When we as students delve into the world of research, there are a lot of unknowns and foreign grounds to be explored. In my experience, research has brought about a whole new level of in-depth data collection and interpretation, which caused me to feel overwhelmed at times. Some research takes place in labs, but research in the field of social science necessitates a different type of data collection and analysis. In my work with qualitative research in the field of nursing, much of our data is collected from patient experiences, case studies, and surveys. Keeping track of the literature, comparing findings between articles, collaborating with peers and colleagues, sharing your ideas and work, and other organizational tasks can be difficult on your own. When I researched the experiences of sexual and gender minorities in inpatient psychiatric care, five tools in particular helped me to stay organized and efficient.
1. Covidence
Covidence is a subscription-based online tool that is extremely helpful, especially when collaborating in a literature review with other researchers. Covidence allows collaborators to upload all of the relevant literature that you find into one organized place. From there, you can review the abstracts in a streamlined fashion and vote on whether you believe certain articles or papers are relevant to your review. With each person able to vote, you can narrow down the included literature through a series of steps, eventually ending with a collection that project collaborators find to be the most targeted. You can also message back and forth on Covidence and discuss why you may have voted to include or exclude a specific paper. In my research project, a graduate student and I voted for articles to be included and my mentor then refined our selections. By using Covidence, we were able to organize our sources in one place, and actively collaborate to narrow down our literature pool.
2. UNH Box
All students at UNH have access to UNH Box, which is a secure cloud file management application. Before being introduced to this platform through undergraduate research, I was not even aware that I had access to it. In Box, you can upload your documents and organize them in specific folders to be shared with your peers and colleagues. You designate who has access to the documents, and Box keeps track of edits and suggestions made to each document for everyone to see. This is a great way to draft papers, as each member of the research team can see the current progress and make changes as necessary. There are other similar applications, such as Google Docs, but I found that Box was more conducive to the research process. Box is secure, which allowed us to upload confidential documents such as patient interviews. Also, because everyone at UNH has access to Box, it’s convenient for use in group research projects.
3. Zotero
When doing any kind of research, it is important to have all your sources organized and easily accessible so that you can cite them properly. Zotero is a software application that you can download for free on your computer. Using Zotero, you can save webpages, journal articles, and any other sources you might have into folders. From there, Zotero will automatically create citations for you in whatever format you need. For example, I usually use the American Psychological Association (APA) citation format for papers, so I select that format in Zotero. There are many other citation formats to choose from, such as Modern Language Association (MLA) and American Sociological Association (ASA). Not only have I used Zotero in research, but also for papers in nursing classes as well as discovery courses in other subjects such as history and fine and performing arts. Overall, it is a well-rounded tool that is helpful no matter what field of research you may be exploring.
4. Web of Science
There were times in my own research on the experiences of sexual and gender minorities in inpatient psychiatric care that I hit a wall when searching for sources and relevant literature. I seemed to be getting the same results with my search strings in databases such as EBSCO, PsychInfo, and Pubmed, but I felt more was out there and I was not ready to give up on my search. I learned about Web of Science after meeting with the Health and Human Services librarian about ways to diversify my search strategy. Web of Science is different from your typical database, as it is a citation index that provides a unique way to search for papers that may not come up in mainstream databases. You can look up a research article and see all the papers it cites, as well as the other papers that have cited it. This allowed me to find many pieces of quality literature that I had previously missed and diversified my search strategy.
5. PRISMA Flow Diagram
When conducting a literature review, it can be difficult to keep track of what sources you decide to include and which ones you weed out through the process. It is important to keep track of this, as these metrics should be included in the literature review. The PRISMA Flow Diagram is an online template that anyone can use to organize included and excluded sources. When I was drafting my paper on the experiences of sexual and gender minorities in inpatient psychiatric care, some articles seemed relevant at first but didn’t actually address our research question. I kept track of this by using the PRISMA template to quantify the narrowing down of the literature pool as we applied different inclusion criteria, such as checking for duplicates and for abstract relevancy. The PRISMA Flow Diagram provides an outline showing how you chose what articles to include in your literature review and which ones you ultimately excluded.
Even though overwhelming feelings may come along with conducting undergraduate research, there are always tools to help you along the way. I found out about many of these tools through meeting with my college’s librarian at UNH. You can also visit the UNH library website, where students have access to databases, research guides, and other useful resources. The staff and student ambassadors at the Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research are always here to help, and you should reach out with any questions surrounding undergraduate research.
