Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?

Abstract

Creating literature reviews encompasses skills that are central to psychology students' academic and professional lives, yet writing them consistently challenges students. Research shows that instruction leads to improvement in students' literature reviews within courses (Boscolo, Arfé, & Quarisa, 2007; Granello, 2001), but little work examines how such instruction carries over to other courses. Our study addresses this by comparing literature reviews from two required courses. Students are taught to write reviews in a psychology writing course (PSYC 205), and without additional instruction, students again write reviews in a Statistics and Research Methods course (PSYC 305). Do the skills transfer? A sample of PSYC 305 reviews ( n = 17) was drawn and their PSYC 205 literature reviews obtained. All reviews were graded using the same rubric. A within-subjects comparison showed that students' PSYC 305 reviews were significantly improved. For a second between-subjects comparison, these PSYC 305 reviews were compared to the 305 reviews of students who did not have PSYC 205. The reviews of those who had PSYC 205 were significantly better than the reviews of those who did not. These combined results suggest that we can teach transferable literature review skills, and, given their importance, we suggest that psychology programmes should.