex interventions, such as the OC, which involve additional personnel and service infrastructure usage, are particularly sensitive to setting contingencies. Thus, a thorough consideration of the unique setting’s features should be done for intervention implementation in each new setting. On the other hand, the results suggested that, in the process of selecting new practices to be transported, no intervention should be ruled out based on a definition of the basic setting. In our work, we found that the OC, originally developed for inpatient settings, was able to yield the planned outcomes in day-care programs. To help clinicians ensure an intervention–setting fit, several structured models were suggested [ 6 , 9 , 14 , 15 ]. Even though many of them provide primarily general, conceptual tools, they may be useful for understanding the scope of the affecting factors and required resources for KTA activities. In the case of the OC, we found that critical factors for the intervention-setting fit included convergence between the OC aims and the service goals, general staff knowledge of activity benefits for health, actions taken by staff to support health through participation in meaningful activities, and an environment that enable practicing of personally relevant activities and goals. However, it is important to note that, in the process of intervention-implementation planning, settings’ features are in tight interplay with additional contextual factors [ 14 , 15 ].

The discrepancy in the studies’ results could be explained by the clinician/group facilitator (GF) position regarding the intervention–implementation process. Even though all the GFs had similar professional backgrounds throughout the studies and completed a workshop on OC implementation, there were differences. In the first study, the GF received direct modeling and ongoing supervision from one of the intervention authors in order to keep the intervention focused on key constructs. Meanwhile, in the second study, implementation was mainly based on the manual, with adherence to the rigorous research procedures, in order to keep similarities between the studies. Interestingly, prominent differences in the outcome measures were found between the first and second studies, supporting the notion that direct adherence to the technical aspects of the intervention, based primarily on the manual, could lead to a less flexible and manual-centered implementation, thereby limiting applications of clinical reasoning and yielding only partial outcomes [ 6 , 9 , 16 ]. Indeed, it was demonstrated that incorporation of a new intervention into practice was a complicated and dynamic process; valuable implementation may be best supported by an ongoing building of capacity for the practice, including intervention delivery issues and actions relating to intervention adaptation [ 6 , 15 ]. Capacity building, which is performed through a continuous process of thinking and reflection on the intervention, can enable the development of strong commitment to the intervention’s key constructs and concepts, rather than to the technical procedures only, and contribute to the achievement of a wide range of relevant primary and secondary outcomes [ 8 , 14 , 15 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. In light of this capacity building concept and the spiral nature of the KT process in long-term implementation, this case study raised the question of what an appropriate stage might be to measure the intervention’s effectiveness through research on the continuum of the intervention delivery. The findings suggested that an investigation on the effectiveness of practice could be more trustworthy at advanced stages of implementation, contributing in a more valuable way to decisions regarding its clinical utility.

An additional approach for GF to serve as an implementation agent is to initiate the process of planned adaptation in the preparation phase [ 14 , 15 ], the action strategy applied in the third study. The adapted procedures yielded improvement in primary outcomes while still contributing to the improvement of secondary outcomes, demonstrating the effectiveness of this strategy to obtain planned outcomes. This served an additional example of the negotiation between direct adherence to research-approved procedures versus flexible implementation of the intervention while acknowledging the practitioners’ and clients’ values and goals and responding to the contextual aspects of practice. Still, effective and powerful tools are required in this situation to maintain balance between the extent of changes that may be accepted, within the boundaries of each intervention, butstill be supported by the evidence, with the potential to reproduce similar outcomes [ 5 ]. In addition, long-term, effective implementation may require further adaptations; thus, ongoing consideration of optimal implementation procedures is needed [ 15 ], suggesting the importance of a combination of strategies for beneficial integration of a new intervention in clinical practice [ 20 ].

One of the tools that could help clinicians keep within the intervention boundaries while adopting the intervention in a new context is the fidelity registration procedure. The concept of intervention fidelity refers to the degree with which the intervention is implemented as planned or intended, based on theoretical assumptions and practical approaches and aspects [ 21 , 22 ]. Originally articulated in the field of controlled studies, it has been less noticeable in clinical practice [ 23 , 24 ], raising further questions about its clinical applications. Indeed, even though a fidelity registration form was developed and kept for the OC intervention, it seemed to be insufficient, given the evident differences between the three studies in the outcome measures. These findings further illustrated the complexity of fidelity and the need for its broader vision in clinical practice, especially in cases involving complex interventions and outcomes which might require responsiveness to ever-changing life circumstances and narratively-described client experiences [ 25 ]. The case study alluded to the need for a shift in the process of fidelity form design, referring mostly to technical aspects of intervention structure and process. This over-emphasized their importance, putting the intervention integrity at risk and, likewise, its effectiveness toward a focus on conceptual intervention issues [ 26 ]. In fact, fidelity should (1) address issues, such as the main constructs and concepts underlying the intervention and guiding actions, and (2) specify mechanisms of change and ways to obtain it [ 24 ], formulating active components of the intervention. On behalf of the action side, clinicians should (1) identify/recognize active components of the intervention and (2) main features of research evidence, and (3) adapt the intervention in a skilled manner, based on obtained insights, context, served population, etc. [ 17 ]. Another issue may be covered by fidelity procedures, reflecting the complexity of intervention procedures toward planned outcomes. One example (in the case of an OC) may be the importance of the group climate and the shared emotional connection between the group participants, and the process of collaboratively working on a range of personal goals during a group session. Fidelity registration could help to ensure the integrity of the intervention and faithful-to-content implementation, with a higher probability of obtaining optimal outcomes [ 20 , 24 ]. In addition, usage of such fidelity procedures will contribute to the ongoing process of capacity building. The systematic documentation of the practice, with reflection on arising issues, will contribute to the researcher–clinician knowledge exchange and further the building of evidence in a supportive way for clinical practice.

4.2. Knowledge Creation

The results of the three studies demonstrated different patterns of change in primary and secondary outcome measurements, up to reversal, supporting the notion of contextual impact on intervention effectiveness [ 5 , 6 , 8 , 9 , 14 , 16 ]. These findings may be seen as challenging to the traditional vision of rigorous research procedures, with a strict adherence to standard intervention practices, in all contexts, in order to obtain further proof of the intervention effectiveness and demonstrate generalizability of the results [ 25 ]. In our view, these findings helped to extract supportive research procedures for clinical practice, demonstrating the importance of replicating effectiveness studies in a naturalistic manner, in different contexts and with different groups of target populations. This should take place as early as the initial stage of evidence building, in order to obtain information about practitioner and client and gain perspective on the intervention [ 5 , 9 ]. This information will be critical for (1) knowledge creation, as it may inform appropriate research designs and outcome measures for rigorous methodology studies [ 27 , 28 ]. The results of our previous studies serve as an example, demonstrating the limited relevance of the well-being measure as an immediate intervention outcome measure [ 11 ], and highlighting reasons to address decreases in subjective measurements as improvements, following the intervention (e.g., change in detached experience of autonomy in daily life activities) [ 13 ]. Moreover, replicating effectiveness studies could enhance (2) clinical implementation, delineating the understanding of which types of outcomes, with what population and under what conditions, could be obtained [ 5 , 6 , 14 ]. The OC effectiveness studies suggested that, at the sub-acute stage of mental illness, with low dosages of intervention, objective parameters such as functional capacity, cognitive functions, and symptom severity may be expected to improve, rather than subjective parameters such as the experience of autonomy in occupations and the intention to participate. On the other hand, with people at advanced stages of symptom stabilization, with actual involvement in everyday life and higher intervention dosages, such as those in day-care programs, improvements in subjective parameters related to occupation and participation, as well as functional capacity improvement, may be expected, rather than changes in cognitive functions. In addition, it was demonstrated that the pattern of improvement in outcomes following the OC intervention, with focus on reflection, participation aspects, and issues, rather than on doing or direct skills training, could depend on the participants’ gender. Throughout these studies, subjective outcomes were most improved among women, while more objective parameters were improved among men, suggesting a further need to investigate the relevance of different types of participation and occupational balance-related outcomes by gender. Cumulative findings from these studies provided further support for a complex interplay between the clients’ characteristics, intervention implementation, and expected outcomes that should be considered by clinicians in the process of skilled intervention implementation. To enable skilled implementation through adaptation while reducing the risk of deviation from the initial intervention principal components (thus, interrupting the fidelity), the knowledge creation process should involve the development of structured but flexible guidelines providing practical tools to address implementation challenges in various contexts [ 25 ]. Moreover, as was previously delineated, the supportive evidence-building process should be applied to reveal the impacts of various contextual factors, supporting further development of clinical guidelines as a powerful tool in helping to overcome the contextual barriers of implementation and closing the gap between the research and the clinic [ 5 , 9 , 19 ]. In the case of the OC intervention, the package to expand general staff knowledge on participation and activity benefits to health was developed to address contextual impacts on the intervention’s effectiveness. However, the findings suggested that this step was insufficient to support the OC implementation across a range of contexts. Next, following the previous discussion, we suggested including guidelines for clear statements on the active intervention components and developing fidelity methods beyond descriptions of the technical procedures dedicated for clinical practice [ 25 ]. The OC manual was designed as a mix of detailed descriptions of specific practices, but a range of materials was developed for each stage to meet participants’ personal needs and preferences. Moreover, for each intervention topic, an overarching goal was articulated to focus the practice. Still, further development of the manual will be needed to incorporate new understanding gained from this case study.

