Taxonomic Table

Taxonomic tables are commonly included in published systematic reviews of the literature, and are used to provide quick summaries of an area of research, and support the reader’s ability to see “patterns” in the data. You may create more than one taxonomic table as you work on a project, including a working document table, and a  for publication table.

• The working  document table can include information that is of interest to you as you work on the project, but may not appear in your final publication. For example, at the bottom of this page is a “working document” table that I created with Zhigao Liang – we listed more information than we ultimately put in the published paper, because we were exploring which variables would be of greatest interest in future writing and research.
  • • You may want to have a column for your comments
• A “classic” (for publication) taxonomic table will include information on
  • authors’ names, date of publication
    • include full APA information at the bottom of the table
  • Participants
  • Independent variable
  • Dependent variable
  • Results

Taxonomic Tables are most useful when they help you “see” patterns in the data, so think about how to

• use  a well-organized layout
• balance  need for brevity and needed detail
  • if you use acronyms, consider the need for a list of acronyms at the bottom of the page

Successful grant proposals address three major themes:

• Passion: evidence that people care about the question
• Purpose: evidence that the question can be addressed (or better understood) with additional research
• Strong science: there are an accepted set of research instruments and methodologies that will help us understand the question of interest (e.g., measure the impact of the intervention)

Your  taxonomic table can help you better understand and document your proposed work, and how it will contribute to the ongoing discussion of your area of research.

• Passion
  • Demonstrate that “people care” by documenting recent work in your area by others
  • Build the argument for the question(s) you will address (set up your hero narrative)
    • as you assemble your table, consider what are the “missing pieces” of the puzzle?
• Purpose
  • Support your understanding of the size and scope of past work, and what will be needed to make a significant contribution to the the discussion forward
    • for example, number of participants, duration and intensity of intervention
    • When you write your review, you will need to balance the reporting of the positive impact of past work with the clear identification of the importance of unanswered questions
• Strong science
  • Understand how  the methodologies and research tools used in past research may or may not be appropriate for your current work
    • in a grant proposal, you don’t have to use what has been used in the past, but you will need to provide a rationale for your decision
    • consider working in ways that support your ability to make comparisons with past research

As you work, consider Schimel’s distinction between different writing activities, and what that means for your taxonomic table. As Schimel describes,  a literature review,  is meant to show what is known about a topic. An introduction, on the other hand, should also help the reader quickly learn what is not known about a topic. Consider how your taxonomic table can help you be prepared to discuss both, depending on your writing goals.

These tables are typically made in MS word in Landscape orientation, but you may want to make it as a Google Doc or Sheet so you have more flexibility in the number of columns you will use. I do not recommend the use of MS Excel.

Below is an example of a table by a student from a past year, and a few comments

A) This is a nice example of being appropriately “terse”

B) Nice example of consistent use of subheadings, different font. In a Google Doc (with unlimited width), this content (settings, intervention etc) could even be broken into separate columns

C) This could be an opportunity to use acronyms in the table, and then spell them out beneath the table.

 

Below is an example of a table that Liang and I made on the topic of video modeling. You can see that we had some very specific questions about each study that were important to us in our work. The decision as to the topics on which you will “drill down” are up to you, the goal is a table that is useful to YOU!