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A semi-systematic literature review, identifying research opportunities for more sustainable, receiver-led inbound urban logistics flows to large higher education institutions

• Thomas H. Zunder   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1865-6548 1  

European Transport Research Review volume  13 , Article number:  28 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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This paper reports a semi-systematic literature review, identifying research opportunities for more sustainable, receiver-led, inbound logistics flows to large Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

The literature - a body of 229 works - was reviewed using online scholarly databases: the NOVELOG toolkit database; a CASP checklist; followed by re-reading of the refined set of works. A two-stage approach was deployed: first scoping, using a semi-systematic approach, then a narrative review, guided by the systematic review in terms of literature survey and selection.

The field was found to be emergent, with 77% of all articles published after 2011. Key concepts were identified and grouped as recurring, or with noticeable gaps - and therefore suitable for further research. The key gaps identified as worthy of note at this stage were: urban freight and procurement activity; private purchasing behaviour; HEIs and freight; barriers to sustainable procurement; engaging with Action Research in purchasing and supply chain management; little or no theory development; and the use of electric vehicles (EVs) in freight.

1 Introduction and context

This review supported action research to explore sustainable solutions on the campus of Newcastle University, in the North East of England with a geospatially and economic significance in the centre of this medium city. The presence of freight delivery vehicles had generated a steady flow of complaints from senior management, pressuring the Estates and Purchasing functions. It was suggested there was a high proportion of freight on campus, with frequent complaints from senior management to Purchasing and Estates staff with regard to vehicle intrusion [ 137 , 138 ].

The increased demand for distribution of goods and services in cities (‘urban freight logistics’) and solutions to the dis-benefits generated (‘city logistics’) are forecast to continue to grow through the twenty-first century, due to increasing urbanisation, income growth, and fragmentation of supply chains. Urbanisation was rising globally, with Europe the most urbanised continent, and the greatest rates of growth predicted to 2050 in Asia and Africa [ 124 ].

A fragmentation of logistics at the last mile delivery has been evident, both globally and locally, as smaller vehicles delivered smaller consignments of lower value, higher density goods [ 28 ]. The causes of this fragmentation were yet to be fully understood, including: rising home deliveries; on-line shopping; continued independent retailers in urban cores; regulations on time, vehicle size or type; reduction of storage; just-in-time principles; and replacement of working capital with transport response [ 85 ].

The inefficient use of resources has impacted on economic viability, since the cost of last mile deliveries could contribute anywhere between 13% and 75% of the total logistics costs, with research suggesting a norm of 40–50% for parcel deliveries [ 55 , 98 ]. Costs could be generated by the low load utilisation of urban freight vehicles, partially due to market demand, restrictive regulation, and lack of co-operation in a free market [ 91 , 126 ].

The social effects of urban distribution have been potentially lower than expected: delivery vehicles made up between 10% and 18% [ 51 , 131 ] of urban road traffic and in general tended to avoid peak times. There were few noticeable social equity issues, although some recent research into US metropolitan areas had suggested traffic congestion growth negatively affected growth in income and employment [ 71 ]. Freight traffic was, however, highly unpopular with the public in the UK, who considered it of the lowest priority in terms of road use [ 118 ] and saw a growing issue of safety conflict between cyclists and trucks (Steer Davies [ 116 ]).

The environmental impact of freight distribution in cities has been observed as disproportionate to the number of vehicles: 20–30% of road-based emissions were related to freight and, with regard to air quality, freight could account for up to 50% of pollutants. Diesel was the predominant freight fuel and therefore the major contributor to nitrogen oxide pollutants (NO x ) and particulate matter (PM) - the main causes of poor air quality.

The Urban Freight Research Roadmap 2014, developed by two European Technology Platforms (ETP), Footnote 1 noted: “Therefore, a holistic approach should be followed to understand what can be done upstream to the supply chain to optimise urban logistics. But the peculiarities of cities and the differences [...] also call for a focus on the urban logistics itself. Different business models, new processes and technologies should be researched and implemented.” [ 7 ].

Urban freight transport has been seen as notoriously ‘difficult to organize, difficult to modernize’ [ 45 ], and was a classic ‘mess’ in systems approaches terminology [ 1 ]. Work had tended to focus on the transport chain, on regulation and on the technology of the operations. As a result of abductive insight, and the ground-breaking work of the TRAILBLAZER [ 127 ] project, I started exploring the role of receiver-led inbound logistics in 2011 [ 133 ], the activity as a supply chain that was demand-led the inversion from ‘value chain’ to ‘supply chain’ championed by Martin Christopher [ 38 ].

I have detailed the local problem, the problems of urbanisation, logistics fragmentation, the challenges to sustainability and the abductive insight to address receiver-led inbound logistics. As a member of staff at a Higher Education Establishment I have completed cycles of logistics action research as an insider [ 41 ] and have adopted the lens of such establishments. I have, since 2011, actioned iterative cycles of literature review into this niche. For this iteration I wanted to adopt methodologies aiding a critical review of the opportunities and gaps in the literature.

As detailed in this paper there is a knowledge gap in receiver demand led research in the field of urban logistics and the purpose of my work and this paper is to scope that gap over time and explore areas for future research. The novelty of this work is exploratory in an area of knowledge previously unexplored and poorly scoped, deploying tailored literature review methods to a new area of enquiry.

2 Literature review methodologies

Literature reviews are utilised to help build knowledge, identify gaps, and to draw out concepts to frame a field so as to inform research questions and judge research outcomes. Most literature reviews in social sciences are ‘narrative’ reviews, developing an overview of a field through a reasonably comprehensive assessment and critical reading of the literature. An alternative approach, originating in medicine and traditional sciences is the ‘systematic’ review. This applies a transparent, replicable and often quantitative methodology to literature identification and review. In some highly quantitative fields, a researcher may adopt a meta-analysis, extrapolating and synthesizing results from multiple papers.

2.1 Review protocol

The use of fully or partial systematic literature reviews in operations management, transport and logistics research has increased in recent years [ 8 , 56 , 97 , 105 , 121 ].

The Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) has developed methodologies for systematic and critical reviews of literature since 1993 [ 35 ]. With roots in UK healthcare it is not tied to any discipline and has been deployed for qualitative as well as quantitative sources [ 34 ]. The approach, which acts as an inclusion/exclusion protocol is viewed as rigorous but flexible and has in recent years been adopted by operations and transport researchers in both systematic and semi-systematic reviews [ 33 ].

It has been noted that a weakness of literature reviews in the field of transport, was the lack of explicit methodology [ 130 ]. To mitigate this, I adopted a “semi-systematic review”. This is a review guided by a systematic review in terms of literature survey and selection ([ 31 ], pp. 98–112), combined with “framing a written discourse about the literature which may be established as a component part of a thesis or other research” [ 30 ].

This allowed an emphasis on such features as transparency about searching, and the potential for comprehensiveness. These “systematic” protocols, CASP for this review have been evidenced in the use explicit questions replicable research search procedures.

The narrative phase of the review allowed for a “plurality of knowing [ 40 ]” and insight from reading and understanding This addresses the suggestions that a metric driven meta-analysis is not appropriate for transport-based literature reviews, due to the “fact that many variables influence an independent variable (e.g. travel behaviour) in a complex way, resulting in complex causal relationships, and a multitude of data analysis methods and interpretations” [ 130 ].

I finalised the review with a framing using a socio-technical approach of ‘why, who, with what, where and when and how’ (5 W + h) which localised problems and solutions [ 135 , 140 ] into an ensemble of actors, territory and techniques, chosen as specifically developed for this field.

The protocol adopted are shown graphically, as a flowchart, in Fig.  1 below.

Semi systematic review protocol as a flowchart

Having developed this protocol, I proceeded to delimit the first searches, scoping the review.

3 Scoping of the review

Based upon the local problems and the broader challenges, the review was tightly scoped to addressing sustainable, receiver-led inbound logistics flows to large Higher Education Institutions (HEI). Herr and Anderson note that “there is a conceptual framework that guides the data gathering and analysis as well as conceptual framework embedded in one’s particular approach to … research. The former is guided by the literature that has been reviewed and the latter by the knowledge interests of the research itself” [ 64 ]. The scope was therefore delimited as follows Footnote 2 :

Impacts that large municipal organisations have on cities, in terms of wealth creation, jobs, person and freight related trip making.

Ways the operational models associated with goods and service supply to large municipal organisations are centralised and decentralised services

The ways in which procurement systems operate across municipal organisations with large numbers of department.

The ways in which supply chains serving large municipals have been made more sustainable, including collaborative logistics techniques (to include consolidation) as well as smart procurement.

The utilisation of delivery service planning for receivers.

The potential for typologies, taxonomies or conceptualisation in the field that would inform the development of the framing of work in the field.

It was intended that these ‘first pass’ topics would eventually be superseded by the iterative development of concepts of note as the narrative elements of the review became dominant and the systematic elements receded.

4 Process and results of systematic review

The first steps of the review resulted in various results, detailed in execution and interim findings as follows.

4.1 Top level scoping

Explicit searches were run to report the overall range and depth of literature in this top-level field. This was completed using WEB OF SCIENCE [WOS] Footnote 3 Google Scholar [GS] and the EU Transport Research and Innovation Monitoring and Information System [TRIMIS Footnote 4 ] databases.

A large proportion of non-peer reviewed literature existed in this field, often from research projects in the form of reports and other deliverables. Bryman called this ‘grey’ literature - of great value in many fields of research into people and systems. To enable a semi-systematic review of such materials, I utilised research outputs catalogued within the NOVELOG toolkit Footnote 5 [ 135 ]. Since research and innovation projects and interventions had preceded academic publication in this field, this database provided a comprehensive but parallel inventory for the grey literature review process.

4.2 Top level results

The field in which the review was carried out, and renewed many times, lay in the enquiry into and about the movement of freight goods and derived vehicle demand in cities. Initial reading and personal insight had revealed this to be variously defined as ‘urban logistics’, ‘city logistics’, and also ‘urban freight’. Searching for (“urban freight” or “urban logistics” or “city logistics”) in the WOS reported 1248 records as at 30/11/2018. Footnote 6 The papers were published in fields largely related to transport, management, urban studies and environmental studies. It was apparent that this field was novel, and, over recent years, the number of publication and citations had risen sharply: suggestive of a field of research emergent in academic research.

Publication dates offered further evidence that this was a newly emergent area of publication, with 77% of all articles published after 2011, 59% of the publications were conference proceedings and 41% were peer-reviewed articles. These were followed up by a focused series of searches.

4.3 Focused searches

Focused searching followed using keywords and search terms developed further from the core research questions and the top-level scoping. This subset of the literature was then examined against an inclusion/exclusion list. These focused searches formed the body of work for the next step, which was a narrative review of the key literature. These focused searches covering the timespan 1970–2018. This approach was applied to each of the topics identified above, as shown in Table  1 below:

5 Grey literature

The grey literature focused review was firstly based on the projects recorded in the NOVELOG database, then investigated further, primarily on GS as more suited to finding non peer-reviewed reports, handbooks, and other grey literature. Reading and judgement of the key deliverables drew attention to certain key bibliographic projects, listed in Table  2 below, focused on good practice collection, taxonomy and conceptualisation of the field.

Of the original 289 items found, and after consideration of the wider field and certain key items of grey literature from UK and EU projects, additional works were added - primarily reflecting the top authorship in the field and personal expert knowledge, leaving a final review bibliography [ 136 ] of 313 articles, reports and documents as recorded above in Fig. 1 . Once completed, the CASP systematic review protocol was applied.

6 CASP inclusion/exclusion process

The articles and grey literature were imported as documents and citations Footnote 7 into the Mendeley reference manager. The resulting database was deduplicated and then filtered through the inclusion/exclusion protocol. A source had to receive a ‘YES’ in all boxes of the CASP checklist, following reading and reader judgement, as detailed in Table  3 below.

Works that explored theoretical and conceptual matters were given greater qualitative weighting in assessment for question A2 (above in Table  3 ). Works which were largely empirical were likely to be excluded at A2, or at question C8 (ibid) with minimal contribution to knowledge and theory. Following application of the CASP, the number of works was reduced from 313 to 229 from which I drew out the concepts to construct and narrate a framing.

The concepts identified were organised into a conceptual framing, to support action research to address the local problems. A secondary purpose was to support further research by the academy in this emergent field. Table  4 below shows the year in which these concepts first emerge in the peer reviewed literature.

Framing in action research [ 112 ] iterative and dynamic developed from but replacing original delimitations. This section is a narrative report, concepts grouped by commonality, identifying key opportunities and gaps.

7.1 Co-operative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS)

C-ITS is the utilisation of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) apps and infrastructures to leverage vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to infrastructure, and vehicle to human communications [ 110 ]. The theme of urban freight and C-ITS was emergent in the literature, but immature compared to the literature on C-ITS for private and public transport.

7.2 Timed delivery-window modelling

The literature had a lot of Japanese research outputs on timed delivery-window modelling, associated primarily with the research team around Taniguchi [ 119 , 120 ]. That work was associated with the repurposing of traffic and network modelling at a very computational level. Taniguchi was one of the pioneers of city logistics research and was the highest output author in the top-level scoping.

7.3 Logistics sprawl and Modelling of distribution hub locations

Logistics sprawl was seen by researchers as the relocation of logistics facilities away from inner urban areas to suburban areas and had received an increasing level of attention from both academics and policy makers. The potential disbenefits of extending the last mile operation of an urban delivery route was exacerbated by sprawl and was inter-related to how land use planning and zoning of use varied between urban areas. Dablanc was the key foundational researcher in this field, working in both North America and Europe [ 47 , 48 ]. Her work had then led to a growing body of quantitative and geo-spatial analysis from others [ 8 , 63 ].

The modelling of distribution hub locations, and the balance between too close and too far away, was key to much grey and peer-reviewed literature; this had resulted in work - often led by Leonardi et al. - on the analysis, evaluation and optimisation of the break-point between the initial ‘stem’ delivery leg to a city and the ‘leaf’ delivery leg of routing [ 11 , 68 , 77 , 82 ].

7.4 Freight landscape was peculiar to each location and time

A recurring concept was that a freight landscape was peculiar to each location and time [ 9 , 79 , 80 ]. Rodrigue et al. had noted that “Results from New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Seoul reveal substantial variations between metropolitan areas, which are observed across the respective levels of zonal specialization as well as density changes over distance from central areas” [ 107 ]. Giuliano et al. found that, when trialled in Los Angeles, using proxies to describe the metropolitan freight landscape was of utility [ 57 ].