This serial case study had several limitations. First of all, the studies that served as the cases for the study were limited in sample size and their methodological issues were quasi-experimental; these factors all had the potential to alter the original study’s results. In addition, the contextual differences between the studies were not an issue of manipulation through the study design, but the results of a naturalistic approach, and thus limited a systematic comparison. Moreover, we only addressed one intervention through the series of cases. Different interventions with different scopes and aims, theoretical backgrounds, and practices could have yielded different results and been sensitive in different ways to the impact of the contextual factors on the process of knowledge creation and implementation. We investigated differences in the patterns of change in outcome measures only descriptively; this was a potential subject for bias and should be further assessed statistically.

5. Conclusions

To summarize, the adoption of new evidence-based interventions is imperative to expand the scope of practices to support health and well-being. This case series illustrated the complexity of knowledge creation and clinical action processes oriented toward the achievement of optimal clinical outcomes in occupation-oriented interventions, emphasizing the importance and mutual contribution of both processes. On the action side, integration of a new intervention into a clinical practice should be conceptualized as an ongoing process. This should involve careful planning of implementation and prolonged monitoring of both implementation and outcomes, while considering the interplay between intervention structure, clinical setting, and clients’ and practitioners’ characteristics. In this way, it becomes possible to reveal the best method by which to adapt the intervention for each setting. Still, the knowledge creation process should be built in an appropriate way; it must be supportive of the clinical actions, through clear formulation of active intervention components for fidelity, systematic evaluation of the extent of contextual factors’ impacts on the intervention’s effectiveness, and definitions of which types of outcomes will be reasonable to obtain, under which conditions and with specific populations. These goals can be achieved by, for example, naturalistic studies. It was shown that, in the case of OC, improvement in subjective participation-related outcomes and experiences of recovery orientation depended on the structure of the implementation process, type of service, intervention dosage, and clients’ factors, as aspects of clinical action. Meanwhile, objective outcomes’ improvements were more resistant to the influence of clinical action aspects. Strategies for closing the gap between what we know from research and what we do in practice will be critical in efforts to provide more effective services for clients, consistent with a professional role and supported in a valuable manner by research and evidence.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Inbal Yoel, Ilana Silvan-Kosovich, and Shani Volovik-Shushan for their help with the data collection. We want to express our deep gratitude to all the studies’ participants.

Supplementary Materials

The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/ijerph20032141/s1 , File S1: Description of the measurements [ 11 , 12 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 ].

Funding Statement

The studies were supported by a personal grant to the first author from the Tauber Family Foundation.

Author Contributions

L.L.-V. and T.K. contributed equally to the study design, the data interpretation, and the manuscript preparation. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was approved by an Institutional Review Board of the Ministry of Health (BY-280; SHA-13-0009; RMB-14-0575, in accordance with the study’s number) and were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all the participants involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.

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Research Process

  • Brainstorming
  • Explore Google This link opens in a new window
  • Explore Web Resources
  • Explore Background Information
  • Explore Books
  • Explore Scholarly Articles
  • Narrowing a Topic
  • Primary and Secondary Resources
  • Academic, Popular & Trade Publications
  • Scholarly and Peer-Reviewed Journals
  • Grey Literature
  • Clinical Trials
  • Evidence Based Treatment
  • Scholarly Research
  • Database Research Log
  • Search Limits
  • Keyword Searching
  • Boolean Operators
  • Phrase Searching
  • Truncation & Wildcard Symbols
  • Proximity Searching
  • Field Codes
  • Subject Terms and Database Thesauri
  • Reading a Scientific Article
  • Website Evaluation
  • Article Keywords and Subject Terms
  • Cited References
  • Citing Articles
  • Related Results
  • Search Within Publication
  • Database Alerts & RSS Feeds
  • Personal Database Accounts
  • Persistent URLs
  • Literature Gap and Future Research
  • Web of Knowledge
  • Annual Reviews
  • Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
  • Finding Seminal Works
  • Exhausting the Literature
  • Finding Dissertations
  • Researching Theoretical Frameworks
  • Research Methods & Design
  • Tests and Measurements
  • Organizing Research & Citations This link opens in a new window
  • Scholarly Publication
  • Learn the Library This link opens in a new window

Research Articles

These examples below illustrate how researchers from different disciplines identified gaps in existing literature. For additional examples, try a NavigatorSearch using this search string: ("Literature review") AND (gap*)

  • Addressing the Recent Developments and Potential Gaps in the Literature of Corporate Sustainability
  • Applications of Psychological Science to Teaching and Learning: Gaps in the Literature
  • Attitudes, Risk Factors, and Behaviours of Gambling Among Adolescents and Young People: A Literature Review and Gap Analysis
  • Do Psychological Diversity Climate, HRM Practices, and Personality Traits (Big Five) Influence Multicultural Workforce Job Satisfaction and Performance? Current Scenario, Literature Gap, and Future Research Directions
  • Entrepreneurship Education: A Systematic Literature Review and Identification of an Existing Gap in the Field
  • Evidence and Gaps in the Literature on HIV/STI Prevention Interventions Targeting Migrants in Receiving Countries: A Scoping Review
  • Homeless Indigenous Veterans and the Current Gaps in Knowledge: The State of the Literature
  • A Literature Review and Gap Analysis of Emerging Technologies and New Trends in Gambling
  • A Review of Higher Education Image and Reputation Literature: Knowledge Gaps and a Research Agenda
  • Trends and Gaps in Empirical Research on Open Educational Resources (OER): A Systematic Mapping of the Literature from 2015 to 2019
  • Where Should We Go From Here? Identified Gaps in the Literature in Psychosocial Interventions for Youth With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Comorbid Anxiety

What is a ‘gap in the literature’?

The gap, also considered the missing piece or pieces in the research literature, is the area that has not yet been explored or is under-explored. This could be a population or sample (size, type, location, etc.), research method, data collection and/or analysis, or other research variables or conditions.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that just because you identify a gap in the research, it doesn't necessarily mean that your research question is worthy of exploration. You will want to make sure that your research will have valuable practical and/or theoretical implications. In other words, answering the research question could either improve existing practice and/or inform professional decision-making (Applied Degree), or it could revise, build upon, or create theoretical frameworks informing research design and practice (Ph.D Degree). See the Dissertation Center  for additional information about dissertation criteria at NU.

For a additional information on gap statements, see the following:

  • How to Find a Gap in the Literature
  • Write Like a Scientist: Gap Statements

How do you identify the gaps?

Conducting an exhaustive literature review is your first step. As you search for journal articles, you will need to read critically across the breadth of the literature to identify these gaps. You goal should be to find a ‘space’ or opening for contributing new research. The first step is gathering a broad range of research articles on your topic. You may want to look for research that approaches the topic from a variety of methods – qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. 

See the videos below for further instruction on identifying a gap in the literature.

Identifying a Gap in the Literature - Dr. Laurie Bedford

How Do You Identify Gaps in Literature? - SAGE Research Methods

Literature Gap & Future Research - Library Workshop

This workshop presents effective search techniques for identifying a gap in the literature and recommendations for future research.

Where can you locate research gaps?

As you begin to gather the literature, you will want to critically read for what has, and has not, been learned from the research. Use the Discussion and Future Research sections of the articles to understand what the researchers have found and where they point out future or additional research areas. This is similar to identifying a gap in the literature, however, future research statements come from a single study rather than an exhaustive search. You will want to check the literature to see if those research questions have already been answered.

Screenshot of an article PDF with the "Suggestions for Future Research and Conclusion" section highlighted.

Roadrunner Search

Identifying the gap in the research relies on an exhaustive review of the literature. Remember, researchers may not explicitly state that a gap in the literature exists; you may need to thoroughly review and assess the research to make that determination yourself.

However, there are techniques that you can use when searching in NavigatorSearch to help identify gaps in the literature. You may use search terms such as "literature gap " or "future research" "along with your subject keywords to pinpoint articles that include these types of statements.

Screenshot of the Roadrunner Advanced Search with an example search for "future research" or gap.

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Chapter 2: Getting Started in Research

Reviewing the Research Literature

Learning Objectives

  • Define the research literature in psychology and give examples of sources that are part of the research literature and sources that are not.
  • Describe and use several methods for finding previous research on a particular research idea or question.

Reviewing the research literature means finding, reading, and summarizing the published research relevant to your question. An empirical research report written in American Psychological Association (APA) style always includes a written literature review, but it is important to review the literature early in the research process for several reasons.

