Background

In the latest meating with the co-authors of the planned study IV article, an updated literature search was suggested as a means to assure that I don’t miss out on some essential articles in the field, as well as a means to get to know which journal to aim for. An efficient and recommended way of doing that was through creating adequate search strings and conduct systematic searches in various relevant databases.

For this particular literature search I aimed to update myself on knowledge and knowledge gaps related to study IV.

Aim and RQs for study IV

Here is the aim and research question for study IV (as for now):

The overarching aim of the study is to evaluate older people’s perceptions of being co-researchers in a mass experiment on accessibility in housing. More specifically, the purpose is to investigate what capacity older people attribute to themselves and show when it comes to performing the tasks included in a mass experiment, and what possible lessons and insights into research and accessibility to which participation in such a mass experiment contributes.

The analysis was guided by the following research questions: 1. What capacity do older people in Sweden attribute to themselves and demonstrate when it comes to performing the tasks included in a mass experiment? 2. What possible lessons and insights about research and accessibility can participation as a co-researcher in a mass experiment on accessibility in housing give older people in Sweden?

Search string that I first created

The search string I envisioned looked like this, but when reflecting upon it the string was perhaps primarily intended as a search for the doctoral project in its entirety:

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("citizen science" OR "mass experiment" OR "mass experiments" OR mass-experiment OR mass-experiments)
AND ("senior citizens" OR "older person" OR "older persons" OR "older adult" OR "older adults" OR elderly)

SCOPUS

I started out searching in SCOPUS database. I noticed that for the 76 articles I received there for this search, frequent keywords were “Participatory research” and “Built environment” so I added thes words to the search. I also did a few searches with only the “mass experiments” terms. I found the following 31 relevant articles in SCOPUS:

PsychINFO

When I did searches in PsychINFO, I found the following additional and relevant article:

SocINDEX

When I did searches in SocINDEX, I found the following 11 additional and relevant articles:

CINAHL

When I did searches in CINAHL on simply the following search string…

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("citizen science" OR "mass experiment" OR "mass experiments" OR mass-experiment OR mass-experiments)

…I got a couple of hundred hits and among them I found the following 28 articles that seemed relevant:

What comes next

What is to be done next is to go through the hits I get for the various searches and identify at around 30-40 articles that seem very relevant and then read and summarize them to get a better understanding of what knowledge there is and what knowledge is lacking.