Land use and zoning establishment surveys were key for North American research reported in the literature. Considered to be highly dependent on the data collected in a nation or city, these tended to yield useful analysis in the USA, but were problematic in the UK and elsewhere in Europe [ 66 , 68 ] due to far less stringent zoning and less rich data collection or homogeneity. This was related to freight trip generation and/or attraction, in that the attraction of freight by receivers may have been more relevant to urban logistics than traditional trip generation models [ 3 , 66 , 127 ].

7.5 Multi-stakeholder nature of urban freight

The multi-stakeholder nature of urban freight, and the concomitant need for co-operation and collaboration, was recurrent: “A key characteristic of it is the heterogeneity of the stakeholders involved. Besides the traditional logistics actors such as shippers, carriers and receivers that share consistent interests (i.e. price and quality), city logistics highly respect the interests of public administrators and citizens that care more about the social welfare. To reach an optimal balance between private and public benefit, it is necessary to understand and in turn forecast the behaviour pattern of different groups” [ 15 ].

This need for co-operation led to the development and deployment of Freight Quality Partnerships in the UK [ 9 , 42 ], and in Sweden [ 80 ], and was related to similar co-operation platforms such as “Marchandises en Ville” in France [ 44 ] and the Dutch “Platform Stedelijke Distributie” [ 61 ]. This concept of Freight Quality Partnerships - in which all key stakeholders in freight transport in a city or transport corridor met collectively to mutually solve problems, although not widely deployed outside of these examples - was emergent across the literature over time [ 72 , 73 ].

A clear theme of the literature was that city logistics and urban freight was “difficult to organize, difficult to modernize” [ 45 , 95 ]. This was due to local peculiarity in both place and time; the disconnect between disbenefits and the paying client; and the disruption of efficient supply chains, with the loss of time and increase in costs.

7.6 Urban consolidation Centres (UCC) and non-traditional approaches to consolidation

Urban Consolidation Centres (UCC) were a key theme of research and intervention. An Urban Consolidation Centre were defined as a logistics facility that was situated in relatively close proximity to the area that it served. Goods destined for this area were dropped off at the UCC and sorted and consolidated onto goods vehicles (sometimes low emission vehicles) for delivery to final destination. This was clearly differentiated from an Urban Distribution Centre (UDC), which had a wider definition and included all typical commercial logistics hubs in urban locations [ 10 , 114 ].

One of the first explorations of this concept in the literature was Schuster, from Traffic Quarterly [ 111 ]. The concept had become highly popular in the 1990s, in Germany, as part of a drive for an integrated ‘city logistics’ top-down approach to freight traffic management, by local government; over 80 such schemes were noted in the trade magazine ‘Logistik Heute’, in mid-decade. All were eventually cancelled, usually due to financial non-viability [ 53 , 54 ].

The widescale failure of UCCs in Germany had not prevented the concept being promoted at EU level, with multiple schemes (e.g. La Rochelle; Bristol-Broadmead) funded by EU research and development programmes, inter-regional funding etc. [ 74 , 132 ]. Almost all of these had proved unsuccessful due to three key issues summarised by Martinez et al.: [lack of] Long-term financial viability; Poor selection of location; and Controlled environments [ 89 ].

Zunder [ 132 ] went further and contended that “most UCC initiatives fail in a liberal economy where free choice and market economics apply”. Despite a list of failed schemes, a few pilots - subsidized by EU or local funding – were held up as beacons to the viability of the UCC [ 132 ].

These could be divided into three key types:

Retail-led UCCs serving whole urban areas;

UCCs serving a controlled geography; and

Construction project UCCs.

There had also been trials and discussions of non-traditional approaches to consolidation, such as mobile consolidation centres [ 125 ], or virtual consolidation centres (where the consolidation was achieved through pre-planned procurement rather than any physical location [ 126 ]), or the use of crowd logistics [ 32 ].

At many points in the review there were many comments about poor ‘ex ante and ex post’ data collection [ 60 , 75 ] and the poor quality and homogeneity of data standards across nations and cities [ 11 , 14 ]. Worthy of note was that circa one third of all UCCs originally identified in 2005 had left no discernible data for analysis [ 27 ].

7.7 Alternative delivery methods

There was a significant body of work researching, analysing and modelling the use of rail, light rail, or trams, for freight delivery in urban areas. This work explored technical, operational and timetabling issues. The potential for such modal shift of freight to urban rail systems had divided opinion, require existing rail infrastructure and, would need significant infrastructure investment. Examples included the Dresden cargo tram, the Zurich recycling tram, and the short-lived Amsterdam cargo tram. The Dresden example was probably an extended ‘conveyor belt’ between separated assembly lines at Volkswagen; the Zurich recycling tram was a novel use of infrastructure for regular but non time-critical large item recycling; and the Amsterdam example failed due to the lack of a viable business model [ 19 , 22 , 29 , 81 , 94 , 99 , 106 , 113 ].

Little of the peer-reviewed literature was on the use of EVs in freight, although a tranche of EU funded projects launched from 2012 provided grey literature on this theme, such as the FREILOT and Smartfusion projects [ 58 , 76 , 83 ]. Lebeau et al. developed a ‘total cost of ownership’ model to assess the competitiveness of quadricycles and light commercial vehicles for freight transport companies [ 75 ]. Herron and Coleman evaluated the volumes of EV chargers required for a certain volume of vehicles [ 65 ]. Leonardi et al. delivered many cost-benefit analyses of urban logistics schemes, using diesel, electric and cycle vehicle solutions, as did the STRAIGHTSOL project [ 18 , 77 ]. For those looking for a recent review of the literature on novel alternative propulsion I suggest Oliveira et al. [ 97 ] which fell outside the scoping of this piece of research.

The use of bicycles or e-bikes for cargo delivery was well represented in the literature [ 62 , 93 ]. Of note were issues of safely sharing the roads with freight vehicles [ 17 , 100 ]; health and social insurance issues [ 87 ]; scheduling into existing logistics networks [ 17 ]; and the opportunity for services such as Gnewt cycles to replace the last mile in London [ 12 ]. This also related to the use of walking as a delivery mode, which was researched quantitatively in London and shown to constitute circa 62% of inner London delivery rounds for parcel carriers [ 12 ].

7.8 Typologies, taxonomies, and frameworks

There was an emergent concept of the proposal and development of typologies, taxonomies, and frameworks [ 16 , 23 , 49 ]. This was evidenced early with the socio-technical approach of ‘why, who, with what, where and when’ which localised problems and solutions [ 140 ] into an ensemble of actors, territory and techniques. This was due to local peculiarity in both place and time, the disconnect between disbenefits and the paying client, and the disruption of efficient supply chains with the loss of time and increase in costs.

A significant development was the ‘4 As’ concept of ‘Awareness, Avoidance, Act and shift, and Anticipation’ of new technologies, by Macharis and Kin [ 85 ]. An alternative approach was taken in pragmatically repurposing taxonomies and typologies from research and EU initiatives into a novel, multi-dimensional, poly-parametric typology for city logistics, which had multiple uses in analysing and selecting interventions [ 135 ].

7.9 Business models

Recognition of the need for viable business models was evidenced, to allow transition between subsidised pilot trials to standalone viable solutions, as was a growing interest in the use of different business model frameworks and the financing of urban logistics from public-private initiatives [PPI] [ 24 , 59 , 74 , 78 , 84 , 101 , 102 , 109 ].

7.10 Out of hours deliveries

The potential to deliver goods ‘out of hours’ or as ‘night delivery’ was explored differently in the literature. In Manhattan, NY there were extensive trials of receiver-led early morning deliveries, offsetting higher labour costs in office staff against reductions in congestion costs [ 67 ]. In the Netherlands, the PIEK programme had taken a strongly mechanical engineering-led approach, re-engineering vehicles and handling equipment to prevent ‘peak noise’. To comply with the standard, each product was acoustically measured and had to function emitting under 60 dB at 7.5 m from the sound source; it was then deemed suitable for out-of-hours delivery that would not cause noise disturbance to nearby residents.

7.11 Receiver led inbound logistics

A key theme of import in the review was the use of delivery and servicing plans (DSP), an establishment-led approach to analysis of receiver-led demand, developed in the Trailblazer project [ 127 ], deployed by TfL in their Palestra offices [ 122 ], and then developed further in the Smartfusion and STRAIGHTSOL projects [ 6 , 101 , 117 , 138 ]. The DSP methodology formed part of the analyses that underlay the Southampton UHS consolidation centre initiatives [ 78 , 89 ].

Further to DSPs the literature held very little on urban freight and procurement activity. There was a theme of emergent ideas and proposals for mandatory municipal freight consolidation in Swedish cities and the potential power of procurement to change inbound urban freight [ 5 , 21 , 25 , 37 , 103 , 134 ]. Finally, in 2018, the Transport Catapult had recommended to the UK government that “Government and Local Authorities should ...[adopt]... measures such as retiming deliveries and collaborative procurement” [ 89 ].

There was little about exploring private purchasing behaviour, save for Cherrett et al. looking at student purchases and Aditjandra et al. looking at private purchasing by University staff [ 36 , 134 ].

There was a small and emergent literature on HEIs and procurement behaviour, with or without reference to freight. The work in the literature was largely written by myself and colleagues in parallel with our wider interventions, and in collaboration with colleagues from the Amsterdam Academy of Sciences, as well as a top-level overview with the Universities of Southampton and others [ 3 , 4 , 21 , 90 , 104 , 134 , 139 ].

There was little discussion of logistics and sustainable procurement in the mainstream procurement journals [ 129 ], sustainable procurement and supply chain logistics, from Murphy and Poist [ 96 ]. This stated that procurement could “influence the behaviour of private sector organisations” to achieve “social, environmental (and other) benefits”. However, with regard to organisational barriers, they noted unwillingness to accept higher invoiced costs as the key barrier to adoption [ 128 ]. Also of relevance was the action research work of Meehan, Ludbrook and Mason, on institutional explanations of legitimised resistance, and how “strategic avoidance responses” such as “symbolic tick-boxing” could “entrench operational barriers” [ 92 ].

7.12 Theory development

Little or no theory development was evident in the literature. With the possible exception of ‘logistics sprawl’, the field was largely empirical observation with a potential tendency to ‘naïve empiricism’ [ 92 ]. The field of logistics research as a whole was weak in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in two areas: theory and explicit discussion, and statement of research philosophies [ 2 , 26 , 115 ]. The inability to address ‘meta’ issues may explain the difficulty in both developing theory and also “that much of the debate and criticism over methodology involves researchers who are failing to communicate with one another because they hold varying basic assumptions about their subject” [ 88 ]. The gap was a need to develop theory and, given the import of locality noted in urban freight, probably theory from case study research [ 50 ].

From these groupings of concepts I made a provisional framing using the 5 W + H approach of Zunder & Dellinger [ 140 ].

The framing is presented as a non-hierarchical representation of 5 W + H groups as portrayed in Fig.  2 below, no inference should be drawn from the relationships of the circles. A ‘meta’ group was required to frame such concepts, although one might use ‘with what’ for these.

Provisional Framing of the Literature

9 Discussion

The key research gaps identified as worthy of note at this stage were: urban freight and procurement activity; private purchasing behaviour; HEIs and freight; barriers to sustainable procurement; engaging with Action Research in purchasing and supply chain management; little or no theory development in urban logistics; and the use of EVs in freight.

There may be additional potential wider gaps and opportunities that deserve further qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods research by others. Not least would be to explore the route that led to this sparsity of knowledge in a key sub set of logistics, and the interplay of different disciplines, commerce, industry, and innovation funding, for good or ill.

Of note is the breadth of grey literature in this field, and the delay between that material and the publication of peer reviewed literature. Given that much of the grey reports are co-authored by academics, it suggests that the academy needs to plan this earlier work in a rigorous fashion, but also using methodological choices that align the applied work with academic publication, there are multiple versions of action research [ 39 , 43 ] that would be appropriate and the literature review evidences this paucity.

10 Conclusion

In this paper I have detailed how a literature review added value by a conceptual framing of a niche urban freight logistics area within the wider research area into which it fitted. It has covered a semi-systematic literature review, identifying research opportunities for more sustainable, receiver-led inbound logistics flows to large Higher Education Institutions, along with existing and emergent evidence suggesting how the negative impacts of such activity could be mitigated. A two-stage approach was deployed, first scoping using a semi-systematic approach, then a narrative review, guided by the systematic review in terms of literature survey and selection.

The objective of this review was to identify research opportunities for more sustainable, receiver-led inbound logistics flows to large HEIs. I have evidenced that that was achieved and as a secondary added value have highlighted a range of potential options for further exploration and research. The field was found to be new, emergent, with 77% of all articles published after 2011. Using a mix of peer-reviewed and grey literature and a combination of online scholarly databases, the NOVELOG toolkit database, the use of a CASP review, and framing using a suitable socio-technical framing, the literature - a body of 229 works - was reviewed and key concepts identified, grouped and those with noticeable gaps identified.

Availability of data and materials

Bibliography online: [ 136 ].

ERTRAC, the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council, and ALICE, Alliance for Logistics

Of note is that all literature reviews, especially those guided by systematic selection have to be quite tightly focused. The search criteria excluded exploration of alternative propulsion technologies for transport but included the use of electric vehicles in freight.

apps.webofknowledge.com

https://trimis.ec.europa.eu

http://www.uct.imet.gr/Novelog-Tools/Toolkit

Search from 1970 to 2018, search terms applied to all fields.

All databases had electronic file export facilities, Mendeley had a search function to locate the electronic sources.

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Zunder, T.H. A semi-systematic literature review, identifying research opportunities for more sustainable, receiver-led inbound urban logistics flows to large higher education institutions. Eur. Transp. Res. Rev. 13 , 28 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12544-021-00487-1

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Literature Reviews within a Scholarly Work

Literature reviews as a scholarly work.

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Literature reviews summarize and analyze what has been written on a particular topic and identify gaps or disagreements in the scholarly work on that topic.

Within a scholarly work, the literature review situates the current work within the larger scholarly conversation and emphasizes how that particular scholarly work contributes to the conversation on the topic. The literature review portion may be as brief as a few paragraphs focusing on a narrow topic area.

When writing this type of literature review, it's helpful to start by identifying sources most relevant to your research question. A citation tracking database such as Web of Science can also help you locate seminal articles on a topic and find out who has more recently cited them. See "Your Literature Search" for more details.