  • It can help you turn a research idea into an interesting research question.
  • It can tell you if a research question has already been answered.
  • It can help you evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
  • It can give you ideas for how to conduct your own study.
  • It can tell you how your study fits into the research literature.

What Is the Research Literature?

The  research literature  in any field is all the published research in that field. The research literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the beginning of the field—and it continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does not include self-help and other pop psychology books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries, websites, and similar sources that are intended mainly for the general public. These are considered unreliable because they are not reviewed by other researchers and are often based on little more than common sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable information, but the fact that its authors are anonymous and may not have any formal training or expertise in that subject area, and its content continually changes makes it unsuitable as a basis of sound scientific research. For our purposes, it helps to define the research literature as consisting almost entirely of two types of sources: articles in professional journals, and scholarly books in psychology and related fields.

Professional Journals

Professional journals  are periodicals that publish original research articles. There are thousands of professional journals that publish research in psychology and related fields. They are usually published monthly or quarterly in individual issues, each of which contains several articles. The issues are organized into volumes, which usually consist of all the issues for a calendar year. Some journals are published in hard copy only, others in both hard copy and electronic form, and still others in electronic form only.

Most articles in professional journals are one of two basic types: empirical research reports and review articles.  Empirical research reports  describe one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors. They introduce a research question, explain why it is interesting, review previous research, describe their method and results, and draw their conclusions. Review articles  summarize previously published research on a topic and usually present new ways to organize or explain the results. When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory, it is often referred to as a theoretical article .

Figure 2.6 Small Sample of the Thousands of Professional Journals That Publish Research in Psychology and Related Fields

Most professional journals in psychology undergo a process of  double-blind peer review . Researchers who want to publish their work in the journal submit a manuscript to the editor—who is generally an established researcher too—who in turn sends it to two or three experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a critical but constructive review, and sends the review back to the editor along with his or her recommendations. The editor then decides whether to accept the article for publication, ask the authors to make changes and resubmit it for further consideration, or reject it outright. In any case, the editor forwards the reviewers’ written comments to the researchers so that they can revise their manuscript accordingly. This entire process is double-blind, as the reviewers do not know the identity of the researcher(s), and vice versa. Double-blind peer review is helpful because it ensures that the work meets basic standards of the field before it can enter the research literature. However, in order to increase transparency and accountability some newer open access journals (e.g., Frontiers in Psychology) utilize an open peer review process wherein the identities of the reviewers (which remain concealed during the peer review process) are published alongside the journal article.

Scholarly Books

Scholarly books  are books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for use by other researchers and practitioners. A  monograph  is written by a single author or a small group of authors and usually gives a coherent presentation of a topic much like an extended review article.  Edited volumes have an editor or a small group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic. Although edited volumes can also give a coherent presentation of the topic, it is not unusual for each chapter to take a different perspective or even for the authors of different chapters to openly disagree with each other. In general, scholarly books undergo a peer review process similar to that used by professional journals.

Literature Search Strategies

Using psycinfo and other databases.

The primary method used to search the research literature involves using one or more electronic databases. These include Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and ProQuest for all academic disciplines, ERIC for education, and PubMed for medicine and related fields. The most important for our purposes, however, is PsycINFO, which is produced by the APA. PsycINFO is so comprehensive—covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books going back more than 100 years—that for most purposes its content is synonymous with the research literature in psychology. Like most such databases, PsycINFO is usually available through your university library.

PsycINFO consists of individual records for each article, book chapter, or book in the database. Each record includes basic publication information, an abstract or summary of the work (like the one presented at the start of this chapter), and a list of other works cited by that work. A computer interface allows entering one or more search terms and returns any records that contain those search terms. (These interfaces are provided by different vendors and therefore can look somewhat different depending on the library you use.) Each record also contains lists of keywords that describe the content of the work and also a list of index terms. The index terms are especially helpful because they are standardized. Research on differences between women and men, for example, is always indexed under “Human Sex Differences.” Research on notetaking is always indexed under the term “Learning Strategies.” If you do not know the appropriate index terms, PsycINFO includes a thesaurus that can help you find them.

Given that there are nearly four million records in PsycINFO, you may have to try a variety of search terms in different combinations and at different levels of specificity before you find what you are looking for. Imagine, for example, that you are interested in the question of whether women and men differ in terms of their ability to recall experiences from when they were very young. If you were to enter “memory for early experiences” as your search term, PsycINFO would return only six records, most of which are not particularly relevant to your question. However, if you were to enter the search term “memory,” it would return 149,777 records—far too many to look through individually. This is where the thesaurus helps. Entering “memory” into the thesaurus provides several more specific index terms—one of which is “early memories.” While searching for “early memories” among the index terms returns 1,446 records—still too many too look through individually—combining it with “human sex differences” as a second search term returns 37 articles, many of which are highly relevant to the topic.

QR code that links to PsycINFO video

Depending on the vendor that provides the interface to PsycINFO, you may be able to save, print, or e-mail the relevant PsycINFO records. The records might even contain links to full-text copies of the works themselves. (PsycARTICLES is a database that provides full-text access to articles in all journals published by the APA.) If not, and you want a copy of the work, you will have to find out if your library carries the journal or has the book and the hard copy on the library shelves. Be sure to ask a librarian if you need help.

Using Other Search Techniques

QR code that links to Google Scholar video

In addition to entering search terms into PsycINFO and other databases, there are several other techniques you can use to search the research literature. First, if you have one good article or book chapter on your topic—a recent review article is best—you can look through the reference list of that article for other relevant articles, books, and book chapters. In fact, you should do this with any relevant article or book chapter you find. You can also start with a classic article or book chapter on your topic, find its record in PsycINFO (by entering the author’s name or article’s title as a search term), and link from there to a list of other works in PsycINFO that cite that classic article. This works because other researchers working on your topic are likely to be aware of the classic article and cite it in their own work. You can also do a general Internet search using search terms related to your topic or the name of a researcher who conducts research on your topic. This might lead you directly to works that are part of the research literature (e.g., articles in open-access journals or posted on researchers’ own websites). The search engine Google Scholar is especially useful for this purpose. A general Internet search might also lead you to websites that are not part of the research literature but might provide references to works that are. Finally, you can talk to people (e.g., your instructor or other faculty members in psychology) who know something about your topic and can suggest relevant articles and book chapters.

What to Search For

When you do a literature review, you need to be selective. Not every article, book chapter, and book that relates to your research idea or question will be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, you want to focus on sources that help you do four basic things: (a) refine your research question, (b) identify appropriate research methods, (c) place your research in the context of previous research, and (d) write an effective research report. Several basic principles can help you find the most useful sources.

First, it is best to focus on recent research, keeping in mind that what counts as recent depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively being studied, “recent” might mean published in the past year or two. For older topics that are receiving less attention right now, “recent” might mean within the past 10 years. You will get a feel for what counts as recent for your topic when you start your literature search. A good general rule, however, is to start with sources published in the past five years. The main exception to this rule would be classic articles that turn up in the reference list of nearly every other source. If other researchers think that this work is important, even though it is old, then by all means you should include it in your review.

Second, you should look for review articles on your topic because they will provide a useful overview of it—often discussing important definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving you a good sense of where your own research fits into the literature. You should also look for empirical research reports addressing your question or similar questions, which can give you ideas about how to operationally define your variables and collect your data. As a general rule, it is good to use methods that others have already used successfully unless you have good reasons not to. Finally, you should look for sources that provide information that can help you argue for the interestingness of your research question. For a study on the effects of cell phone use on driving ability, for example, you might look for information about how widespread cell phone use is, how frequent and costly motor vehicle crashes are, and so on.

How many sources are enough for your literature review? This is a difficult question because it depends on how extensively your topic has been studied and also on your own goals. One study found that across a variety of professional journals in psychology, the average number of sources cited per article was about 50 (Adair & Vohra, 2003) [1] . This gives a rough idea of what professional researchers consider to be adequate. As a student, you might be assigned a much lower minimum number of references to use, but the principles for selecting the most useful ones remain the same.

Key Takeaways

  • The research literature in psychology is all the published research in psychology, consisting primarily of articles in professional journals and scholarly books.
  • Early in the research process, it is important to conduct a review of the research literature on your topic to refine your research question, identify appropriate research methods, place your question in the context of other research, and prepare to write an effective research report.
  • There are several strategies for finding previous research on your topic. Among the best is using PsycINFO, a computer database that catalogs millions of articles, books, and book chapters in psychology and related fields.
  • Practice: Use the techniques discussed in this section to find 10 journal articles and book chapters on one of the following research ideas: memory for smells, aggressive driving, the causes of narcissistic personality disorder, the functions of the intraparietal sulcus, or prejudice against the physically handicapped.
  • Watch the following video clip produced by UBCiSchool about how to read an academic paper (without losing your mind):

QR code that links to UBCiSchool video

Video Attributions

  • “ Sample PsycINFO Search on EBSCOhost ” by APA Publishing Training . Standard YouTube Licence.
  • “ Using Google Scholar (CLIP) ” by clipinfolit . CC BY (Attribution)
  • “ How to Read an Academic Paper ” by UBCiSchool . CC BY (Attribution)
  • Adair, J. G., & Vohra, N. (2003). The explosion of knowledge, references, and citations: Psychology’s unique response to a crisis. American Psychologist, 58 , 15–23. ↵

All the published research in a particular field.

