THE USE OF SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW IN A GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH ON THE EXAMPLE OF RURAL RENEWAL STUDIES

Аннотация

A literature review is an indispensable and integral element of each scientific work. Its quality conditions scholars’ state of knowledge, as well as it has got an influence on interpretation of the results of their own research.

In geographical studies an expert literature review has diffused. This method does not demand on authors to describe pre-defined search criteria, which makes a review arbitrary. One alternative method for literature review is a systematic literature review. In contrast to the expert one, it requires from authors a methodological rigour when it comes to literature studies. In this method, definition and description of search criteria (search strategy) are necessary, making the whole procedure replicable.

The aim of this article is to present and analyse the use of a systematic literature review in geographical studies on the example of rural renewal publications devoted to define and understand this phenomenon. In the article, the results of conducted review was also presented. Apart from that, the quantitative analysis (a meta-analysis of rural renewal publications) and
the first stage of the qualitative analysis (an assessment of publications usefulness for the purpose of further definition and interpretation of a term “rural renewal”) had been done and presented in this work.

Using search engines available in the selected publishers’ databases and search engines available in the most important indexing databases, more than 2000 records were received, whence about 100 was recognised significant and unique. The conducted search procedure allowed, apart from defining the number of records and carrying out the quantitative analysis,
to: define the number of records received in the particular databases, recognise duplicates in the databases, define the number of significant records by the used keywords, define the degree of the identicalness of results received in the publisher’s databases and received in the indexing databases. Basing on that, a verification of pre-defined keywords used in the search
procedure and an exploration of the geography of rural renewal publications were possible.

It was proved that that systematic review method allows to objectify the discussion on a phenomenon thanks to the use of a replicable search procedure. It allows to investigate meaningful information on a phenomenon basing on a meta-analysis of publications referring to it as well. Moreover, it can optimise future search procedures. Despite the usefulness of a systematic literature review, the method has got some limitations concerning an application in interdisciplinary studies and is not fully comprehensive.