A literature review may itself be a scholarly publication and provide an analysis of what has been written on a particular topic without contributing original research. These types of literature reviews can serve to help keep people updated on a field as well as helping scholars choose a research topic to fill gaps in the knowledge on that topic. Common types include:

Systematic Review

Systematic literature reviews follow specific procedures in some ways similar to setting up an experiment to ensure that future scholars can replicate the same steps. They are also helpful for evaluating data published over multiple studies. Thus, these are common in the medical field and may be used by healthcare providers to help guide diagnosis and treatment decisions. Cochrane Reviews are one example of this type of literature review.

Semi-Systematic Review

When a systematic review is not feasible, a semi-systematic review can help synthesize research on a topic or how a topic has been studied in different fields (Snyder 2019). Rather than focusing on quantitative data, this review type identifies themes, theoretical perspectives, and other qualitative information related to the topic. These types of reviews can be particularly helpful for a historical topic overview, for developing a theoretical model, and for creating a research agenda for a field (Snyder 2019). As with systematic reviews, a search strategy must be developed before conducting the review.

Integrative Review

An integrative review is less systematic and can be helpful for developing a theoretical model or to reconceptualize a topic. As Synder (2019) notes, " This type of review often re quires a more creative collection of data, as the purpose is usually not to cover all articles ever published on the topic but rather to combine perspectives and insights from di ff erent fi elds or research traditions" (p. 336).

Source: Snyder, H. (2019). Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research. 104. 333-339. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.07.039

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Literature Reviews

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Developing a Literature Review

1. Purpose and Scope

To help you develop a literature review, gather information on existing research, sub-topics, relevant research, and overlaps. Note initial thoughts on the topic - a mind map or list might be helpful - and avoid unfocused reading, collecting irrelevant content.  A literature review serves to place your research within the context of existing knowledge. It demonstrates your understanding of the field and identifies gaps that your research aims to fill. This helps in justifying the relevance and necessity of your study.

To avoid over-reading, set a target word count for each section and limit reading time. Plan backwards from the deadline and move on to other parts of the investigation. Read major texts and explore up-to-date research. Check reference lists and citation indexes for common standard texts. Be guided by research questions and refocus on your topic when needed. Stop reading if you find similar viewpoints or if you're going off topic.

You can use a "Synthesis Matrix" to keep track of your reading notes. This concept map helps you to provide a summary of the literature and its connections is produced as a result of this study. Utilizing referencing software like RefWorks to obtain citations, you can construct the framework for composing your literature evaluation.

2. Source Selection

Focus on searching for academically authoritative texts such as academic books, journals, research reports, and government publications. These sources are critical for ensuring the credibility and reliability of your review. 

• Academic Books: Provide comprehensive coverage of a topic.
• Journal Articles: Offer the most up-to-date research and are essential for a literature review.
• Research Reports: Detailed accounts of specific research projects.
• Government Publications: Official documents that provide reliable data and insights.

3. Thematic Analysis

Instead of merely summarizing sources, identify and discuss key themes that emerge from the literature. This involves interpreting and evaluating how different authors have tackled similar issues and how their findings relate to your research.

4. Critical Evaluation

Adopt a critical attitude towards the sources you review. Scrutinize, question, and dissect the material to ensure that your review is not just descriptive but analytical. This helps in highlighting the significance of various sources and their relevance to your research.

Each work's critical assessment should take into account:

Provenance:  What qualifications does the author have? Are the author's claims backed up by proof, such as first-hand accounts from history, case studies, stories, statistics, and current scientific discoveries? Methodology:  Were the strategies employed to locate, collect, and evaluate the data suitable for tackling the study question? Was the sample size suitable? Were the findings properly reported and interpreted? Objectivity : Is the author's viewpoint impartial or biased? Does the author's thesis get supported by evidence that refutes it, or does it ignore certain important facts? Persuasiveness:  Which of the author's arguments is the strongest or weakest in terms of persuasiveness? Value:  Are the author's claims and deductions believable? Does the study ultimately advance our understanding of the issue in any meaningful way?

5. Categorization

Organize your literature review by grouping sources into categories based on themes, relevance to research questions, theoretical paradigms, or chronology. This helps in presenting your findings in a structured manner.

6. Source Validity

Ensure that the sources you include are valid and reliable. Classic texts may retain their authority over time, but for fields that evolve rapidly, prioritize the most recent research. Always check the credibility of the authors and the impact of their work in the field.

7. Synthesis and Findings

Synthesize the information from various sources to draw conclusions about the current state of knowledge. Identify trends, controversies, and gaps in the literature. Relate your findings to your research questions and suggest future directions for research.

Practical Tips

• Use a variety of sources, including online databases, university libraries, and reference lists from relevant articles. This ensures a comprehensive coverage of the literature.
• Avoid listing sources without analysis. Use tables, bulk citations, and footnotes to manage references efficiently and make your review more readable.
• Writing a literature review is an ongoing process. Start writing early and revise as you read more. This iterative process helps in refining your arguments and identifying additional sources as needed.  

Brown University Library (2024) Organizing and Creating Information. Available at: https://libguides.brown.edu/organize/litreview (Accessed: 30 July 2024).

Pacheco-Vega, R. (2016) Synthesizing different bodies of work in your literature review: The Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED) technique . Available at: http://www.raulpacheco.org/2016/06/synthesizing-different-bodies-of-work-in-your-literature-review-the-conceptual-synthesis-excel-dump-technique/ (Accessed: 30 July 2024).

Study Advice at the University of Reading (2024) Literature reviews . Available at: https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/literaturereview/developing (Accessed: 31 July 2024).

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The development of social science research on smart grids: a semi-structured literature review

• A.-R. Kojonsaari 1 &
• J. Palm 1  

Energy, Sustainability and Society volume  13 , Article number:  1 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Smart technologies, such as smart grids, are emerging as indispensable aspects of an energy transformation and come with hopes of more sustainable resource use. A substantial amount of research has examined the technical, economic, and environmental implications of these technologies, but less attention has been paid to their social aspects. For the smart grid projects to be realised, studies that include the actors who are supposed to implement the visions are needed.

A semi-structured literature review was conducted to investigate the state of social science literature on smart grids and identify the main research avenues and research gaps by addressing a broad research question: “What kind of knowledge is produced in social science studies on smart grids?” We retrieved peer-reviewed articles from the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases up until 2022 and mapped them in terms of features such as topic, design, method, and theory.

Conclusions

We found that knowledge development in social science studies on smart grids followed a pattern where most research focused on visions; professionals and users; and smart technologies in homes with a geographical focus on Europe or the USA. We identified six research gaps related to an overly vague definition of the smart grid and the need to include more diverse actors and geographical places to advance our understanding of the smart grid. There is also a lack of studies relating to energy democracy, the resistance of smart grids and the centralised–decentralised nexus of the smart grid. These less studied areas can bring in new knowledge that enhances a deployment of a smart grids supporting not only technological development, but also society and users.

The European Union’s (EU’s) Green Deal states that by 2030 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should be reduced by at least 50%, and by 2050 there should be no net GHG emissions [ 1 ]. The energy sector is central to this transformation, and relevant measures will include increases in the electrification of infrastructure, such as transportation, renewable electricity generation, and penetration of information technology (IT), which allows for more flexible and less hierarchical infrastructure management [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. This development will require the gradual evolution of distribution networks from passive to active and the development of so-called smart grids [ 7 ]. Smart and innovative technologies will be important facilitators of this transition.

Earlier smart grid research has commonly used the European Commission’s definition of the smart grid as “an electricity network that can intelligently integrate the actions of all users connected to it … in order to efficiently deliver sustainable, economic and secure electricity supplies” [ 8 ]. Many smart grid definitions are characterised by the notions of two-way information flows and automation. Raimi and Carrico [ 9 ], for example, described smart grid technology as follows: “Smart grids are modernized electrical grids that use information and communications technology to gather and act on information, such as information about the behaviours of electricity providers and consumers” (p. 73). Many studies do not explicitly define the smart grid, but imply that it is a distributed energy system that enables grid-serving flexibility (e.g. [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]). Most definitions emphasise the technical aspects of connecting Information and Communications Technology (ICT) with the energy system, particularly the opportunities afforded by two-way information flow and automation. Earlier research has dealt with private costs in relation to smart grids, rather than the social costs, even if recent research has started to look into also social costs as a barrier for smart grids deployment [ 13 ]. Most definitions do not incorporate social aspects into technical descriptions or even include any people in them [ 14 ], even though a smart grid obviously has many social implications. Reinders et al. [ 15 ] state, for example, that social factors such as social acceptance are often considered uncertainties and therefore assessed on their own and seen as something separated from the smart grid technology. The smart grid discourse has traditionally overemphasised technology while overlooking social considerations and their incorporation into technocratic visions [ 16 ]. Lovell [ 17 ] observed that smart grids throughout history have had a problem when it comes to implementation, and their potential has even now not been fully realised. One reason for this lack of realisation is the decoupling between the social and the technical, where those who are supposed to implement these visions are not included in either the definition or the imagined futures.

State of the art of social implications

Although previously neglected, that the smart grid has many social implications is recognised by a growing body of literature [ 18 ], most of which emphasises its sociotechnical character [ 19 ]. Wolsink [ 20 ], for example, drew attention to the sociotechnical when defining the smart grid as “a sociotechnical network characterized by the active management of both information and energy flows, in order to control practices of distributed generation, storage, consumption and flexible demand” (p. 824). This definition recognises that a smart grid is constituted by a sociotechnical network, and this article will align to this definition. However, this rather new sociotechnical discourse brings in new questions and issues concerning the development of smart grids. For example, Verbong et al. [ 21 ] raised several critical questions, such as the following: “Despite these promises, it is unclear what ‘smart grids’ exactly constitute, how they should be implemented, and what their effect will be on the reliability and costs of the electricity system” [ 21 ]. Similarly, Skjølsvold [ 22 ] questioned how all the high ambitions for smart grid implementation will be achieved if attention remains chiefly on technical efforts. Kojonsaari and Palm [ 23 ] criticised the technocratic dominance of the decision-making process concerning the smart grid, emphasising the need to consider diverse perspectives and interests when developing any future smart grid. Skjølsvold and Lindkvist [ 24 ] suggested that “perhaps it is now time to seriously re-think whether the problem at hand is really a technological challenge in need of a social component” (p. 49). Expanding social science research on the smart grid, however, raises new questions and concerns, applying new perspectives to the field. This has spurred our interest in exploring this research in depth to see what issues have been addressed and what new knowledge and questions have been contributed. How has the social science perspective advanced our knowledge of the smart grid?

This article reviews the academic social science literature on smart grids to determine what kind of knowledge has been produced. The main research questions are the following: What issues have been in focus? Can any trends be discerned in this research? What has been overlooked, and which research gaps can be identified?

The article is organised as follows. Sect. " Methods " presents the methodological design and data collection methods. In Sect. " Results ", we synthesise the data and analyse the trends and themes (e.g. geographical scope and theoretical aspects) identified in the dataset. Lastly, Sect. " Discussion " presents the conclusions, proposes avenues for future research and discusses the limitations of this study.

This article reviews the social science literature on smart grids, meaning that we are interested in earlier research on smart grids in relation to social processes, organisations and institutions. We wanted to discover how smart grids have been studied from a social science standpoint and what topics have been addressed, considering when, where, and in what ways this matters for the development of the field. We chose to focus on research on social aspects, hence no hypothesis was proposed; rather, the study method was designed to be exploratory and qualitative, as that best served our aims.

Broadly, literature reviews collect and synthesise existing research in a more or less systematic way [ 25 ]. A semi-structured review often looks at how research in a selected field has progressed over time [ 26 ]; this methodology was the best for our purposes, as we sought to tease out the overarching storylines in the data. Following Bryman’s [ 27 ] method of incorporating some elements of a systematic review into a narrative review, a rather broad guiding research question was formulated: “What kind of knowledge is produced in social science studies of smart grids?” This question narrowed the scope enough but not too much as it allowed us to omit studies that were only technically oriented, while including studies addressing the technology–social science nexus. The review concentrated on knowledge development in research, combining the study of smart grids with analyses of social structures and relationships. This includes studies of interactions between the smart grid and households, such as how smart grids are envisioned, and material participation.

This review will outline trends in earlier research, while also identifying the research gaps and reflecting on them. A semi-structured method was found to be the most appropriate approach for addressing the research problem.

Selection and exclusion of articles and quality criteria

We chose to limit the study to academic articles published in peer-reviewed journals. The articles were retrieved in May 2022 from two databases: Scopus and WoS. The search tools in the two databases are slightly different, thus we describe here our search process in detail. Scopus is a citation database from Elsevier for peer-reviewed literature, whereas WoS is a paid-accessed platform owned by Clarivate. Both have broad coverage [ 28 ] but cover slightly different publications, which rationalises including them both. There were, however, many overlaps as can be seen in Fig.  1 below. The search term used was “smart grid”, in line with the overall purpose of the review. In Scopus, we searched for the term “smart grid” within “Article title, Abstract, Keywords”. In hindsight, we should have chosen to search only within the abstract, since the search we used led to some of the results mentioning “smart grid” only as a keyword even when the article did not focus on smart grids. In addition, we limited the search to articles and reviews, including only social science and excluding all non-English-language material, leaving us with 859 results. The search tools in WoS allowed us to be more precise. In WoS, we also used the search term “smart grid” and limited the search to English-language articles or reviews. We chose the following categories: architecture, history, philosophy of science, public administration, sociology, communication, social issues, social sciences, interdisciplinary, urban studies, regional urban planning, environmental studies, international relations, geography, and multidisciplinary sciences. This was done to narrow the results to those within the scope of our study. We did not use a limiting time span, but included all years in the database and were left with 493 results.

The literature review workflow used to identify the 111 papers included in the review

In total, searching Scopus and WoS resulted in 1352 hits. After merging the results from the two databases and removing duplicates, 1140 hits remained. Three articles were excluded in this phase because they were paywalled, and this left 1137 records, which we subsequently screened. The workflow process is visualised in Fig.  1 .

Initial screening was performed by reading the abstracts and sometimes the introductions of the articles, together with a quick scanning of the full article. If the records were solely technical or made no mention of social sciences, they were excluded. This screening resulted in a total of 304 relevant articles, which were further examined with respect to smart grids and social science. After reading and analysing the full-text versions of these articles, those that focused solely on technical issues and did not have a social science perspective were excluded. We were left with 111 articles.

We individually evaluated and subsequently excluded studies that were purely technical or techno-economically oriented and did not address any social aspects, such as those focusing on specific technologies (e.g. ZigBee), financial or environmental feasibility (without mentioning social aspects), business models (based on the technology, i.e. system performance, without mentioning social aspects), software-defined networking (SDN), buildings, encryption, optimisation, routing, technical and economic synergies, technical simulations, economic cost–benefit analysis, load control or other technical engineering subjects, algorithms, technology roadmapping, investment planning strategies, fuzzy logic, IT (e.g. performance analysis), system management, network problems, numerical simulations, law, modelling, and technical scenarios.