Periodicals that publish original research articles.

A type of research article which describes one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors.

A type of research article that summarizes previously published research on a topic and usually presents new ways to organize or explain the results.

A type of review article primarily devoted to presenting a new theory.

Books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for sue by other researchers and practitioners.

Type of scholarly book written by a single author or small group of authors, coherently presents a topic much like an extended review article.

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How to find and fill gaps in the literature [Research Gaps Made Easy]

As we dive deeper into the realm of research, one term repeatedly echoes in the corridors of academia: “gap in literature.”

But what does it mean to find a gap in the literature, and why is it so crucial for your research project?

A gap in the literature refers to an area that hasn’t been studied or lacks substantial inquiry in your field of study. Identifying such gaps allows you to contribute fresh insights and innovation, thereby extending the existing body of knowledge.

It’s the cornerstone for every dissertation or research paper, setting the stage for an introduction that explicitly outlines the scope and aim of your investigation.

This gap review isn’t limited to what has been published in peer-reviewed journals; it may also include conference papers, dissertations, or technical reports, i.e., types of papers that provide an overview of ongoing research. 

This step is where your detective work comes in—by spotting trends, common methodologies, and unanswered questions, you can unearth an opportunity to explore an unexplored domain, thereby finding a research gap. 

Why Looking for Research Gaps is Essential

Looking for research gaps is essential as it enables the discovery of novel and unique contributions to a particular field.

By identifying these gaps, found through methods such as analyzing concluding remarks of recent papers, literature reviews, examining research groups’ non-peer-reviewed outputs, and utilizing specific search terms on Google Scholar, one can discern the trajectory of ongoing research and unearth opportunities for original inquiry.

These gaps highlight areas of potential innovation, unexplored paths, and disputed concepts, serving as the catalyst for valuable contributions and progression in the field. Hence, finding research gaps forms the basis of substantial and impactful scientific exploration.

Then your research can contribute by finding and filling the gap in knowledge. 

Method 1: Utilizing Concluding Remarks of Recent Research

When embarking on a quest to find research gaps, the concluding remarks of recent research papers can serve as an unexpected treasure map.

This section of a paper often contains insightful comments on the limitations of the work and speculates on future research directions.

These comments, although not directly pointing to a research gap, can hint at where the research is heading and what areas require further exploration.

Consider these remarks as signposts, pointing you towards uncharted territories in your field of interest.

For example, you may come across a conclusion in a recent paper on artificial intelligence that indicates a need for more research on ethical considerations. This gives you a direction to explore – the ethical implications of AI. 

However, it’s important to bear in mind that while these statements provide valuable leads, they aren’t definitive indicators of research gaps. They provide a starting point, a clue to the vast research puzzle.

Your task is to take these hints, explore further, and discern the most promising areas for your investigation. It’s a bit like being a detective, except your clues come from scholarly papers instead of crime scenes!

Method 2: Examining Research Groups and Non-peer Reviewed Outputs

If concluding remarks are signposts to potential research gaps, non-peer reviewed outputs such as preprints, conference presentations, and dissertations are detailed maps guiding you towards the frontier of research.

These resources reflect the real-time development in the field, giving you a sense of the “buzz” that surrounds hot topics.

These materials, presented but not formally published, offer a sneak peek into ongoing studies, providing you with a rich source of information to identify emerging trends and potential research gaps.

For instance, a presentation on the impact of climate change on mental health might reveal a new line of research that’s in its early stages.

One word of caution: while these resources can be enlightening, they have not undergone the rigorous peer review process that published articles have.

This means the quality of research may vary and the findings should be interpreted with a critical eye. Remember, the key is to pinpoint where the research is heading and then carve out your niche within that sphere.

Exploring non-peer reviewed outputs allows you to stay ahead of the curve, harnessing the opportunity to investigate and contribute to a burgeoning area of study before it becomes mainstream.

Method 3: Searching for ‘Promising’ and ‘Preliminary’ Results on Google Scholar

With a plethora of research at your fingertips, Google Scholar can serve as a remarkable tool in your quest to discover research gaps. The magic lies in a simple trick: search for the phrases “promising results” or “preliminary results” within your research area. Why these specific phrases? Scientists often use them when they have encouraging but not yet fully verified findings.

To illustrate, consider an example. Type “promising results and solar cell” into Google Scholar, and filter by recent publications.

The search results will show you recent studies where researchers have achieved promising outcomes but may not have fully developed their ideas or resolved all challenges.

These “promising” or “preliminary” results often represent areas ripe for further exploration.

They hint at a research question that has been opened but not fully answered. However, tread carefully.

While these findings can indeed point to potential research gaps, they can also lead to dead ends. It’s crucial to examine these leads with a critical eye and further corroborate them with a comprehensive review of related research.

Nevertheless, this approach provides a simple, effective starting point for identifying research gaps, serving as a launchpad for your explorations.

Method 4: Reading Around the Subject

Comprehensive reading forms the bedrock of effective research. When hunting for research gaps, you need to move beyond just the preliminary findings and delve deeper into the context surrounding these results.

This involves broadening your view and reading extensively around your topic of interest.

In the course of your reading, you will start identifying common themes, reoccurring questions, and shared challenges in the research.

Over time, patterns will emerge, helping you recognize areas where research is thin or missing.

For instance, in studying autonomous vehicles, you might find recurring questions about regulatory frameworks, pointing to a potential gap in the legal aspects of this technology.

However, this method is not about scanning through a huge volume of literature aimlessly. It involves strategic and critical reading, looking for patterns, inconsistencies, and areas where the existing literature falls short.

It’s akin to painting a picture where some parts are vividly detailed while others remain sketchy. Your goal is to identify these sketchy areas and fill in the details.

So grab your academic reading list, and start diving into the ocean of knowledge. Remember, it’s not just about the depth, but also the breadth of your reading, that will lead you to a meaningful research gap.

Method 5: Consulting with Current Researchers

Few methods are as effective in uncovering research gaps as engaging in conversations with active researchers in your field of interest.

Current researchers, whether they are PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, or supervisors, are often deeply engaged in ongoing studies and understand the current challenges in their respective fields.

Start by expressing genuine interest in their work. Rather than directly asking for research gaps, inquire about the challenges they are currently facing in their projects.

You can ask, “What are the current challenges in your research?”

Their responses can highlight potential areas of exploration, setting you on the path to identifying meaningful research gaps.

Moreover, supervisors, particularly those overseeing PhD and Master’s students, often have ideas for potential research topics. By asking the right questions, you can tap into their wealth of knowledge and identify fruitful areas of study.

While the act of discovering research gaps can feel like a solitary journey, it doesn’t have to be.

Engaging with others who are grappling with similar challenges can provide valuable insights and guide your path. After all, the world of research thrives on collaboration and shared intellectual curiosity.

Method 6: Utilizing Online Tools

The digital age has made uncovering research gaps easier, thanks to a plethora of online tools that help visualize the interconnectedness of research literature.

Platforms such as:

  • Connected Papers,
  • ResearchRabbit, and

allow you to see how different papers in your field relate to one another, thereby creating a web of knowledge.

Upon creating this visual web, you may notice that many papers point towards a certain area, but then abruptly stop. This could indicate a potential research gap, suggesting that the topic hasn’t been adequately addressed or has been sidelined for some reason.

By further reading around this apparent gap, you can understand if it’s a genuine knowledge deficit or merely a research path that was abandoned due to inherent challenges or a dead end.

These online tools provide a bird’s eye view of the literature, helping you understand the broader landscape of research in your area of interest.

By examining patterns and relationships among studies, you can effectively zero in on unexplored areas, making these tools a valuable asset in your quest for research gaps.

Method 7: Seeking Conflicting Ideas in the Literature

In scientific research, areas of conflict can often be fertile ground for finding research gaps. These are areas where there’s a considerable amount of disagreement or ongoing debate among researchers.

If you can bring a fresh perspective, a new technique, or a novel hypothesis to such a contentious issue, you may well be on your way to uncovering a significant research gap.

Take, for instance, an area in psychology where there is a heated debate about the influence of nature versus nurture.

If you can introduce a new dimension to the debate or a method to test a novel hypothesis, you could potentially fill a significant gap in the literature.

Investigating areas of conflict not only opens avenues for exploring research gaps, but it also provides opportunities for you to make substantial contributions to your field. The key is to be able to see the potential for a new angle and to muster the courage to dive into contentious waters.

However, engaging with conflicts in research requires careful navigation.

Striking the right balance between acknowledging existing research and championing new ideas is crucial.

In the end, resolving these conflicts or adding significant depth to the debate can be incredibly rewarding and contribute greatly to your field.

