SATURATION

To prepare:

Read the two articles on Quality of Evidence and Meeting the Saturation Requirement. Consider your proposed dissertation topic. Consider what constitutes saturation in a literature review. Consider what appears to be the research problem for your study and why you need to use current research to establish your research gap. Current research is defined as any research conducted in the last 5 years, but for the purpose of this course, you will only read research studies from the last 3 years.

Chapter 2 of a dissertation is where a scholar provides a comprehensive and critical review of the research that has been done on a particular topic to establish what is known about a topic. From the research findings of these studies, it should become obvious what has and what has not been researched, so a need or gap emerges for further research. If findings are contradictory among the studies, a gap where more research is needed exists. Consider what could happen if researchers did not achieve saturation in a literature review when writing Chapter 2 of their dissertation and it is discovered that the selected topic has already been extensively researched.Post the following:

One sentence stating your potential dissertation topic.

One sentence stating your potential research problem (what you do not know from current research).

One to two sentences each about three different concepts you must cover in your literature review where you might experience challenges in relation to gaining historical and current saturation on your topic, as well as why you believe you might experience those challenges.

At least two specific questions about which you would like advice or assistance for researching your literature review including adequately covering the depth or breadth of specific concepts or the historical or current nature of specific concepts related to your study.