We are aware that the inductive nature of this review has its limitations. The task of finding the exclusion/inclusion balance involved considerable iteration when reading the papers and applying the exclusion criteria. While the semi-systematic nature of this review allowed us to go through all the papers, it became clear that the identified field overlaps with many others and that our scope would encompass studies from these fields as well. We therefore needed to find a common denominator for all the studies and chose “social aspects”, i.e. studies that focus on the social aspects of the smart grid. As a result, teaching/education articles were excluded because they mainly dealt with engineering education, which was not within the scope of our review. We also excluded scenarios mainly discussing technological pathways for the future and not analysing social aspects per se.

Semi-structured analysis

The 111 selected articles were classified based on their themes. The study was exploratory in character, and the inductive analysis involved data-driven categories. It is recommended that literature reviews be organised in relation to, for example, concepts, themes, theories, or disciplines [ 29 ], and this was done in the analysis. According to Hammersley [ 30 ], even the simplest rule-following entails an element of interpretation, and we kept this in mind when exploring the material and searching for themes. The coding enabled us to see the data in a different light, giving us “tools to think with” [ 31 ] (p. 32). When rearranging the data, we also teased out certain narratives. Sovacool et al. [ 29 ] noted that a narrative review provides an exploratory evaluation of the literature or a subset of the literature in a particular area. We started to categorise the data according to different themes and geographical categories and tease out different themes or storylines. Our own observations were also included in one specific coding section.

Next, the results from the analysis will be presented and structured in relation to the themes found.

In this section, we synthesise the records and present our results in relation to the overall trends and themes identified in the analysis (see also Additional file 1 for a classification and summary of key variables in the reviewed literature). Below, we first discuss the challenges the reviewed research faces in studying a smart grid that has not yet materialised, and then reflect on the geographical scope of the research. This is followed by a discussion of the reviewed studies’ theoretical foci.

Studying an emerging but non-existent smart grid

The earliest study in our dataset is from 2012, and the field has since then continued to develop. The peek year for relevant publications was 2015. Four papers were published in 2013, eight in 2014, and 19 in 2015, after which there was a dip in the number of published articles (see Fig.  2 ).

Number of relevant articles published since 2012

The early years of social science research on smart grids were characterised by uncertainty regarding exactly how the pathway to a low-carbon electricity economy would unfold, where the variations between how different disciplines imagined smart grids were discussed: “Engineers, sociologists, and economists all emphasize different aspects of the emerging smart grid and its users” [ 32 ] (p. 283). One reason for this was that few smart grids had been established, opening up many potential development paths. The lack of existing smart grids available to study was also discussed as a barrier to research in the field:

Researching the societal implications of smart grids faces similar problems to that of other new technologies (e.g. biotechnologies, nanotechnologies) in gaining insight into sociotechnical systems that do not yet exist. The uncertainty of future technologies necessitates defining them for research participants. In doing so the context and framing used can have a large influence on responses. [ 33 ] (p. 22)

A result of this lack of actual smart grids is that several studies instead concentrated on visions and imaginaries of the future manifestations (e.g. [ 34 , 35 , 36 ]). In these studies, documents were examined or different professional stakeholders, most commonly those with a background in engineering or economics, were asked how they envisioned the future grid. When analysing the visions, the researcher then identified some possible pathways but also considered what actors and issues were included in and excluded from the visions. The idea was that the visions have the power to become political goals and legitimate technological choices, making them relevant from a political perspective [ 11 , 35 , 37 ].

An absent or vague definition has, of course, the implication stated above, namely that it is difficult to explore actors’ perceptions of the smart grid because researchers must first define the phenomenon for the interviewees; however, by proposing a definition, the researchers risk influencing how the smart grid is imagined. A vague definition can engender confusion, resulting in one overlooking of differences between conceptions of smart grids, differences that may be important for understanding how smart grids will emerge. On the other hand, a vague definition is not necessarily problematic, because there is no common understanding of what a smart grid is. When reading the papers, we noted that, although many lacked a definition, this was seldom a problem. To follow the analysis, it was often sufficient for the article to describe the smart grid in vague terms, but this lack of definition might become more of a problem when the smart grid starts to emerge and more detailed comparisons and analyses become possible and productive. A possible limitation of the current study is thus that, as smart grids continue to mature, research might begin using more specific terms and focus on specific aspects of it, such as flexibility. Nevertheless, all things considered, the study at hand aims at analysing the specific studies that focus on smart grids.

When the scene is not definitively set, this allows for greater possibility concerning what can be discussed and how. By the end of the studied period, a smart grid was often treated as synonymous with a distributed energy system. However, early in the review period, there were more studies that had not yet chosen this path, such as an early study on the ‘SuperSmartGrid’ [ 37 ]. In this study, the authors argued for the development of a SuperSmartGrid that could apply the advantages found in the SuperGrid, i.e. the transmission infrastructure, and the SmartGrid, i.e. a distributed system with local control and independence, which permits local accountability for demand. Nevertheless, the study identified significant technological and socioeconomic conflicts of interest between the SuperGrid and SmartGrid, thus policy makers and Transmission System Operators (TSOs) must act strategically, and strong policy intervention will be needed to allow both the SuperGrid and SmartGrid to evolve. Most reviewed studies have focused solely on the smart grid as a distributed system, ignoring the centralised system or simply advocating a distributed smart grid. Blarke and Jenkins [ 37 ] noted that the SuperGrid and SmartGrid require different and conflicting technological, institutional, economic, and social pathways for system design. An optional future scenario is that they would converge, making combined studies of decentralised and centralised system development crucial to avoiding a lock-in effect in smart grid research.

The domination of case studies from Europe and the USA

Moving on to a review of the geographical focus of the studies (see Fig.  3 ), we notice that from 2012 there is only one study from Asia, by Mah et al. [ 38 ], a widely cited case study from Hong Kong using telephone surveys to study consumer perceptions of a specific smart grid development. A focus on Asia is not that common in the corpus, with European case studies dominating the spotlight, followed by US ones. European studies do not always focus on a specific country, but when they do, countries located in northern Europe are dominant. Most empirical studies were conducted in the UK (15), Germany (11), and the Netherlands (11). Moreover, in recent years, the number of articles conducted in Denmark (11) has increased. Some of the other Nordic countries, such as Norway and/or Sweden, are addressed in 10 of the articles. The high number of studies focusing on specific countries might be an indication of a cultural tradition where it has been established to analyse sociotechnical aspects. The reasons why some countries are under-represented and absent in our dataset can furthermore be related to what focus points have been established within higher education, and what kind of research has been prioritised by funding bodies. It is also possible that in some countries the sociotechnical characterisation of a technology has not been raised as an issue of political or public interest, i.e. the smart grid has been considered a purely technological project, rather than a sociotechnical one that influences almost every aspect of a society.

The geographical focus of the relevant studies by continent

Studies from the UK often treat smart metering and demand–response practices, with a preference for early adopters [ 33 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ]. The starting point for these studies is how the technology influences energy use and can contribute to, for example, a more flexible consumption pattern. This starting point likely also influenced the theoretical perspective chosen for the analysis, a matter to which we will return below. The papers from the Netherlands are dominated by household studies, often in combination with a social practice theory perspective (e.g. [ 21 , 45 ]). More recent studies have also considered more cooperative forms of household engagement and energy communities [ 45 , 46 ]. For instance, the studies from Germany often concern the Energiewende and the attendant energy landscape. The Energiewende supports decentralised renewable energy, combined heat and power, and energy efficiency [ 47 ]—all key aspects of the smart grid—with a smart network being seen as a tool or facilitator of the transition or ‘Energiewende’. In German research, smart meters and how they can be used to accommodate more variable production have been a central issue. As part of the Energiewende, the federal parliament passed the Act on the Digitalisation of the Energy Transition in 2016, calling for development of a smart meter infrastructure, called the Smart Meter Gateway, contributing to the focus on smart meters in the studies. The studies from the Nordic countries have emphasised the envisioned smart grid and material participation in it. When material participation is considered, the researchers apply an ‘object-oriented’ or ‘device-centred’ perspective [ 48 ] where attention is paid to the role of technologies and material objects in everyday interactions with the energy system.

In sum, the studies from the dominant countries in the field have empirically focused on smart meters and demand–response practices; households and (more recently) cooperative forms of household engagement; smart grids as part of the energy transition (Energiewende); the imagined or envisioned smart grid; and material participation.

The single-case study was the most popular method, although several articles presented multiple case studies. Studies of smart grid geographies [ 49 ] analysing the meanings of different contexts are under-represented and would be a welcome addition to the literature. Overall, the smart grid geography field is centred on Europe. Mah [ 50 ] addressed this problem in a study comparing China and Japan: “This study adds to a limited body of empirical work exploring energy transitions in a non-western context … by focusing on government–market dynamics” (p. 163). Nevertheless, there are some other studies outside Europe and the USA, such as Joo and Kim’s [ 51 ] study, in which residents in South Korea were interviewed about the smart grid; Bertheau et al.’s [ 52 ] case study on the Philippines, which looked at the challenges associated with implementing renewable energy; and a few studies from Africa (e.g. [ 53 ]) and Latin America (e.g. [ 54 ]). More social science case studies outside Europe would, however, broaden our understanding of the smart grid and give more diverse insights into how smart grid solutions could be designed and used [ 55 ]. For instance, Khalid et al. [ 56 ] compared Denmark and Pakistan, concluding that it was beneficial to compare these “socio-culturally contrasting contexts” because it helped expose established cultural and material structures and embedded practices and ideas. The case studies from outside Europe and the USA could also potentially bring new aspects to smart grid research. The authors concluded that their results had implications for international donor policy, which often supports off-grid solutions and could thus be questioned, as it might help delay more effective community solutions. This critique of international donor policy was a new issue addressed by this study, yet the domination of some geographical areas in the literature risks narrowing our understanding of how a smart grid can be designed (e.g. only as a distributed system) and emphasises certain features of the smart grid (e.g. early adopters’ use of smart home appliances), while other relevant features (e.g. international support programmes) are overlooked or neglected. On the other hand, social science research on smart grids is an emerging field in which some research communities, such as the science and technology studies (STS) community, are frontrunners, and these communities have given the field a certain focus and played the important role of opening smart grid research to new questions and perspectives.

The domination of early adopters and professionals

The actor perspective has been evident since the first social science articles on smart grids and been an important counterweight to all technically focused research. There is, however, a quite narrow set-up of actors who have been in focus, where technical and economic professionals, together with the domestic users, have dominated. “The social” was often represented by including the users. For example, Verbong et al. [ 21 ] stated, “In this article, our goal is to shed light upon practices and perceptions of stakeholders on including users [i.e. “the social”] in the transition process towards smart grids” [ 21 ] (p. 124). Furthermore, in 2013, Gangale et al. [ 57 ] highlighted users by using a questionnaire to explore consumers’ behaviour and new role as active participants in smart grid projects in Europe. They found an increasing emphasis on consumer engagement and that trust and confidence were central to energy providers’ successful strategies to promote it. A common early observation was that the only aspects of a smart grid that can truly be smart are the people within it, and many highlight the challenges and obstacles facing users of complex smart systems; nevertheless, many also champion finding new innovative solutions to interact with the grid [e.g. 21 , 58 ].

The material participation of users has also been examined in many studies, as mentioned above. The study objects are often smart home devices, such as smart meters, a mobile phone app, a rooftop PV installation, or an electric vehicle. Material participation through renewable technologies in the home is a recurrent topic, with the empowered and engaged citizen in the foreground. Ryghaug et al. [ 48 ] found that such physical and embodied experiences open up new ways for users to engage with and take responsibility for the future energy transition. Experiences with rooftop PVs or electric vehicles in the driveway represent new ways to engage with the grid, scripting certain behaviours and leading to proactive shifts in household electricity consumption [ 12 , 59 ].

There is also criticism of smart grid proponents. We lack long-term studies of user interaction with the technology beyond a testbed or intervention period. Büscher and Sumpf [ 60 ], for example, found that it cannot be assumed, as proponents do, that the customers/public will simply shift their behaviour once they receive smart appliances, technologies, meters, etc.

Chadwick et al. [ 61 ], in their article dealing with household adoption and rejection, also highlighted mainstream energy consumers’ lack of understanding in their critical review of the literature on household energy traditions. Furthermore, Calver et al. [ 62 ] interviewed households in Manchester, United Kingdom, and studied energy justice, while Milchram et al. [ 63 ] looked into energy justice.

Theoretical perspectives

Almost all studied articles applied a sociotechnical perspective, an overall aim of which has been to study the processes of social and technical change. The smart grid constitutes a typical sociotechnical system in which technology is so closely intertwined with its surroundings that differentiating the two is not meaningful [ 64 , 65 ], which is why it seems reasonable that STS researchers have been among the first to explore smart grids. The sociotechnical system approach is the analytical lens through which the development of smart grids in society is understood. In the introduction to a special issue treating social science and smart grids, Skjølsvold et al. [ 22 ] identified two relevant strands of research concerning (1) sociotechnical imaginaries of the smart grid and (2) the human–technology relationship. The identification of these two strands is still very much valid, even though the field has widened and more perspectives have been introduced—a matter to which we return below.

Sociotechnical imaginaries and narratives

As discussed above, one dominant strand of earlier research concerns sociotechnical imaginaries and narratives. The concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, developed by Jasanoff and Kim [ 66 ], has been used as an analytical approach to examining visions and futures concerned with smart grids (e.g. [ 34 , 35 , 36 ]). This research emphasises the significant role of energy imaginaries, shaped mainly by past energy choices, in reconfiguring the energy system. Imaginary futures consist of elements capable of facilitating and influencing sociotechnical trajectories by projecting what futures are desirable and attainable based on current and anticipated knowledge. In this research, the visions rather than the actors are emphasised, and the main contribution is better knowledge of how powerful visions can be for legitimising political ends and technological choices. Sociotechnical narratives’ implications for decision-making in energy policy have recently been discussed by Libertson [ 67 ].

The human–technology relationship

Kloppenburg and Boekelo [ 68 ] referred to the energy social sciences as an established field in its own right, where the focus is on the users/citizens: “The energy social sciences (ESS) have examined how these developments have generated new possibilities for citizens to engage with energy and participate in the energy transition” (p. 68). They further mentioned that it is imperative for ESS to contribute to the responsible design and development of new energy infrastructure.