The Right Perspective Towards Research Gaps

The traditional understanding of research gaps often involves seeking out a ‘bubble’ of missing knowledge in the sea of existing research, a niche yet to be explored. However, in today’s fast-paced research environment, these bubbles are becoming increasingly rare.

The paradigm of finding research gaps is shifting. It’s no longer just about seeking out holes in existing knowledge, but about understanding the leading edge of research and the directions it could take. It involves not just filling in the gaps but extending the boundaries of knowledge.

To identify such opportunities, develop a comprehensive understanding of the research landscape, identify emerging trends, and keep a close eye on recent advancements.

Look for the tendrils of knowledge extending out into the unknown and think about how you can push them further. It might be a challenging task, but it offers the potential for making substantial, impactful contributions to your field. 

Remember, every great innovation begins at the edge of what is known. That’s where your research gap might be hiding.

Wrapping up – Literature and research gaps

Finding and filling a gap in the literature is a task crucial to every research project. It begins with a systematic review of existing literature – a quest to identify what has been studied and more importantly, what hasn’t.

You must delve into the rich terrain of literature in their field, from the seminal, citation-heavy research articles to the fresh perspective of conference papers. Identifying the gap in the literature necessitates a thorough evaluation of existing studies to refine your area of interest and map the scope and aim of your future research.

The purpose is to explicitly identify the gap that exists, so you can contribute to the body of knowledge by providing fresh insights. The process involves a series of steps, from consulting with faculty and experts in the field to identify potential trends and outdated methodologies, to being methodological in your approach to identify gaps that have emerged.

Upon finding a gap in the literature, we’ll ideally have a clearer picture of the research need and an opportunity to explore this unexplored domain.

It is important to remember that the task does not end with identifying the gap. The real challenge lies in drafting a research proposal that’s objective, answerable, and can quantify the impact of filling this gap. 

It’s important to consult with your advisor, and also look at commonly used parameters and preliminary evidence. Only then can we complete the task of turning an identified gap in the literature into a valuable contribution to your field, a contribution that’s peer-reviewed and adds to the body of knowledge.

To find a research gap is to stand on the shoulders of giants, looking beyond the existing research to further expand our understanding of the world.

psychology literature gaps

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

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Grad Coach

The Research Gap (Literature Gap)

Everything you need to know to find a quality research gap

By: Ethar Al-Saraf (PhD) | Expert Reviewed By: Eunice Rautenbach (DTech) | November 2022

If you’re just starting out in research, chances are you’ve heard about the elusive research gap (also called a literature gap). In this post, we’ll explore the tricky topic of research gaps. We’ll explain what a research gap is, look at the four most common types of research gaps, and unpack how you can go about finding a suitable research gap for your dissertation, thesis or research project.

Overview: Research Gap 101

  • What is a research gap
  • Four common types of research gaps
  • Practical examples
  • How to find research gaps
  • Recap & key takeaways

What (exactly) is a research gap?

Well, at the simplest level, a research gap is essentially an unanswered question or unresolved problem in a field, which reflects a lack of existing research in that space. Alternatively, a research gap can also exist when there’s already a fair deal of existing research, but where the findings of the studies pull in different directions , making it difficult to draw firm conclusions.

For example, let’s say your research aims to identify the cause (or causes) of a particular disease. Upon reviewing the literature, you may find that there’s a body of research that points toward cigarette smoking as a key factor – but at the same time, a large body of research that finds no link between smoking and the disease. In that case, you may have something of a research gap that warrants further investigation.

Now that we’ve defined what a research gap is – an unanswered question or unresolved problem – let’s look at a few different types of research gaps.

A research gap is essentially an unanswered question or unresolved problem in a field, reflecting a lack of existing research.

Types of research gaps

While there are many different types of research gaps, the four most common ones we encounter when helping students at Grad Coach are as follows:

  • The classic literature gap
  • The disagreement gap
  • The contextual gap, and
  • The methodological gap

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psychology literature gaps

1. The Classic Literature Gap

First up is the classic literature gap. This type of research gap emerges when there’s a new concept or phenomenon that hasn’t been studied much, or at all. For example, when a social media platform is launched, there’s an opportunity to explore its impacts on users, how it could be leveraged for marketing, its impact on society, and so on. The same applies for new technologies, new modes of communication, transportation, etc.

Classic literature gaps can present exciting research opportunities , but a drawback you need to be aware of is that with this type of research gap, you’ll be exploring completely new territory . This means you’ll have to draw on adjacent literature (that is, research in adjacent fields) to build your literature review, as there naturally won’t be very many existing studies that directly relate to the topic. While this is manageable, it can be challenging for first-time researchers, so be careful not to bite off more than you can chew.

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2. The Disagreement Gap

As the name suggests, the disagreement gap emerges when there are contrasting or contradictory findings in the existing research regarding a specific research question (or set of questions). The hypothetical example we looked at earlier regarding the causes of a disease reflects a disagreement gap.

Importantly, for this type of research gap, there needs to be a relatively balanced set of opposing findings . In other words, a situation where 95% of studies find one result and 5% find the opposite result wouldn’t quite constitute a disagreement in the literature. Of course, it’s hard to quantify exactly how much weight to give to each study, but you’ll need to at least show that the opposing findings aren’t simply a corner-case anomaly .

psychology literature gaps

3. The Contextual Gap

The third type of research gap is the contextual gap. Simply put, a contextual gap exists when there’s already a decent body of existing research on a particular topic, but an absence of research in specific contexts .

For example, there could be a lack of research on:

  • A specific population – perhaps a certain age group, gender or ethnicity
  • A geographic area – for example, a city, country or region
  • A certain time period – perhaps the bulk of the studies took place many years or even decades ago and the landscape has changed.

The contextual gap is a popular option for dissertations and theses, especially for first-time researchers, as it allows you to develop your research on a solid foundation of existing literature and potentially even use existing survey measures.

Importantly, if you’re gonna go this route, you need to ensure that there’s a plausible reason why you’d expect potential differences in the specific context you choose. If there’s no reason to expect different results between existing and new contexts, the research gap wouldn’t be well justified. So, make sure that you can clearly articulate why your chosen context is “different” from existing studies and why that might reasonably result in different findings.

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4. The Methodological Gap

Last but not least, we have the methodological gap. As the name suggests, this type of research gap emerges as a result of the research methodology or design of existing studies. With this approach, you’d argue that the methodology of existing studies is lacking in some way , or that they’re missing a certain perspective.

For example, you might argue that the bulk of the existing research has taken a quantitative approach, and therefore there is a lack of rich insight and texture that a qualitative study could provide. Similarly, you might argue that existing studies have primarily taken a cross-sectional approach , and as a result, have only provided a snapshot view of the situation – whereas a longitudinal approach could help uncover how constructs or variables have evolved over time.

psychology literature gaps

Practical Examples

Let’s take a look at some practical examples so that you can see how research gaps are typically expressed in written form. Keep in mind that these are just examples – not actual current gaps (we’ll show you how to find these a little later!).

Context: Healthcare

Despite extensive research on diabetes management, there’s a research gap in terms of understanding the effectiveness of digital health interventions in rural populations (compared to urban ones) within Eastern Europe.

Context: Environmental Science

While a wealth of research exists regarding plastic pollution in oceans, there is significantly less understanding of microplastic accumulation in freshwater ecosystems like rivers and lakes, particularly within Southern Africa.

Context: Education

While empirical research surrounding online learning has grown over the past five years, there remains a lack of comprehensive studies regarding the effectiveness of online learning for students with special educational needs.

As you can see in each of these examples, the author begins by clearly acknowledging the existing research and then proceeds to explain where the current area of lack (i.e., the research gap) exists.

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How To Find A Research Gap

Now that you’ve got a clearer picture of the different types of research gaps, the next question is of course, “how do you find these research gaps?” .

Well, we cover the process of how to find original, high-value research gaps in a separate post . But, for now, I’ll share a basic two-step strategy here to help you find potential research gaps.

As a starting point, you should find as many literature reviews, systematic reviews and meta-analyses as you can, covering your area of interest. Additionally, you should dig into the most recent journal articles to wrap your head around the current state of knowledge. It’s also a good idea to look at recent dissertations and theses (especially doctoral-level ones). Dissertation databases such as ProQuest, EBSCO and Open Access are a goldmine for this sort of thing. Importantly, make sure that you’re looking at recent resources (ideally those published in the last year or two), or the gaps you find might have already been plugged by other researchers.

Once you’ve gathered a meaty collection of resources, the section that you really want to focus on is the one titled “ further research opportunities ” or “further research is needed”. In this section, the researchers will explicitly state where more studies are required – in other words, where potential research gaps may exist. You can also look at the “ limitations ” section of the studies, as this will often spur ideas for methodology-based research gaps.

