Synthesising Findings

Synthesising Findings#

Next step in the analysis is synthesising, where you compare the different information you have found and connect your findings to the research question.

Recap Standard Practice: Synthesising Literature#

There is not just one standard practice for synthesising literature. It can help to create an overview or matrix with information from your different sources to find similarities and differences (as already mentioned in the previous section about summarising). You can also use a mindmapping tool to help summarise the main findings from the different sources you have studied.

The Use of AI for Synthesising Literature#

While the use of AI is very helpful for exploring your field, finding more sources and supporting selection and reading, it is risky to use AI to do the complete analysis of the selected papers for you. There are multiple reasons why it is better to analyse papers yourself:

Having AI do your research limits your own learning process. Synthesising information is one of the key points where learning takes place. Synthesising the information yourself also helps you to get a better understanding of the topics you’re working on.

AI may introduce incorrect information or biased information. This is a common problem with AI tools. If you don’t read and synthesise the literature yourself, there is a big risk that your analysis contains inaccuracies or simply doesn’t make sense. Be reminded that AI tools don’t think: they produce content based on prompts they receive and databases they are trained with. If you feed your sources to an AI, it doesn’t understand the articles, and therefore will probably not be able to sysnthesise literature in a correct and meaningful way.

When you are doing your analyses you may be working with copyrighted or sensitive information. It is unclear where the information will end up, as such it is not recommended to upload copyrighted information to AI tools.

References#

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