In contrast, Skjølsvold et al. [ 69 ] identified the need for four reconfigurations: (1) knowledge reconfiguration in the design practice field—the research community needs to engage more in disseminating results to practitioners, and practitioners, developers, and designers need to engage more with diverse bodies of research; (2) material reconfiguration—established design and technology development processes and regimes need to be destabilised to bring in new ideas and innovations; (3) epistemic reconfiguration—instead of embedding social science in technical projects, epistemic reconfiguration should be the goal when social scientists “work on equal footing with engineers and programmers in development processes”; and (4) what could be called disciplinary reconfiguration—establishing and mainstreaming new routines for cooperation and integration between previously scattered knowledge communities (p. 7). Skjølsvold et al. [ 69 ] presented this schema in 2017, indicating that the field had by then become mature enough to consider the critical evaluation of the impacts of sociotechnical research on the development of the smart grid.

The field has had a user focus, especially in underlining behaviour and practices at home. Less attention, however, has been paid to company and industry processes. Hence, more studies of, for example, business anthropology or ethnographies inside companies could be a welcome addition to the field. An interesting study that has taken such a turn is that of Grandclément [ 70 ], who described working as a sociologist for seven years in the R&D department of an energy company. To achieve the reconfigurations that Skjølsvold et al. [ 69 ] identified, it would be beneficial to have more studies giving insider glimpses into energy companies and companies working on designing smart-grid-related technology.

The application of social practice theory (SPT)

A dominant theory used in many of the reviewed studies was social practice theory (SPT) (e.g. [ 19 , 59 , 69 , 71 , 72 ]). As early as 2014, Naus et al. [ 71 ] and Higginson et al. [ 42 ] examined smart grids, information flows, and emerging domestic energy practices. By using SPT, doings in relation to the smart grid can be studied by treating structure and agency as united in repeated performance, meaning that a proper understanding of a user agency’s potential power needs to be related to established structures materialised as routinised behaviour [ 73 ]. A practice is routinised behaviour when it consists of three or four interconnected elements, where the number of elements identified, as well as how they are labelled, differs among the reviewed articles. All routines include forms of these elements: materials such as technologies, competences such as know-how, and meanings such as social norms and shared meanings. By applying SPT, researchers can describe how users enact and interact with the smart grid and detect or map patterns of interaction. The SPT approach suits the empirical focus in which users in homes and households have been rather dominant, as discussed above. SPT advances our understanding of how and why certain smart-grid-related practices occur and can enhance our knowledge of, for example, demand–response practices and flexibility. As mentioned earlier, few smart grids have been established, although there have been many testbeds and experiments in which users participate as early adopters, thus their interaction with the technology can be studied (e.g. [ 59 , 72 , 73 , 74 ]). The roll-out of smart meters has also allowed smart meter practice to be studied in the home (e.g. [ 19 , 39 , 69 ]). Higginson et al. [ 42 ] noted that the study of domestic energy use requires that researchers combine the study of technology, with a focus on the individual as the change agent, and the social, in which agency inheres in a culture or society. An analysis of how the smart grid affects society and vice versa makes it important to recognise that both living and non-living things (e.g. people, technology, and their surroundings) are active and therefore share agency [ 42 ]. SPT is one theory with a potential to capture this complexity, but there are others such as the socio-material perspective, which we will examine below. A practice-based understanding of energy outside the home has also been expanded to encompass distribution system operators (DSOs), and Verkade and Höffken [ 36 ] have noted that:

A main characteristic of a practice-based perspective is that, ontologically, it places the practice itself center stage, rather than whoever is performing that practice. The collective that performs the practice can be a civic energy community, but also another organization, such as a market-based company, a public or government institution, or an organization from civil society. The point of focusing on the practice and ‘leaving open’ who the performing actor is, is not only inherent to practice theory, but it allows a perspective in which different organizations develop their own, sometimes competing, versions of collective energy practices. (p. 12)

Theories other than SPT have the potential to analyse this sociotechnical interaction in everyday life, as done in the reviewed article, but only to a lesser extent. For example, Nyborg and Røpke [ 75 ] applied an actor-network perspective to illustrate how some societal groups were less willing to be enrolled by the ministry in the smart grid programme, and how the utility and significance of heat pumps were strengthened by smart grid development. Lazowski et al. [ 76 ] and Ford et al. [ 77 ] applied the energy culture framework to investigate household decision-making and energy behaviour in relation to smart grid contexts in Ontario [ 76 ] and New Zealand [ 77 ]. A version of household socio-material participation has been used in several studies [ 48 , 78 , 79 , 80 ], and Hansen and Hauge [ 59 ] used the related notion of the script. Some have also discussed the need for more theory development; for example, Khalid et al. [ 56 ] reminded us that conceptualising practices as shared or socially differentiated entities in different cultural contexts calls for further theory development. In addition, Adams et al. [ 81 ] critically reviewed the use of ‘social license to automate’, where ‘Social licence to automate’ (SLA) provides a framework to understand the (mis)alignments between the expectations of actors within the energy systems and the household practices, sense of control and stake in the energy system. They argue that the concept of an SLA can bridge these domains.

Other theoretical perspectives applied

Sociotechnical pathway research discusses different routes that the electricity grid could take. Lunde et al. [ 3 ] used this approach in considering how different paths include different elements of the smart grid discourse, while highlighting different policies and strategies. One pathway was that of a European SuperGrid and the other was a decentralised energy system centring on local actors [ 3 ]. Another theoretical perspective we found in our data concerned governmentality, often drawing on neoliberal theories or critical studies. For example, Levenda’s [ 82 ] case study in Texas discussed the problems of smart grid case studies, illustrating how urban entrepreneurialism alters the potential for active co-production, whereas Rosenfield [ 83 ] responded to Shelton et al.’s [ 84 ] call for studies of the actually existing smart city. Lovell [ 85 ] noted that “the most valuable insight provided by a governmentality lens for those interested in processes of technological change concerns the close two-way relationship between the rationalities and technologies of government” (p. 592). In another study, Laes and Bombaerts [ 86 ] explored neoliberal governmentality and energy communities, but there are not that many studies on how the technical issues of policy implementation have together influenced the emergence of smart grid policy in different countries.

There have been interdisciplinary research attempts to break the silos and combine knowledge from different fields, as often advocated by researchers. In this effort, a field such as geography can enable the integration of various perspectives. Kumar [ 87 ], for example, in a study of microgrids in India, reviewed some of the literature on social sciences and smart grids, and concluded by calling for a more social-scientific approach to smart grids. Kumar also highlighted the need to connect smart-grid-related problems early on in the design phase. This is also something that has been highlighted over the years by a range of researchers (e.g. [ 88 , 89 , 90 ]); they have been calling for design approaches that would script technologies to better align with the daily lives and diverse existing patterns of electricity use and understanding [ 24 ].

Some more recent studies have used assemblage theory [ 74 , 91 ], which is an alternative way to approach sociotechnical configurations. Assemblage theory is a bottom–up framework that sees relationships between human and non-human actors as fluid. According to this perspective, agency is not in the hands of a few key actors but is widely distributed among the many components of an assemblage. By using assemblage theory, the outcome of the implementation and use of a smart grid is left open ended, not fixed, and can be constantly reinterpreted. This perspective has the potential to permit new analyses of both the development and use of the smart grid.

In an earlier systematic review of smart meter research, Sovacool et al. [ 40 ] found that almost two thirds of articles primarily discussed technical challenges; they also identified two important gaps related to social science approaches: social concerns and vulnerable consumers, and how consumers and others can resist smart meter adoption. These two gaps are also relevant to smart grid studies, which have not focused on vulnerable citizens and non-adoption.

Experimental studies

There are some interesting studies from recent years that experiment with methods and theoretical frameworks. For example, Hess et al. [ 92 ] argue for a comparative, sociotechnical design perspective in their experimental study with a multiple perspectives comparison. Furthermore, Trahan & Hess [ 93 ] outline three central challenges of digitisation, suggesting new directions in energy social science research as the future control of electricity develops along its digital pathway. Strengers et al. [ 94 ] use comic-strip scenarios as a method to disrupt energy industry futures. Through the article they urge the need to revise energy imaginaries, reminding us about the urgency of exploration and communication in order to meet the targets set in the Green Deal by 2030.

The aim of this article was to analyse trends and knowledge gaps identified in social science research on smart grids. The trends discovered are presented in Fig.  4 .

Trends in earlier research and research gaps

Theoretically, the dominant main perspectives have emanated from the STS field: sociotechnical imaginaries, the human–technology relationship, and social practice theory. When the smart grid did not exist physically, but only on the conceptual level, it was difficult to study actors’ experiences of it. Sociotechnical imaginaries therefore fulfilled an important role in analysing the potential meaning and influence of the visions of smart grids for the energy system and society. When smart grid demonstrations and testbeds developed further, it also became possible to consider different actors’ reactions. The roll-out of smart meters and the Internet of Things in Europe helped create active consumers who could interact with the grid, change their usage patterns, and become more flexible. This could make these early adopters important assets in demand–response practices and in understanding how households use electricity and related technology. Material participation became a common approach to understanding the users’ interaction with the domestic technology. This also occurred at a time when practice theory had become a dominant theory in the energy field, hence practice theory became a popular perspective in smart grid research as well.

After the smart grid’s initial existence as mere sociotechnical imaginaries, it developed beyond the first technologically oriented phase into demonstrations that could be tested by people. Accordingly, more attention was paid to how the smart grid was or would be governed, and theories relating to governing have started to become more common.

Another trend in the research analysed is that most studies have concentrated on the distributed smart grid, whereas there has been less examination of the centralised grid or the centralised–decentralised nexus. Most studies have also been case studies geographically located in Europe or North America.

Thus, several research gaps were identified, as shown in Fig.  5 .

Identified research gaps

An absent or vague definition of the smart grid, or a technology-oriented definition, often results in overlooking different conceptions of the smart grid and contributes to disregarding aspects important to, e.g. actors who are supposed to implement it. The lack of definitions also makes detailed comparison between smart grid impossible. There are few studies that address how to define a smart grid in an inclusive way that covers its sociotechnical character and considers existing conflicting conceptualisations and understandings of the phenomena. This is important, because better integrating the social aspects into the design of the smart grid from the very beginning of the smart grid project would make them more socially sustainable.

One research gap relates to smart grid geographies and the trend with case studies concentrated on Europe and North America. In future research, it will be important to include the meanings and experiences of the smart grids in different contexts and have more case studies in the Global South. This would allow for more diverse insights and thus possibilities for more inclusive smart grid development.

Another research gap is the narrow range of actors studied. Technical and economical professionals are almost always present in the studies together with early adopters of smart technology. Future research should prioritise actors with other values, perceptions and experiences. Given the increased importance of energy in peoples’ everyday lives, the inclusion of various actors is important from an energy justice perspective concerning who, for example, has sufficient resources in order to participate and who is represented in hearings and planning processes. There should also be a reflection on what kind of studies were absent; for example, there were not many studies focusing on gender roles. More studies with a feminist approach would help with the aim of including more diverse actors.

As electricity becomes increasingly embedded in all sectors of society, energy democracy clearly merits further study. From an energy democracy perspective, the energy transition is linked to a broader project of expanding political democracy in which the smart grid has the potential to re-inspire politically engaged citizen participation. This is something existing research touches on, but the democratic aspects could be highlighted and problematised much more explicitly. Consideration of more diverse actors and users is needed to advance our understanding of the smart grid, which should incorporate the perspectives of, for example, gender, other marginalised individuals, and SMEs as niche actors. The literature often captures the fact that relatively few early adopters interact with the technology and the social practices related to this. Few studies consider the procedural aspects of participation and issues of inclusion and outcomes.

Regarding material participation, how can a user opt out of the smart grid? Will it be possible to remain on grid but still avoid using related smart technology? Can one avoid taking part in grid automation? As yet, no study has explored the tensions between participation and non-participation in the smart grid. According to our data, some studies investigate how people participate in the smart grid, but far fewer studies consider their willingness to participate. This might, however, be due to the limitations of our study, as we excluded the field of psychology from our search.

As few studies examined centralised versus decentralised systems and their interconnected or conflicting development paths, the dominant focus on decentralised systems can be criticised for not reflecting the centralised energy system that most citizens experience in their everyday lives.

Smart grid research does, of course, benefit from developing incremental contributions, but assumption-challenging research is also needed. By focusing, for example, on marginalised actors, resistant actors or new geographical contexts, these less studied areas can bring in new knowledge supporting smart grid solutions to be developed, which also aligns with the actors actually implementing and using them.

We can conclude that research in social science studies on smart grids has followed a pattern where visions; professionals and users; and smart technologies in homes usually have been studied using case studies mainly focusing Europe or the USA. Six research gaps were identified and these were: the need of a clear definition of the smart grid, to include more diverse actors and geographical places, more studies relating to energy democracy and the resistance of smart grids and finally a lack of studies of the centralised–decentralised nexus of the smart grid.

Lastly, we want to acknowledge the limitations of the study and discuss alternative ways of conducting this type of review. The search terms are important and there are several search terms related to the smart grid that could have been used, such as “smart energy”, “smart energy systems”, “flexibility” or “community energy storage”. The aim was, however, to capture how the social scientists have studied smart grids as a system, and we were not interested in how individual subsystems have been approached or analysed in earlier studies. Moreover, to place greater focus on parts of the system or different artefacts would have been interesting but that would have involved another kind of analysis than that aimed for here. Finally, due to the limited resources, we excluded non-English literature from our review, which may have resulted in a geographical bias.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

Distribution system operators

European Union

Energy Social Sciences

Greenhouse gas

Information and Communications Technology

Information technology

Software-defined networking

Small and medium-sized enterprises

Social practice theory

Science and technology studies

United States of America

Web of Science

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Kojonsaari, AR., Palm, J. The development of social science research on smart grids: a semi-structured literature review. Energ Sustain Soc 13 , 1 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13705-023-00381-9

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Semistructured interviewing in primary care research: a balance of relationship and rigour

Melissa dejonckheere.