By following this process, you’ll orient yourself with the current state of research , which will lay the foundation for you to identify potential research gaps. You can then start drawing up a shortlist of ideas and evaluating them as candidate topics . But remember, make sure you’re looking at recent articles – there’s no use going down a rabbit hole only to find that someone’s already filled the gap 🙂

Let’s Recap

We’ve covered a lot of ground in this post. Here are the key takeaways:

  • A research gap is an unanswered question or unresolved problem in a field, which reflects a lack of existing research in that space.
  • The four most common types of research gaps are the classic literature gap, the disagreement gap, the contextual gap and the methodological gap. 
  • To find potential research gaps, start by reviewing recent journal articles in your area of interest, paying particular attention to the FRIN section .

If you’re keen to learn more about research gaps and research topic ideation in general, be sure to check out the rest of the Grad Coach Blog . Alternatively, if you’re looking for 1-on-1 support with your dissertation, thesis or research project, be sure to check out our private coaching service .

psychology literature gaps

Psst… there’s more (for free)

This post is part of our dissertation mini-course, which covers everything you need to get started with your dissertation, thesis or research project. 

You Might Also Like:

How To Find a Research Gap (Fast)

29 Comments

ZAID AL-ZUBAIDI

This post is REALLY more than useful, Thank you very very much

Abdu Ebrahim

Very helpful specialy, for those who are new for writing a research! So thank you very much!!

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I found it very helpful article. Thank you.

fanaye

Just at the time when I needed it, really helpful.

Tawana Ngwenya

Very helpful and well-explained. Thank you

ALI ZULFIQAR

VERY HELPFUL

A.M Kwankwameri

We’re very grateful for your guidance, indeed we have been learning a lot from you , so thank you abundantly once again.

ahmed

hello brother could you explain to me this question explain the gaps that researchers are coming up with ?

Aliyu Jibril

Am just starting to write my research paper. your publication is very helpful. Thanks so much

haziel

How to cite the author of this?

kiyyaa

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Bhakti Prasad Subedi

Very important presentation. Thanks.

Best Ideas. Thank you.

Getachew Gobena

I found it’s an excellent blog to get more insights about the Research Gap. I appreciate it!

Juliana Otabil

Kindly explain to me how to generate good research objectives.

Nathan Mbandama

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Favour

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Vapeuk

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Effie

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Guillermo Dimaligalig

This article is really helpfull in discussing how will we be able to define better a research problem of our interest. Thanks so much.

Yisa Usman

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lucy kiende

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TOUFIK

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Dien Kei

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Takele Gezaheg Demie

Great one! Thank you all.

Efrem

Thank you very much.

Rev Andy N Moses

This is so enlightening. Disagreement gap. Thanks for the insight.

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Research Method

Home » Research Gap – Types, Examples and How to Identify

Research Gap – Types, Examples and How to Identify

Table of Contents

Research Gap

Research Gap

Definition:

Research gap refers to an area or topic within a field of study that has not yet been extensively researched or is yet to be explored. It is a question, problem or issue that has not been addressed or resolved by previous research.

How to Identify Research Gap

Identifying a research gap is an essential step in conducting research that adds value and contributes to the existing body of knowledge. Research gap requires critical thinking, creativity, and a thorough understanding of the existing literature . It is an iterative process that may require revisiting and refining your research questions and ideas multiple times.

Here are some steps that can help you identify a research gap:

  • Review existing literature: Conduct a thorough review of the existing literature in your research area. This will help you identify what has already been studied and what gaps still exist.
  • Identify a research problem: Identify a specific research problem or question that you want to address.
  • Analyze existing research: Analyze the existing research related to your research problem. This will help you identify areas that have not been studied, inconsistencies in the findings, or limitations of the previous research.
  • Brainstorm potential research ideas : Based on your analysis, brainstorm potential research ideas that address the identified gaps.
  • Consult with experts: Consult with experts in your research area to get their opinions on potential research ideas and to identify any additional gaps that you may have missed.
  • Refine research questions: Refine your research questions and hypotheses based on the identified gaps and potential research ideas.
  • Develop a research proposal: Develop a research proposal that outlines your research questions, objectives, and methods to address the identified research gap.

Types of Research Gap

There are different types of research gaps that can be identified, and each type is associated with a specific situation or problem. Here are the main types of research gaps and their explanations:

Theoretical Gap

This type of research gap refers to a lack of theoretical understanding or knowledge in a particular area. It can occur when there is a discrepancy between existing theories and empirical evidence or when there is no theory that can explain a particular phenomenon. Identifying theoretical gaps can lead to the development of new theories or the refinement of existing ones.

Empirical Gap

An empirical gap occurs when there is a lack of empirical evidence or data in a particular area. It can happen when there is a lack of research on a specific topic or when existing research is inadequate or inconclusive. Identifying empirical gaps can lead to the development of new research studies to collect data or the refinement of existing research methods to improve the quality of data collected.

Methodological Gap

This type of research gap refers to a lack of appropriate research methods or techniques to answer a research question. It can occur when existing methods are inadequate, outdated, or inappropriate for the research question. Identifying methodological gaps can lead to the development of new research methods or the modification of existing ones to better address the research question.

Practical Gap

A practical gap occurs when there is a lack of practical applications or implementation of research findings. It can occur when research findings are not implemented due to financial, political, or social constraints. Identifying practical gaps can lead to the development of strategies for the effective implementation of research findings in practice.

Knowledge Gap

This type of research gap occurs when there is a lack of knowledge or information on a particular topic. It can happen when a new area of research is emerging, or when research is conducted in a different context or population. Identifying knowledge gaps can lead to the development of new research studies or the extension of existing research to fill the gap.

Examples of Research Gap

Here are some examples of research gaps that researchers might identify:

  • Theoretical Gap Example : In the field of psychology, there might be a theoretical gap related to the lack of understanding of the relationship between social media use and mental health. Although there is existing research on the topic, there might be a lack of consensus on the mechanisms that link social media use to mental health outcomes.
  • Empirical Gap Example : In the field of environmental science, there might be an empirical gap related to the lack of data on the long-term effects of climate change on biodiversity in specific regions. Although there might be some studies on the topic, there might be a lack of data on the long-term effects of climate change on specific species or ecosystems.
  • Methodological Gap Example : In the field of education, there might be a methodological gap related to the lack of appropriate research methods to assess the impact of online learning on student outcomes. Although there might be some studies on the topic, existing research methods might not be appropriate to assess the complex relationships between online learning and student outcomes.
  • Practical Gap Example: In the field of healthcare, there might be a practical gap related to the lack of effective strategies to implement evidence-based practices in clinical settings. Although there might be existing research on the effectiveness of certain practices, they might not be implemented in practice due to various barriers, such as financial constraints or lack of resources.
  • Knowledge Gap Example: In the field of anthropology, there might be a knowledge gap related to the lack of understanding of the cultural practices of indigenous communities in certain regions. Although there might be some research on the topic, there might be a lack of knowledge about specific cultural practices or beliefs that are unique to those communities.

Examples of Research Gap In Literature Review, Thesis, and Research Paper might be:

  • Literature review : A literature review on the topic of machine learning and healthcare might identify a research gap in the lack of studies that investigate the use of machine learning for early detection of rare diseases.
  • Thesis : A thesis on the topic of cybersecurity might identify a research gap in the lack of studies that investigate the effectiveness of artificial intelligence in detecting and preventing cyber attacks.
  • Research paper : A research paper on the topic of natural language processing might identify a research gap in the lack of studies that investigate the use of natural language processing techniques for sentiment analysis in non-English languages.

How to Write Research Gap

By following these steps, you can effectively write about research gaps in your paper and clearly articulate the contribution that your study will make to the existing body of knowledge.

Here are some steps to follow when writing about research gaps in your paper:

  • Identify the research question : Before writing about research gaps, you need to identify your research question or problem. This will help you to understand the scope of your research and identify areas where additional research is needed.
  • Review the literature: Conduct a thorough review of the literature related to your research question. This will help you to identify the current state of knowledge in the field and the gaps that exist.
  • Identify the research gap: Based on your review of the literature, identify the specific research gap that your study will address. This could be a theoretical, empirical, methodological, practical, or knowledge gap.
  • Provide evidence: Provide evidence to support your claim that the research gap exists. This could include a summary of the existing literature, a discussion of the limitations of previous studies, or an analysis of the current state of knowledge in the field.
  • Explain the importance: Explain why it is important to fill the research gap. This could include a discussion of the potential implications of filling the gap, the significance of the research for the field, or the potential benefits to society.
  • State your research objectives: State your research objectives, which should be aligned with the research gap you have identified. This will help you to clearly articulate the purpose of your study and how it will address the research gap.

Importance of Research Gap

The importance of research gaps can be summarized as follows:

  • Advancing knowledge: Identifying research gaps is crucial for advancing knowledge in a particular field. By identifying areas where additional research is needed, researchers can fill gaps in the existing body of knowledge and contribute to the development of new theories and practices.
  • Guiding research: Research gaps can guide researchers in designing studies that fill those gaps. By identifying research gaps, researchers can develop research questions and objectives that are aligned with the needs of the field and contribute to the development of new knowledge.
  • Enhancing research quality: By identifying research gaps, researchers can avoid duplicating previous research and instead focus on developing innovative research that fills gaps in the existing body of knowledge. This can lead to more impactful research and higher-quality research outputs.
  • Informing policy and practice: Research gaps can inform policy and practice by highlighting areas where additional research is needed to inform decision-making. By filling research gaps, researchers can provide evidence-based recommendations that have the potential to improve policy and practice in a particular field.

