Literature reviews & meta-analyses
According to the American Psychological Association,
"Literature reviews . . . are critical evaluations of material that has already been published. . . . By organizing, integrating, and analyzing previously published material, authors of literature reviews consider the progress of research toward clarifying a problem.
In a sense, literature reviews are tutorials, in that authors
____________
American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. (6th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000
Below are three ways to find them. Because these articles are relatively scarce, you may need to try more than one. Also, consider searching for broader, rather than narrower concepts.
Psychology Database [A ProQuest database of articles from psychology journals]
MegaSearch [Searches multiple databases. MegaSearch is not as precise as the databases above. They both categorize articles by type, including literature reviews and meta-analyses. MegaSearch does not. But it has lots of articles. This strategy is not perfect, but still useful]
Meta-analysis
a research method that gathers many empirical studies that share a hypothesis. The meta-analysis uses the findings from these studies to create a "mega-study," if you will, that aims to reach more definitive conclusions.
How do you distinguish empirical articles from literature reviews and meta-analyses?