1 Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Lisa M Vaughn

2 Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

3 Division of Emergency Medicine, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

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fmch-2018-000057supp001.pdf

Semistructured in-depth interviews are commonly used in qualitative research and are the most frequent qualitative data source in health services research. This method typically consists of a dialogue between researcher and participant, guided by a flexible interview protocol and supplemented by follow-up questions, probes and comments. The method allows the researcher to collect open-ended data, to explore participant thoughts, feelings and beliefs about a particular topic and to delve deeply into personal and sometimes sensitive issues. The purpose of this article was to identify and describe the essential skills to designing and conducting semistructured interviews in family medicine and primary care research settings. We reviewed the literature on semistructured interviewing to identify key skills and components for using this method in family medicine and primary care research settings. Overall, semistructured interviewing requires both a relational focus and practice in the skills of facilitation. Skills include: (1) determining the purpose and scope of the study; (2) identifying participants; (3) considering ethical issues; (4) planning logistical aspects; (5) developing the interview guide; (6) establishing trust and rapport; (7) conducting the interview; (8) memoing and reflection; (9) analysing the data; (10) demonstrating the trustworthiness of the research; and (11) presenting findings in a paper or report. Semistructured interviews provide an effective and feasible research method for family physicians to conduct in primary care research settings. Researchers using semistructured interviews for data collection should take on a relational focus and consider the skills of interviewing to ensure quality. Semistructured interviewing can be a powerful tool for family physicians, primary care providers and other health services researchers to use to understand the thoughts, beliefs and experiences of individuals. Despite the utility, semistructured interviews can be intimidating and challenging for researchers not familiar with qualitative approaches. In order to elucidate this method, we provide practical guidance for researchers, including novice researchers and those with few resources, to use semistructured interviewing as a data collection strategy. We provide recommendations for the essential steps to follow in order to best implement semistructured interviews in family medicine and primary care research settings.

Introduction

Semistructured interviews can be used by family medicine researchers in clinical settings or academic settings even with few resources. In contrast to large-scale epidemiological studies, or even surveys, a family medicine researcher can conduct a highly meaningful project with interviews with as few as 8–12 participants. For example, Chang and her colleagues, all family physicians, conducted semistructured interviews with 10 providers to understand their perspectives on weight gain in pregnant patients. 1 The interviewers asked questions about providers’ overall perceptions on weight gain, their clinical approach to weight gain during pregnancy and challenges when managing weight gain among pregnant patients. Additional examples conducted by or with family physicians or in primary care settings are summarised in table 1 . 1–6

Examples of research articles using semistructured interviews in primary care research

From our perspective as seasoned qualitative researchers, conducting effective semistructured interviews requires: (1) a relational focus, including active engagement and curiosity, and (2) practice in the skills of interviewing. First, a relational focus emphasises the unique relationship between interviewer and interviewee. To obtain quality data, interviews should not be conducted with a transactional question-answer approach but rather should be unfolding, iterative interactions between the interviewer and interviewee. Second, interview skills can be learnt. Some of us will naturally be more comfortable and skilful at conducting interviews but all aspects of interviews are learnable and through practice and feedback will improve. Throughout this article, we highlight strategies to balance relationship and rigour when conducting semistructured interviews in primary care and the healthcare setting.

Qualitative research interviews are ‘attempts to understand the world from the subjects’ point of view, to unfold the meaning of peoples’ experiences, to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanations’ (p 1). 7 Qualitative research interviews unfold as an interviewer asks questions of the interviewee in order to gather subjective information about a particular topic or experience. Though the definitions and purposes of qualitative research interviews vary slightly in the literature, there is common emphasis on the experiences of interviewees and the ways in which the interviewee perceives the world (see table 2 for summary of definitions from seminal texts).

Definitions of qualitative interviews

The most common type of interview used in qualitative research and the healthcare context is semistructured interview. 8 Figure 1 highlights the key features of this data collection method, which is guided by a list of topics or questions with follow-up questions, probes and comments. Typically, the sequencing and wording of the questions are modified by the interviewer to best fit the interviewee and interview context. Semistructured interviews can be conducted in multiple ways (ie, face to face, telephone, text/email, individual, group, brief, in-depth), each of which have advantages and disadvantages. We will focus on the most common form of semistructured interviews within qualitative research—individual, face-to-face, in-depth interviews.

Key characteristics of semistructured interviews.

Purpose of semistructured interviews

The overall purpose of using semistructured interviews for data collection is to gather information from key informants who have personal experiences, attitudes, perceptions and beliefs related to the topic of interest. Researchers can use semistructured interviews to collect new, exploratory data related to a research topic, triangulate other data sources or validate findings through member checking (respondent feedback about research results). 9 If using a mixed methods approach, semistructured interviews can also be used in a qualitative phase to explore new concepts to generate hypotheses or explain results from a quantitative phase that tests hypotheses. Semistructured interviews are an effective method for data collection when the researcher wants: (1) to collect qualitative, open-ended data; (2) to explore participant thoughts, feelings and beliefs about a particular topic; and (3) to delve deeply into personal and sometimes sensitive issues.

Designing and conducting semistructured interviews

In the following section, we provide recommendations for the steps required to carefully design and conduct semistructured interviews with emphasis on applications in family medicine and primary care research (see table 3 ).

Steps to designing and conducting semistructured interviews

Steps for designing and conducting semistructured interviews

Step 1: determining the purpose and scope of the study.

The purpose of the study is the primary objective of your project and may be based on an anecdotal experience, a review of the literature or previous research finding. The purpose is developed in response to an identified gap or problem that needs to be addressed.

Research questions are the driving force of a study because they are associated with every other aspect of the design. They should be succinct and clearly indicate that you are using a qualitative approach. Qualitative research questions typically start with ‘What’, ‘How’ or ‘Why’ and focus on the exploration of a single concept based on participant perspectives. 10

Step 2: identifying participants

After deciding on the purpose of the study and research question(s), the next step is to determine who will provide the best information to answer the research question. Good interviewees are those who are available, willing to be interviewed and have lived experiences and knowledge about the topic of interest. 11 12 Working with gatekeepers or informants to get access to potential participants can be extremely helpful as they are trusted sources that control access to the target sample.

Sampling strategies are influenced by the research question and the purpose of the study. Unlike quantitative studies, statistical representativeness is not the goal of qualitative research. There is no calculation of statistical power and the goal is not a large sample size. Instead, qualitative approaches seek an in-depth and detailed understanding and typically use purposeful sampling. See the study of Hatch for a summary of various types of purposeful sampling that can be used for interview studies. 12

‘How many participants are needed?’ The most common answer is, ‘it depends’—it depends on the purpose of the study, what kind of study is planned and what questions the study is trying to answer. 12–14 One common standard in qualitative sample sizes is reaching thematic saturation, which refers to the point at which no new thematic information is gathered from participants. Malterud and colleagues discuss the concept of information power , or a qualitative equivalent to statistical power, to determine how many interviews should be collected in a study. They suggest that the size of a sample should depend on the aim, homogeneity of the sample, theory, interview quality and analytic strategy. 14

Step 3: considering ethical issues

An ethical attitude should be present from the very beginning of the research project even before you decide who to interview. 15 This ethical attitude should incorporate respect, sensitivity and tact towards participants throughout the research process. Because semistructured interviewing often requires the participant to reveal sensitive and personal information directly to the interviewer, it is important to consider the power imbalance between the researcher and the participant. In healthcare settings, the interviewer or researcher may be a part of the patient’s healthcare team or have contact with the healthcare team. The researchers should ensure the interviewee that their participation and answers will not influence the care they receive or their relationship with their providers. Other issues to consider include: reducing the risk of harm; protecting the interviewee’s information; adequately informing interviewees about the study purpose and format; and reducing the risk of exploitation. 10

Step 4: planning logistical aspects

Careful planning particularly around the technical aspects of interviews can be the difference between a great interview and a not so great interview. During the preparation phase, the researcher will need to plan and make decisions about the best ways to contact potential interviewees, obtain informed consent, arrange interview times and locations convenient for both participant and researcher, and test recording equipment. Although many experienced researchers have found themselves conducting interviews in less than ideal locations, the interview location should avoid (or at least minimise) interruptions and be appropriate for the interview (quiet, private and able to get a clear recording). 16 For some research projects, the participants’ homes may make sense as the best interview location. 16

Initial contacts can be made through telephone or email and followed up with more details so the individual can make an informed decision about whether they wish to be interviewed. Potential participants should know what to expect in terms of length of time, purpose of the study, why they have been selected and who will be there. In addition, participants should be informed that they can refuse to answer questions or can withdraw from the study at any time, including during the interview itself.

Audio recording the interview is recommended so that the interviewer can concentrate on the interview and build rapport rather than being distracted with extensive note taking 16 (see table 4 for audio-recording tips). Participants should be informed that audio recording is used for data collection and that they can refuse to be audio recorded should they prefer.

Suggestions for successful audio recording of interviews

Most researchers will want to have interviews transcribed verbatim from the audio recording. This allows you to refer to the exact words of participants during the analysis. Although it is possible to conduct analyses from the audio recordings themselves or from notes, it is not ideal. However, transcription can be extremely time consuming and, if not done yourself, can be costly.

In the planning phase of research, you will want to consider whether qualitative research software (eg, NVivo, ATLAS.ti, MAXQDA, Dedoose, and so on) will be used to assist with organising, managing and analysis. While these tools are helpful in the management of qualitative data, it is important to consider your research budget, the cost of the software and the learning curve associated with using a new system.

Step 5: developing the interview guide

Semistructured interviews include a short list of ‘guiding’ questions that are supplemented by follow-up and probing questions that are dependent on the interviewee’s responses. 8 17 All questions should be open ended, neutral, clear and avoid leading language. In addition, questions should use familiar language and avoid jargon.

Most interviews will start with an easy, context-setting question before moving to more difficult or in-depth questions. 17 Table 5 gives details of the types of guiding questions including ‘grand tour’ questions, 18 core questions and planned and unplanned follow-up questions.

Questions and prompts in semistructured interviewing

To illustrate, online supplementary appendix A presents a sample interview guide from our study of weight gain during pregnancy among young women. We start with the prompt, ‘Tell me about how your pregnancy has been so far’ to initiate conversation about their thoughts and feelings during pregnancy. The subsequent questions will elicit responses to help answer our research question about young women’s perspectives related to weight gain during pregnancy.

Supplementary data

After developing the guiding questions, it is important to pilot test the interview. Having a good sense of the guide helps you to pace the interview (and not run out of time), use a conversational tone and make necessary adjustments to the questions.

Like all qualitative research, interviewing is iterative in nature—data collection and analysis occur simultaneously, which may result in changes to the guiding questions as the study progresses. Questions that are not effective may be replaced with other questions and additional probes can be added to explore new topics that are introduced by participants in previous interviews. 10

Step 6: establishing trust and rapport

Interviews are a special form of relationship, where the interviewer and interviewee converse about important and often personal topics. The interviewer must build rapport quickly by listening attentively and respectfully to the information shared by the interviewee. 19 As the interview progresses, the interviewer must continue to demonstrate respect, encourage the interviewee to share their perspectives and acknowledge the sensitive nature of the conversation. 20

To establish rapport, it is important to be authentic and open to the interviewee’s point of view. It is possible that the participants you recruit for your study will have preconceived notions about research, which may include mistrust. As a result, it is important to describe why you are conducting the research and how their participation is meaningful. In an interview relationship, the interviewee is the expert and should be treated as such—you are relying on the interviewee to enhance your understanding and add to your research. Small behaviours that can enhance rapport include: dressing professionally but not overly formal; avoiding jargon or slang; and using a normal conversational tone. Because interviewees will be discussing their experience, having some awareness of contextual or cultural factors that may influence their perspectives may be helpful as background knowledge.

Step 7: conducting the interview

Location and set-up.

The interview should have already been scheduled at a convenient time and location for the interviewee. The location should be private, ideally with a closed door, rather than a public place. It is helpful if there is a room where you can speak privately without interruption, and where it is quiet enough to hear and audio record the interview. Within the interview space, Josselson 15 suggests an arrangement with a comfortable distance between the interviewer and interviewee with a low table in between for the recorder and any materials (consent forms, questionnaires, water, and so on).

Beginning the interview

Many interviewers start with chatting to break the ice and attempt to establish commonalities, rapport and trust. Most interviews will need to begin with a brief explanation of the research study, consent/assent procedures, rationale for talking to that particular interviewee and description of the interview format and agenda. 11 It can also be helpful if the interviewer shares a little about who they are and why they are interested in the topic. The recording equipment should have already been tested thoroughly but interviewers may want to double-check that the audio equipment is working and remind participants about the reason for recording.

Interviewer stance

During the interview, the interviewer should adopt a friendly and non-judgemental attitude. You will want to maintain a warm and conversational tone, rather than a rote, question-answer approach. It is important to recognise the potential power differential as a researcher. Conveying a sense of being in the interview together and that you as the interviewer are a person just like the interviewee can help ease any discomfort. 15

Active listening

During a face-to-face interview, there is an opportunity to observe social and non-verbal cues of the interviewee. These cues may come in the form of voice, body language, gestures and intonation, and can supplement the interviewee’s verbal response and can give clues to the interviewer about the process of the interview. 21 Listening is the key to successful interviewing. 22 Listening should be ‘attentive, empathic, nonjudgmental, listening in order to invite, and engender talk’ 15 15 (p 66). Silence, nods, smiles and utterances can also encourage further elaboration from the interviewee.

Continuing the interview

As the interview progresses, the interviewer can repeat the words used by the interviewee, use planned and unplanned follow-up questions that invite further clarification, exploration or elaboration. As DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree 10 explain: ‘Throughout the interview, the goal of the interviewer is to encourage the interviewee to share as much information as possible, unselfconsciously and in his or her own words’ (p 317). Some interviewees are more forthcoming and will offer many details of their experiences without much probing required. Others will require prompting and follow-up to elicit sufficient detail.

As a result, follow-up questions are equally important to the core questions in a semistructured interview. Prompts encourage people to continue talking and they can elicit more details needed to understand the topic. Examples of verbal probes are repeating the participant’s words, summarising the main idea or expressing interest with verbal agreement. 8 11 See table 6 for probing techniques and example probes we have used in our own interviewing.

Probing techniques for semistructured interviews (modified from Bernard 30 )

Step 8: memoing and reflection

After an interview, it is essential for the interviewer to begin to reflect on both the process and the content of the interview. During the actual interview, it can be difficult to take notes or begin reflecting. Even if you think you will remember a particular moment, you likely will not be able to recall each moment with sufficient detail. Therefore, interviewers should always record memos —notes about what you are learning from the data. 23 24 There are different approaches to recording memos: you can reflect on several specific ideas, or create a running list of thoughts. Memos are also useful for improving the quality of subsequent interviews.

Step 9: analysing the data

The data analysis strategy should also be developed during planning stages because analysis occurs concurrently with data collection. 25 The researcher will take notes, modify the data collection procedures and write reflective memos throughout the data collection process. This begins the process of data analysis.