Applications of Research Gap

Here are some potential applications of research gap:

  • Informing research priorities: Research gaps can help guide research funding agencies and researchers to prioritize research areas that require more attention and resources.
  • Identifying practical implications: Identifying gaps in knowledge can help identify practical applications of research that are still unexplored or underdeveloped.
  • Stimulating innovation: Research gaps can encourage innovation and the development of new approaches or methodologies to address unexplored areas.
  • Improving policy-making: Research gaps can inform policy-making decisions by highlighting areas where more research is needed to make informed policy decisions.
  • Enhancing academic discourse: Research gaps can lead to new and constructive debates and discussions within academic communities, leading to more robust and comprehensive research.

Advantages of Research Gap

Here are some of the advantages of research gap:

  • Identifies new research opportunities: Identifying research gaps can help researchers identify areas that require further exploration, which can lead to new research opportunities.
  • Improves the quality of research: By identifying gaps in current research, researchers can focus their efforts on addressing unanswered questions, which can improve the overall quality of research.
  • Enhances the relevance of research: Research that addresses existing gaps can have significant implications for the development of theories, policies, and practices, and can therefore increase the relevance and impact of research.
  • Helps avoid duplication of effort: Identifying existing research can help researchers avoid duplicating efforts, saving time and resources.
  • Helps to refine research questions: Research gaps can help researchers refine their research questions, making them more focused and relevant to the needs of the field.
  • Promotes collaboration: By identifying areas of research that require further investigation, researchers can collaborate with others to conduct research that addresses these gaps, which can lead to more comprehensive and impactful research outcomes.

Disadvantages of Research Gap

While research gaps can be advantageous, there are also some potential disadvantages that should be considered:

  • Difficulty in identifying gaps: Identifying gaps in existing research can be challenging, particularly in fields where there is a large volume of research or where research findings are scattered across different disciplines.
  • Lack of funding: Addressing research gaps may require significant resources, and researchers may struggle to secure funding for their work if it is perceived as too risky or uncertain.
  • Time-consuming: Conducting research to address gaps can be time-consuming, particularly if the research involves collecting new data or developing new methods.
  • Risk of oversimplification: Addressing research gaps may require researchers to simplify complex problems, which can lead to oversimplification and a failure to capture the complexity of the issues.
  • Bias : Identifying research gaps can be influenced by researchers’ personal biases or perspectives, which can lead to a skewed understanding of the field.
  • Potential for disagreement: Identifying research gaps can be subjective, and different researchers may have different views on what constitutes a gap in the field, leading to disagreements and debate.

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Identifying research gaps in substance use disorder: A systematic methodology and prioritized list

Affiliation.

  • 1 a Psychological Health Center of Excellence, Defense Health Agency , Falls Church , VA , USA.
  • PMID: 30668154
  • DOI: 10.1080/00952990.2018.1558229

Background : This paper presents a new methodology for identifying and prioritizing research gaps, contributing to the nascent literature on systematic ways to identify research gaps. Objectives : The goal of this paper is to report on a gaps analysis of substance use disorder (SUD) research. Based on input from Military Health System stakeholders, we selected the following subtopics as priorities: alcohol use disorder (AUD) and comorbid conditions, prescription opioids, and novel synthetic drugs (NSDs), including synthetic cannabinoids, synthetic cathinones, novel synthetic opioids, and e-cigarette use. Methods: Statements of research needs were extracted from authoritative source reports. A work group of 13 subject matter experts then supplemented, consolidated, and refined the statements. Support for each statement was rated based on predetermined metrics to produce a list of high-priority potential research gaps. Work group members searched both published and ongoing research literature to determine whether these potential gaps were sufficiently addressed in the literature. Finally, to prioritize the gaps, work group members rated them on a set of metrics. Results : The work group reduced 175 statements of research needs to a list of 18 final prioritized gaps: nine for AUD, four for prescription opioids, and five for NSDs. For each topic, we present a prioritized list of gaps. Conclusions : This paper describes a method to identify and prioritize research gaps relevant to military and civilian research and presents the prioritized SUD gaps. Our methodology and findings can inform policy makers, researchers, and funding agencies as they consider investments in future research.

Keywords: Substance use disorder; alcohol use disorder; novel synthetic drugs; prescription opioids; research gap analysis.

  • Analgesics, Opioid
  • Biomedical Research / methods*
  • Health Priorities*
  • Military Health*
  • Prescription Drugs
  • Stakeholder Participation
  • Substance-Related Disorders / prevention & control*
  • Synthetic Drugs
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50+ Topics of Psychology Research

How to Find Psychology Research Topics for Your Student Paper

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

psychology literature gaps

Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

psychology literature gaps

Are you searching for a great topic for your psychology paper ? Sometimes it seems like coming up with topics of psychology research is more challenging than the actual research and writing. Fortunately, there are plenty of great places to find inspiration and the following list contains just a few ideas to help get you started.

Finding a solid topic is one of the most important steps when writing any type of paper. It can be particularly important when you are writing a psychology research paper or essay. Psychology is such a broad topic, so you want to find a topic that allows you to adequately cover the subject without becoming overwhelmed with information.

In some cases, such as in a general psychology class, you might have the option to select any topic from within psychology's broad reach. Other instances, such as in an  abnormal psychology  course, might require you to write your paper on a specific subject such as a psychological disorder.

As you begin your search for a topic for your psychology paper, it is first important to consider the guidelines established by your instructor.

Topics of Psychology Research Within Specific Branches

The key to selecting a good topic for your psychology paper is to select something that is narrow enough to allow you to really focus on the subject, but not so narrow that it is difficult to find sources or information to write about.

One approach is to narrow your focus down to a subject within a specific branch of psychology. For example, you might start by deciding that you want to write a paper on some sort of social psychology topic. Next, you might narrow your focus down to how persuasion can be used to influence behavior.

Other social psychology topics you might consider include:

  • Prejudice and discrimination (i.e., homophobia, sexism, racism)
  • Social cognition
  • Person perception
  • Social control and cults
  • Persuasion , propaganda, and marketing
  • Attraction, romance, and love
  • Nonverbal communication
  • Prosocial behavior

Psychology Research Topics Involving a Disorder or Type of Therapy

Exploring a psychological disorder or a specific treatment modality can also be a good topic for a psychology paper. Some potential abnormal psychology topics include specific psychological disorders or particular treatment modalities, including:

  • Eating disorders
  • Borderline personality disorder
  • Seasonal affective disorder
  • Schizophrenia
  • Antisocial personality disorder
  • Profile a  type of therapy  (i.e., cognitive behavioral therapy, group therapy, psychoanalytic therapy)

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Cognition

Some of the possible topics you might explore in this area include thinking, language, intelligence, and decision-making. Other ideas might include:

  • False memories
  • Speech disorders
  • Problem-solving

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Development

In this area, you might opt to focus on issues pertinent to  early childhood  such as language development, social learning, or childhood attachment or you might instead opt to concentrate on issues that affect older adults such as dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

Some other topics you might consider include:

  • Language acquisition
  • Media violence and children
  • Learning disabilities
  • Gender roles
  • Child abuse
  • Prenatal development
  • Parenting styles
  • Aspects of the aging process

Do a Critique of Publications Involving Psychology Research Topics

One option is to consider writing a critique paper of a published psychology book or academic journal article. For example, you might write a critical analysis of Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams or you might evaluate a more recent book such as Philip Zimbardo's  The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil .

Professional and academic journals are also great places to find materials for a critique paper. Browse through the collection at your university library to find titles devoted to the subject that you are most interested in, then look through recent articles until you find one that grabs your attention.

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Famous Experiments

There have been many fascinating and groundbreaking experiments throughout the history of psychology, providing ample material for students looking for an interesting term paper topic. In your paper, you might choose to summarize the experiment, analyze the ethics of the research, or evaluate the implications of the study. Possible experiments that you might consider include:

  • The Milgram Obedience Experiment
  • The Stanford Prison Experiment
  • The Little Albert Experiment
  • Pavlov's Conditioning Experiments
  • The Asch Conformity Experiment
  • Harlow's Rhesus Monkey Experiments

Topics of Psychology Research About Historical Figures

One of the simplest ways to find a great topic is to choose an interesting person in the  history of psychology  and write a paper about them. Your paper might focus on many different elements of the individual's life, such as their biography, professional history, theories, or influence on psychology.

While this type of paper may be historical in nature, there is no need for this assignment to be dry or boring. Psychology is full of fascinating figures rife with intriguing stories and anecdotes. Consider such famous individuals as Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner, Harry Harlow, or one of the many other  eminent psychologists .

Psychology Research Topics About a Specific Career

​Another possible topic, depending on the course in which you are enrolled, is to write about specific career paths within the  field of psychology . This type of paper is especially appropriate if you are exploring different subtopics or considering which area interests you the most.

In your paper, you might opt to explore the typical duties of a psychologist, how much people working in these fields typically earn, and the different employment options that are available.

Topics of Psychology Research Involving Case Studies

One potentially interesting idea is to write a  psychology case study  of a particular individual or group of people. In this type of paper, you will provide an in-depth analysis of your subject, including a thorough biography.

Generally, you will also assess the person, often using a major psychological theory such as  Piaget's stages of cognitive development  or  Erikson's eight-stage theory of human development . It is also important to note that your paper doesn't necessarily have to be about someone you know personally.

In fact, many professors encourage students to write case studies on historical figures or fictional characters from books, television programs, or films.

Psychology Research Topics Involving Literature Reviews

Another possibility that would work well for a number of psychology courses is to do a literature review of a specific topic within psychology. A literature review involves finding a variety of sources on a particular subject, then summarizing and reporting on what these sources have to say about the topic.

Literature reviews are generally found in the  introduction  of journal articles and other  psychology papers , but this type of analysis also works well for a full-scale psychology term paper.

Topics of Psychology Research Based on Your Own Study or Experiment

Many psychology courses require students to design an actual psychological study or perform some type of experiment. In some cases, students simply devise the study and then imagine the possible results that might occur. In other situations, you may actually have the opportunity to collect data, analyze your findings, and write up your results.

Finding a topic for your study can be difficult, but there are plenty of great ways to come up with intriguing ideas. Start by considering your own interests as well as subjects you have studied in the past.

Online sources, newspaper articles, books , journal articles, and even your own class textbook are all great places to start searching for topics for your experiments and psychology term papers. Before you begin, learn more about  how to conduct a psychology experiment .

A Word From Verywell

After looking at this brief list of possible topics for psychology papers, it is easy to see that psychology is a very broad and diverse subject. While this variety makes it possible to find a topic that really catches your interest, it can sometimes make it very difficult for some students to select a good topic.

If you are still stumped by your assignment, ask your instructor for suggestions and consider a few from this list for inspiration.

  • Hockenbury, SE & Nolan, SA. Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers; 2014.
  • Santrock, JW. A Topical Approach to Lifespan Development. New York: McGraw-Hill Education; 2016.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

IMAGES

  1. 6 Types of Research Gaps in Literature Review

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  2. The Literature gap and future research-research process in scientific

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  3. How to identify research gaps and include them in your thesis?

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  4. Venn diagram showing gaps in literature

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  5. SOLUTION: 6 types of research gaps in the literature

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  6. Identify Themes and Gaps in Literature

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COMMENTS

  1. Identifying Research Gaps and Prioritizing Psychological Health Evidence Synthesis Needs

    We screened for evidence gaps in psychological health management approaches relevant to the target population. We translated gaps into potential topics for evidence maps and/or systematic reviews. Gaps amenable to evidence synthesis format provided the basis for stakeholder input.

  2. Identify Research Gaps

    Step 1: Focus Your Research Area Before you start trying to identify gaps in the literature, you need to figure out what your area of interest is, and then focus and narrow that research area. If you don't narrow down your initial research area of interest, you'll end up wanting to research everything.

  3. Identifying Research Gaps and Prioritizing Psychological Hea ...

    Identification of a gap serves as the first step in developing a new research question. Research gaps in health care do not necessarily align directly with research needs.

  4. PDF University of Washington Psychology Writing Center http://www.psych.uw

    Writing a Literature Review in Psychology What is a literature review? How is a literature review different from a research article? The two purposes: describe/compare and evaluate ... , gaps, and inconsistencies" and "suggest next steps to solve the research problem" (APA Publication Manual 2010, p. 10). Begin writing when you have ...

  5. Introduction

    The identification of gaps from systematic reviews is essential to the practice of "evidence-based research." Health care research should begin and end with a systematic review.1-3 A comprehensive and explicit consideration of the existing evidence is necessary for the identification and development of an unanswered and answerable question, for the design of a study most likely to answer ...

  6. Research Guides: Psychology: Conducting a Literature Review

    6. Incorporate the literature review into your research paper draft. (note: this step is only if you are using the literature review to write a research paper. Many times the literature review is an end unto itself). After the literature review is complete, you should incorporate it into your research paper (if you are writing the review as one ...

  7. Challenges of finding and filling a gap in the literature

    Do pilot studies fill a gap in the literature? Sometimes, but not always. Some pilot studies described in papers received at RINAH were important for the study team to confirm feasibility of a larger study but do not fill a gap in the literature. In particular, pilot work prior to a descriptive study rarely contributes evidence useful elsewhere.

  8. Gaps in the Literature

    Gaps in the Literature Gaps in the literature are missing pieces or insufficient information in the published research on a topic. These are areas that have opportunities for further research because they are unexplored, under-explored, or outdated. Identifying Research Gaps Identifying Research Gaps Finding Gaps Gaps can be missing or incomplete:

  9. Closing the Gap: From Research to Practice in Mental Health

    1. Introduction. Recovery vision guides mental health services, which should be supportive of individuals in the multidimensional process of change toward living a self-directed life and reaching their full potential with mental health conditions [1,2].Following that, one of the key tenets of professional practice is providing respective, flexible, and responsive services to client needs ...

  10. (PDF) A Framework for Rigorously Identifying Research Gaps in

    To develop the framework we thoroughly analyze the state-of-the-art procedure of identifying research gaps in 40 recent literature reviews using a grounded theory approach. Based on the data, we ...

  11. PDF Writing a Psychology Literature Review

    contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature and by suggesting the next step needed to solve the research problem (APA Manual 2001, p. 7). A literature review may compare studies in terms of assumptions about the research question, experimental method, data analysis, and any conclusions drawn. Literature reviews may

  12. Literature Gap and Future Research

    Research Process These pages offer an introduction to the research process at a very general level. What is a 'gap in the literature'? The gap, also considered the missing piece or pieces in the research literature, is the area that has not yet been explored or is under-explored.

  13. PDF Applications of Psychological Science to Teaching

    Gaps in the Literature Abstract The authors identified gaps in the literature in the course of preparing 10 evidence -based modules for teachers on topics related to cognitive, behavioral and affective dimensions of the teaching and learning process. This document provides a summary of those gaps

  14. Reviewing the Research Literature

    The research literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the beginning of the field—and it continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does not include self-help and other pop psychology books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries ...

  15. How to find and fill gaps in the literature [Research Gaps Made Easy

    A gap in the literature refers to an area that hasn't been studied or lacks substantial inquiry in your field of study. Identifying such gaps allows you to contribute fresh insights and innovation, thereby extending the existing body of knowledge.

  16. Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice: Predicting What Will

    This article addresses the gap between what works in research and what works in practice. ... Much of the literature advocating RCTs stresses the benefits of randomly assigning subjects to intervention and control groups in order to balance the other causal factors that might ... Journal of Educational Psychology, 66, 688-701. Crossref. ISI ...

  17. What is Research Gap and how to identify research gap

    Though there is no well-defined process to find a gap in existing knowledge, your curiosity, creativity, imagination, and judgment can help you identify it. Here are 6 tips to identify research gaps: 1. Look for inspiration in published literature. Read books and articles on the topics that you like the most.

  18. (PDF) Types of Research Gaps

    PDF | Miles (2017) proposed a taxonomy of research gaps, built on the two previous models. It consists of seven core research gaps: (a) Evidence Gap;... | Find, read and cite all the research you ...

  19. What Is A Research Gap (With Examples)

    1. The Classic Literature Gap First up is the classic literature gap. This type of research gap emerges when there's a new concept or phenomenon that hasn't been studied much, or at all.

  20. Research Gap

    Definition: Research gap refers to an area or topic within a field of study that has not yet been extensively researched or is yet to be explored. It is a question, problem or issue that has not been addressed or resolved by previous research. How to Identify Research Gap

  21. Identifying research gaps in substance use disorder: A ...

    <span><i>Background</i>: This paper presents a new methodology for identifying and prioritizing research gaps, contributing to the nascent literature on systematic ways to identify research gaps. <i>Objectives</i>: The goal of this paper is to report on a gaps analysis of substance use disorder (SUD) rese</span> …

  22. Types of Research Gaps in Literature Review

    1. Evidence Gap: An evidence gap occurs with a provocative exception arising if a new research finding contradicts widely accepted conclusions. This gap involves contradictions in the findings of the prior research. It occurs if results from studies allow for conclusions in their own right, but are contradictory when examined from a more abstract point of view.

  23. 50+ Topics of Psychology Research for Your Student Paper

    Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Cognition. Some of the possible topics you might explore in this area include thinking, language, intelligence, and decision-making. Other ideas might include: Dreams. False memories. Attention. Perception.