The data analysis strategy used in your study will depend on your research question and qualitative design—see the study of Creswell for an overview of major qualitative approaches. 26 The general process for analysing and interpreting most interviews involves reviewing the data (in the form of transcripts, audio recordings or detailed notes), applying descriptive codes to the data and condensing and categorising codes to look for patterns. 24 27 These patterns can exist within a single interview or across multiple interviews depending on the research question and design. Qualitative computer software programs can be used to help organise and manage interview data.

Step 10: demonstrating the trustworthiness of the research

Similar to validity and reliability, qualitative research can be assessed on trustworthiness. 9 28 There are several criteria used to establish trustworthiness: credibility (whether the findings accurately and fairly represent the data), transferability (whether the findings can be applied to other settings and contexts), confirmability (whether the findings are biased by the researcher) and dependability (whether the findings are consistent and sustainable over time).

Step 11: presenting findings in a paper or report

When presenting the results of interview analysis, researchers will often report themes or narratives that describe the broad range of experiences evidenced in the data. This involves providing an in-depth description of participant perspectives and being sure to include multiple perspectives. 12 In interview research, the participant words are your data. Presenting findings in a report requires the integration of quotes into a more traditional written format.

Conclusions

Though semistructured interviews are often an effective way to collect open-ended data, there are some disadvantages as well. One common problem with interviewing is that not all interviewees make great participants. 12 29 Some individuals are hard to engage in conversation or may be reluctant to share about sensitive or personal topics. Difficulty interviewing some participants can affect experienced and novice interviewers. Some common problems include not doing a good job of probing or asking for follow-up questions, failure to actively listen, not having a well-developed interview guide with open-ended questions and asking questions in an insensitive way. Outside of pitfalls during the actual interview, other problems with semistructured interviewing may be underestimating the resources required to recruit participants, interview, transcribe and analyse the data.

Despite their limitations, semistructured interviews can be a productive way to collect open-ended data from participants. In our research, we have interviewed children and adolescents about their stress experiences and coping behaviours, young women about their thoughts and behaviours during pregnancy, practitioners about the care they provide to patients and countless other key informants about health-related topics. Because the intent is to understand participant experiences, the possible research topics are endless.

Due to the close relationships family physicians have with their patients, the unique settings in which they work, and in their advocacy, semistructured interviews are an attractive approach for family medicine researchers, even if working in a setting with limited research resources. When seeking to balance both the relational focus of interviewing and the necessary rigour of research, we recommend: prioritising listening over talking; using clear language and avoiding jargon; and deeply engaging in the interview process by actively listening, expressing empathy, demonstrating openness to the participant’s worldview and thanking the participant for helping you to understand their experience.

Further Reading

• Edwards R, & Holland J. (2013). What is qualitative interviewing?: A&C Black.
• Josselson R. Interviewing for qualitative inquiry: A relational approach. Guilford Press, 2013.
• Kvale S. InterViews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing. SAGE, London, 1996.
• Pope C, & Mays N. (Eds). (2006). Qualitative research in health care.

Correction notice: This article has been corrected. Reference details have been updated.

Contributors: Both authors contributed equally to this work.

Funding: The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interests: None declared.

Patient consent for publication: Not required.

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

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Methodology

Semi-Structured Interview | Definition, Guide & Examples

Published on January 27, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on June 22, 2023.

A semi-structured interview is a data collection method that relies on asking questions within a predetermined thematic framework. However, the questions are not set in order or in phrasing.

In research, semi-structured interviews are often qualitative in nature. They are generally used as an exploratory tool in marketing, social science, survey methodology, and other research fields.

They are also common in field research with many interviewers, giving everyone the same theoretical framework, but allowing them to investigate different facets of the research question .

• Structured interviews : The questions are predetermined in both topic and order.
• Unstructured interviews : None of the questions are predetermined.
• Focus group interviews : The questions are presented to a group instead of one individual.

Table of contents

What is a semi-structured interview, when to use a semi-structured interview, advantages of semi-structured interviews, disadvantages of semi-structured interviews, semi-structured interview questions, how to conduct a semi-structured interview, how to analyze a semi-structured interview, presenting your results (with example), other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about semi-structured interviews.

Semi-structured interviews are a blend of structured and unstructured types of interviews.

• Unlike in an unstructured interview, the interviewer has an idea of what questions they will ask.
• Unlike in a structured interview, the phrasing and order of the questions is not set.

Semi-structured interviews are often open-ended, allowing for flexibility. Asking set questions in a set order allows for easy comparison between respondents, but it can be limiting. Having less structure can help you see patterns, while still allowing for comparisons between respondents.

Semi-structured interviews are best used when:

• You have prior interview experience. Spontaneous questions are deceptively challenging, and it’s easy to accidentally ask a leading question or make a participant uneasy.
• Your research question is exploratory in nature. Participant answers can guide future research questions and help you develop a more robust knowledge base for future research.

Just like in structured interviews, it is critical that you remain organized and develop a system for keeping track of participant responses. However, since the questions are less set than in a structured interview, the data collection and analysis become a bit more complex.

Differences between different types of interviews

Make sure to choose the type of interview that suits your research best. This table shows the most important differences between the four types.

Semi-structured interviews come with many advantages.

Best of both worlds

No distractions, detail and richness.

However, semi-structured interviews also have their downsides.

Low validity

High risk of research bias, difficult to develop good semi-structured interview questions.

Since they are often open-ended in style, it can be challenging to write semi-structured interview questions that get you the information you’re looking for without biasing your responses. Here are a few tips:

• Define what areas or topics you will be focusing on prior to the interview. This will help you write a framework of questions that zero in on the information you seek.
• Write yourself a guide to refer to during the interview, so you stay focused. It can help to start with the simpler questions first, moving into the more complex ones after you have established a comfortable rapport.
• Be as clear and concise as possible, avoiding jargon and compound sentences.
• How often per week do you go to the gym? a) 1 time; b) 2 times; c) 3 times; d) 4 or more times
• If yes: What feelings does going to the gym bring out in you?
• If no: What do you prefer to do instead?
• If yes: How did this membership affect your job performance? Did you stay longer in the role than you would have if there were no membership?

Once you’ve determined that a semi-structured interview is the right fit for your research topic , you can proceed with the following steps.

Step 1: Set your goals and objectives

You can use guiding questions as you conceptualize your research question, such as:

• What are you trying to learn or achieve from a semi-structured interview?
• Why are you choosing a semi-structured interview as opposed to a different type of interview, or another research method?

If you want to proceed with a semi-structured interview, you can start designing your questions.

Step 2: Design your questions

Try to stay simple and concise, and phrase your questions clearly. If your topic is sensitive or could cause an emotional response, be mindful of your word choices.

One of the most challenging parts of a semi-structured interview is knowing when to ask follow-up or spontaneous related questions. For this reason, having a guide to refer back to is critical. Hypothesizing what other questions could arise from your participants’ answers may also be helpful.

Step 3: Assemble your participants

There are a few sampling methods you can use to recruit your interview participants, such as:

• Voluntary response sampling : For example, sending an email to a campus mailing list and sourcing participants from responses.
• Stratified sampling of a particular characteristic trait of interest to your research, such as age, race, ethnicity, or gender identity.

Step 4: Decide on your medium

It’s important to determine ahead of time how you will be conducting your interview. You should decide whether you’ll be conducting it live or with a pen-and-paper format. If conducted in real time, you also need to decide if in person, over the phone, or via videoconferencing is the best option for you.

Note that each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages:

• Pen-and-paper may be easier for you to organize and analyze, but you will receive more prepared answers, which may affect the reliability of your data.
• In-person interviews can lead to nervousness or interviewer effects, where the respondent feels pressured to respond in a manner they believe will please you or incentivize you to like them.

Step 5: Conduct your interviews

As you conduct your interviews, keep environmental conditions as constant as you can to avoid bias. Pay attention to your body language (e.g., nodding, raising eyebrows), and moderate your tone of voice.

Relatedly, one of the biggest challenges with semi-structured interviews is ensuring that your questions remain unbiased. This can be especially challenging with any spontaneous questions or unscripted follow-ups that you ask your participants.

After you’re finished conducting your interviews, it’s time to analyze your results. First, assign each of your participants a number or pseudonym for organizational purposes.

The next step in your analysis is to transcribe the audio or video recordings. You can then conduct a content or thematic analysis to determine your categories, looking for patterns of responses that stand out to you and test your hypotheses .

Transcribing interviews

Before you get started with transcription, decide whether to conduct verbatim transcription or intelligent verbatim transcription.

• If pauses, laughter, or filler words like “umm” or “like” affect your analysis and research conclusions, conduct verbatim transcription and include them.
• If not, you can conduct intelligent verbatim transcription, which excludes fillers, fixes any grammatical issues, and is usually easier to analyze.

Transcribing presents a great opportunity for you to cleanse your data . Here, you can identify and address any inconsistencies or questions that come up as you listen.

Your supervisor might ask you to add the transcriptions to the appendix of your paper.

Coding semi-structured interviews

Next, it’s time to conduct your thematic or content analysis . This often involves “coding” words, patterns, or recurring responses, separating them into labels or categories for more robust analysis.

Due to the open-ended nature of many semi-structured interviews, you will most likely be conducting thematic analysis, rather than content analysis.

• You closely examine your data to identify common topics, ideas, or patterns. This can help you draw preliminary conclusions about your participants’ views, knowledge or experiences.
• After you have been through your responses a few times, you can collect the data into groups identified by their “code.” These codes give you a condensed overview of the main points and patterns identified by your data.
• Next, it’s time to organize these codes into themes. Themes are generally broader than codes, and you’ll often combine a few codes under one theme. After identifying your themes, make sure that these themes appropriately represent patterns in responses.

Analyzing semi-structured interviews

Once you’re confident in your themes, you can take either an inductive or a deductive approach.

• An inductive approach is more open-ended, allowing your data to determine your themes.
• A deductive approach is the opposite. It involves investigating whether your data confirm preconceived themes or ideas.

After your data analysis, the next step is to report your findings in a research paper .

• Your methodology section describes how you collected the data (in this case, describing your semi-structured interview process) and explains how you justify or conceptualize your analysis.
• Your discussion and results sections usually address each of your coded categories.
• You can then conclude with the main takeaways and avenues for further research.

Example of interview methodology for a research paper

Let’s say you are interested in vegan students on your campus. You have noticed that the number of vegan students seems to have increased since your first year, and you are curious what caused this shift.

You identify a few potential options based on literature:

• Perceptions about personal health or the perceived “healthiness” of a vegan diet
• Concerns about animal welfare and the meat industry
• Increased climate awareness, especially in regards to animal products
• Availability of more vegan options, making the lifestyle change easier

Anecdotally, you hypothesize that students are more aware of the impact of animal products on the ongoing climate crisis, and this has influenced many to go vegan. However, you cannot rule out the possibility of the other options, such as the new vegan bar in the dining hall.

Since your topic is exploratory in nature and you have a lot of experience conducting interviews in your work-study role as a research assistant, you decide to conduct semi-structured interviews.

You have a friend who is a member of a campus club for vegans and vegetarians, so you send a message to the club to ask for volunteers. You also spend some time at the campus dining hall, approaching students at the vegan bar asking if they’d like to participate.

Here are some questions you could ask:

• Do you find vegan options on campus to be: excellent; good; fair; average; poor?
• How long have you been a vegan?
• Follow-up questions can probe the strength of this decision (i.e., was it overwhelmingly one reason, or more of a mix?)

Depending on your participants’ answers to these questions, ask follow-ups as needed for clarification, further information, or elaboration.

• Do you think consuming animal products contributes to climate change? → The phrasing implies that you, the interviewer, do think so. This could bias your respondents, incentivizing them to answer affirmatively as well.
• What do you think is the biggest effect of animal product consumption? → This phrasing ensures the participant is giving their own opinion, and may even yield some surprising responses that enrich your analysis.

After conducting your interviews and transcribing your data, you can then conduct thematic analysis, coding responses into different categories. Since you began your research with several theories about campus veganism that you found equally compelling, you would use the inductive approach.

Once you’ve identified themes and patterns from your data, you can draw inferences and conclusions. Your results section usually addresses each theme or pattern you found, describing each in turn, as well as how often you came across them in your analysis. Feel free to include lots of (properly anonymized) examples from the data as evidence, too.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Student’s  t -distribution
• Normal distribution
• Null and Alternative Hypotheses
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Data cleansing
• Reproducibility vs Replicability
• Peer review
• Prospective cohort study

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Placebo effect
• Hawthorne effect
• Hindsight bias
• Affect heuristic
• Social desirability bias

A semi-structured interview is a blend of structured and unstructured types of interviews. Semi-structured interviews are best used when:

• You have prior interview experience. Spontaneous questions are deceptively challenging, and it’s easy to accidentally ask a leading question or make a participant uncomfortable.

The four most common types of interviews are:

• Structured interviews : The questions are predetermined in both topic and order. 
• Semi-structured interviews : A few questions are predetermined, but other questions aren’t planned.

Social desirability bias is the tendency for interview participants to give responses that will be viewed favorably by the interviewer or other participants. It occurs in all types of interviews and surveys , but is most common in semi-structured interviews , unstructured interviews , and focus groups .

Social desirability bias can be mitigated by ensuring participants feel at ease and comfortable sharing their views. Make sure to pay attention to your own body language and any physical or verbal cues, such as nodding or widening your eyes.

This type of bias can also occur in observations if the participants know they’re being observed. They might alter their behavior accordingly.

The interviewer effect is a type of bias that emerges when a characteristic of an interviewer (race, age, gender identity, etc.) influences the responses given by the interviewee.

There is a risk of an interviewer effect in all types of interviews , but it can be mitigated by writing really high-quality interview questions.

Inductive reasoning is a bottom-up approach, while deductive reasoning is top-down.

Inductive reasoning takes you from the specific to the general, while in deductive reasoning, you make inferences by going from general premises to specific conclusions.

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Semi-structured Interviews

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Open-ended interview ; Qualitative interview ; Systematic exploratory interview ; Thematic interview

The semi-structured interview is an exploratory interview used most often in the social sciences for qualitative research purposes or to gather clinical data. While it generally follows a guide or protocol that is devised prior to the interview and is focused on a core topic to provide a general structure, the semi-structured interview also allows for discovery, with space to follow topical trajectories as the conversation unfolds.

Introduction

Qualitative interviews exist on a continuum, ranging from free-ranging, exploratory discussions to highly structured interviews. On one end is unstructured interviewing, deployed by approaches such as ethnography, grounded theory, and phenomenology. This style of interview involves a changing protocol that evolves based on participants’ responses and will differ from one participant to the next. On the other end of the continuum...

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Magaldi, D., Berler, M. (2020). Semi-structured Interviews. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_857

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Defining thought broadcast. Semi-structured literature review

Affiliation.

• 1 Academic Clinical Psychiatry, University of Sheffield, UK.
• PMID: 14519605
• DOI: 10.1192/bjp.183.4.287

Background: The symptom of thought broadcast may have diagnostic significance but its definition varies.

Aims: To examine multiple definitions of thought broadcast in different texts, to synthesise their common features and to undertake local and national surveys of psychiatrists to determine which definitions they endorse.

Method: A semi-structured literature review of electronic databases, supplemented by a manual search of psychiatric textbooks, conceptual analyses and postal surveys of clinicians in North Trent (58 trainees and 70 consultants) and throughout the UK (49 professors of general adult psychiatry).

Results: Thought broadcast is susceptible to multiple definitions: three exemplars were identified in the literature, each endorsed by influential authors. Among those psychiatrists responding to the survey (approximately 59%), some endorsed each definition of thought broadcast.

Conclusions: Thought broadcast means different things to different people. Inconsistent terminology might impair communication in clinical and research contexts.

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To evaluate the experience and effectiveness of six semi-structured writing retreats on research publication quantity and quality for nursing and midwifery academics and research students.

Research publications are necessary to develop a track record to gain competitive funding and for promotion. Publications also improve the standing of universities because their performance is measured in-part by research outputs. However, there are challenges to writing for publication, especially for new nursing and midwifery academics and research students. Therefore, four of the authors initiated semi-structured writing retreats to support nursing and midwifery academics and research students to overcome these challenges.

A mixed methods exploratory sequential design consisting of two distinct phases and data collection methods. In phase one, an online evaluation was administered to collect participant experiences which were then analysed using content analysis. In phase two, data about the quantity and quality of publications arising from each retreat was collected, and descriptive statistics performed.

A total of 70 participants responded to the online evaluation. Qualitative analysis of their responses demonstrated that the writing retreats were highly valued as they offered a collaborative environment with dedicated time to focus on writing for publication. Quantitative analysis identified 81 publications were planned over the six writing retreats. Of these, 60 have been published, 5 are under review, 5 have not yet been submitted, and 11 were abandoned.

Conclusions

Findings demonstrated that our six semi-structured writing retreats enabled and developed nursing and midwifery academics and research students writing for publication. Semi-structured writing retreats are a research investment that enabled preparation of high-quality publications by offering protected time to write, expert peer review and collaboration and networking opportunities.

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Introduction

Writing retreats provide an environment to engage in collaborative writing, which is especially important for new nursing and midwifery academics and research students to help demystify the process and grow their confidence. Writing retreats are often semi-structured, offering opportunities for distraction-free writing, expert peer feedback on manuscripts as well as researcher training opportunities. In a recent integrative review, several benefits of writing retreats which contributed to increased publication outputs were identified, including: protected time to write, support to develop academic writing skills, and collaboration and mentoring from expert peers [ 1 ].

Writing for publication is a key skill for academics and research students because high-quality research outputs are used in-part as a measure of academic success [ 2 ]. A research output track record is also a recognised metric of university performance. By publishing their research, nursing and midwifery academics and research students create and share new knowledge to improve healthcare and advance the nursing and midwifery professions. For academics, a growing publication record is necessary to gain competitive research funding, achieve promotion and attract research students. Despite these expectations, new academics often describe their professional identities as educators rather than researchers who must write and publish. This can create tension for new academics because of the publish or perish expectation [ 3 ] which has seen increasing pressure for individual academics to publish [ 4 ].

While conducting research is given priority, writing for publication may receive little attention, and consequently publications may be abandoned [ 4 ]. Without a clear understanding of the writing process or support to grow the necessary academic skills to write, the expectations of new academics and research students may be misaligned with the realities of writing for publication. New nursing and midwifery academics also describe being under considerable pressure to simultaneously gain higher degrees, design and deliver high-quality teaching, supervise research students, as well as undertake and publish research upon their transition, yet they may struggle to meet all of these expectations concurrently [ 5 ].

The research culture and environment of universities are influential predictors of individual academic and organisational research performance, measured in part by publications in high-quality journals [ 6 ]. Switching from a siloed and competitive writing culture to a social and collaborative one through co-writing can improve publication outputs [ 7 ]. Many scholars have therefore championed academic writing retreats or workshops to focus on researcher development to be able to successfully write for publication [ 8 ]. Through purposeful planning, writing retreats can be experienced as, and benefit from, communities of practice, where a shared group of people cohere through appropriated enterprise on a mutual goal. The core elements of community of practice that should be given careful attention, include: mutuality of engagement, identity of participation [ 9 , 10 ] and legitimate peripheral participation [ 10 ] which are defined in Table  1 .

To build the circumstances for a successful research environment and to grow nursing and midwifery academic and research student writing for publication capacity, four (GB, JM, LB & PLR) of the authors developed bi-annual, semi-structured writing retreats in 2019, with the intent of enculturating researcher identity, building strong collaborative relationships and ensuring participants have protected time to write up their research. All academics and research students in the school were eligible to apply to attend, and if successful, were supported with a scholarship which covered meals, venue hire, and for an off-campus retreat, accommodation at the venue. Scholarships were competitive and based on readiness to write up research findings. Participants were eligible to attend more than one writing retreat, but needed to demonstrate submission of the manuscript they were writing at the previous retreat and work on a new manuscript at the next retreat.

Each semi-structured writing retreat was held over three-days and two-nights in early July and December, outside of peak teaching periods. They have been held both on and off-campus, and once online in February 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The off-campus writing retreats are held at a picturesque resort, approximately 150kms from Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, nestled between wetlands and the pristine beaches formed by the Bass Strait, on the land of The Bunurong Peoples. Each writing retreat offered 14 h of dedicated writing time in blocks of 2–3 h across the three-days. Each day featured opt-in research training activities which were tailored to the experience and skill level of the participants, for example: choosing a journal for publication, nailing the abstract, tips and tricks for writing “mojo”, and bouncing back after reviewer rejection.

The aim of this study was to explore the experiences and effectiveness of a series of six semi-structured writing retreats on nursing and midwifery academic and research student writing for publication. Two questions guided this study: (1) What is the experience of nursing and midwifery academics and research students attending semi-structured writing retreats, and (2) What impact do a series of semi-structured writing retreats have on participants research outputs?

The design was a mixed methods exploratory sequential design consisting of two distinct phases and data collection methods. This approach allowed us to explore how the experience of the semi-structured writing retreats developed participant writing for publication. In phase one, qualitative data were collected at the end of each retreat through an anonymous online survey that included Likert-scale questions and free-text responses. Only the free-text responses were analysed for this study. In phase two, quantitative data, including the number and quality of publications arising from each writing retreat were collected and analysed using descriptive statistics.

Participants

Nursing and midwifery academics from Assistant Lecturer to Professor level and research students from Honours to PhD participated in the writing retreats. The participants had mixed publication experience, with some writing their first manuscript.

This study was conducted at a single School of Nursing and Midwifery at an Australian university. During the period of this study, the school had over 70 academic staff, 25 professional staff and 2,600 students across undergraduate and postgraduate courses. The School typically has 31 students enrolled in their PhD program each year.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Retrospective ethics approval and a waiver of consent was obtained from the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (35531).

Data collection

At the end of each writing retreat, participants were invited to complete an anonymous online evaluation via a Google Form. Completion of the evaluation was voluntary. The evaluation included Likert-type questions and open-ended answers to explain ratings. For example, a Likert-type question included ‘How would you rate your satisfaction with the writing block sessions?’ whilst an open-ended question included ‘How was the writing retreat beneficial for developing relationships/connections with other participants?’. Research outputs arising from each retreat were recorded by the research office. This data included participant role, output type, status of the publication (as of 19th February 2024), journal name, journal quartile ranking and impact factor, Altmetric score and Google Scholar citations. If a publication was abandoned the reason for abandonment, if available, was recorded. Prior to data analysis, data cleaning was undertaken by LB and JB.

Data analysis

Qualitative analysis.

In phase one, content analysis was undertaken “to provide knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon under study” through the evaluation free-text responses [ 11 ]. A deductive coding approach was applied, with a set of pre-defined deductive codes developed in a codebook. These codes were derived from concepts from Lave and Wenger’s communities of practice concepts and included: mutuality of engagement, identity of participation and legitimate peripheral participation [ 9 , 12 ]. Credibility was established by two authors (JB & GB) blindly coding the data and then discussing any disagreements [ 13 ].

Quantitative analysis

In phase two, descriptive statistics were undertaken to measure the quantity and quality of publications arising from each retreat. The quality of the publications was measured through Clarivate Journal Citation Reports, specifically the impact factor and quartile ranking of the journal according to the year the publication was published. Journals are ranked into quartiles (Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4) with Q1 being the top 25%. Quartile rankings are derived from journal impact factor data. This data can be influenced by a myriad of factors, including the type of publication, for example, review articles often attract more citations [ 14 ]. Altmetric scores and Google Scholar citations were also assessed to determine the reach of the publications.

Rigour was established as described by Lincoln and Guba [ 15 ]. To maintain privacy, but also enable rigour in the breadth of participant data, each participant has been allocated an ID number based on the retreat they attended (numbered 1–6) and the order in which their feedback was received in the online evaluation, for example, the person who attended the first retreat and submitted their feedback third is labelled in the results as R1P3.

Over the six writing retreats a total of 112 participants attended: 94 academics from Assistant Lecturer to Professor level and 18 research students from Honours to PhD level. Participants were able to attend more than one writing retreat. Table  2 identifies the role and number of participants who have attended across the six writing retreats.

Qualitative findings

A total of 70 participants (62% of those eligible) submitted written comments to the online survey across five writing retreats: no data were collected for the February 2021 writing retreat due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing an abrupt end to the writing retreat.

Mutuality of engagement

The ability to engage with other participants at the writing retreats and share both tangible and intangible efforts to establish relationships and achieve a common purpose was evident. While a few respondents preferred solitary writing, the majority were motivated to write when in the presence of others: “I felt motivated by other people writing” (R1P3). Sharing the same writing time and physical space meant that writers were “all on the same level” (R1P10) sharing the “time, energy and inspiration” (R1P10) of the retreat facilitators which encouraged writers to be “as productive as possible” (R2P2). There was a shared sense that by writing together it “enabled tasks to progress quicker than normal” (R3P13) because writers could “support each other when [they] had [writing] blocks” (R2P2). Writers having “similar issues and problems promoted sharing of knowledge” (R1P4) to sustain writing motivation throughout each retreat.

Sharing the writing experience meant that peer and expert feedback was readily available to enable and develop writing for publication: “overall support for all things academic writing was instantly at hand” (R3P14). Participants described having enthusiastic and experienced writing mentors as “invaluable” (R3P11) because they “received constructive feedback” (R1P7) and “pearls of wisdom” (R1P11) that provided the “perfect balance between support and challenge” (R1P16) to progress their writing. For novice writers, the “constant reassuring message[s]” (R1P16) encouraged them to continue writing during the retreat. For more experienced writers, they utilised the retreats to not only work on their own writing but to “[support] colleagues with developing their research/writing skills” (R3P15). Research students who attended appreciated dedicated time with their supervisors, thanking them in their responses for their “time and expertise” (R6P5) reviewing their writing and providing timely feedback.

The semi-structured and flexible approach was highly valued by participants. The “opt in, rather than compulsory” (R1P1) format of the research training activities meant that writers could continue writing or choose to take a break from writing and participate. One participant appreciated the “great balance between writing, interaction, [and] great teaching” (R3P9) whilst another valued “being given a freedom to choose where to write [and] that [they] could choose for how long to write” (R5P4). Not all writers chose to attend the research training sessions, but they acknowledged that whilst the sessions were “not necessary for [them], [they] can see value for others” (R6P10) highlighting appreciation for the shared learning experiences that were available. The semi-structured approach meant that writers experienced a “good mix of individual and group” (R5P6) writing time. The flexible approach also meant that participants were able to “spend time with people that [they] wouldn’t normally” (R1P14) and talk with “people about research but also about topics beyond research” (R1P17). The flexible and “social nature” (R2P2) of the retreats meant that writers were able to take time to hear about and learn from “what others are doing” (R2P2). Several participants identified that “having the ability to go elsewhere (to cabin, outside) was a good option” (R2P8) if they needed solitary thinking and writing time.

Five writing retreats were held face-to-face and one was held online. The contrasting experiences between the retreat formats highlighted how the physical environment influenced how participants were able to engage with and respond to each other. Overall, participants did not experience the online writing retreat as positively as the face-to-face retreats, finding that the retreat was “not [as] beneficial as [it was held] online” (R3P7). One participant of the online retreat missed the opportunity of seeing experienced academics and retreat facilitators “totally relaxed” (R1P15) which impacted on them feeling comfortable enough to approach them for feedback. Participants observed that the online retreat “had a big impact on developing relationships” (R3P5) and “developing connection” (R3P10) with other participants, demonstrating the value participants place on sharing the writing experience together. Another participant reflected that “no real connections [were] made” during the online retreat (R3P2). Distractions were more commonly identified during the online writing retreat with some participants finding it a “little tricker to switch off from work commitments” (R3P6).

Identity of participation

The feeling of becoming a writer, and overcoming feelings of vulnerability, developed with time and participation in the writing blocks and research training opportunities. For most participants, prioritising writing during the retreat was evident: “went overtime with the blocks and at times just kept going in the moment” (R1P7). Some participants were conflicted about continuing to write or attending the opt-in research training sessions: “I would have liked to attend more but was conflicted as I had my writing mojo on, and wanted to keep writing while I was on a roll” (R1P17). One participant identified that the writing retreats “made [them] aware of focusing on writing without any other disturbances” (R1P21). Another participant “forced [themselves] to keep to the writing blocks and [were] actually very productive” (R3P8). Prioritising writing had many benefits for participants including feeling “like a weight had lifted off [their] shoulders” (R3P9) on the final afternoon when they identified their progress. There was a shared sense of “a lot of progress” towards writing up research results (R4P10). Most participants described “productive work” (R3P12) during the retreats including making “good progress on an aspect of [a] paper [they] had been stuck on for quite a few months” (R3P13). Progress made during the writing retreats meant that participants were “motivated to finish the paper” (R3P14) and submit shortly after the retreat. However, some participants felt disillusioned about their ability to continue writing on return to their usual academic responsibilities: “I just can never block out time – even with the suggestions given – I honestly don’t have the time” (R3P11). Another participant felt concerned that writing progress would slow “due to [their] teaching commitments” (R5P2).

Many of the participants were able to recognise the progress they made, which contributed to forming their identity as a writer: “we all feel vulnerable when it comes to writing…[but] it built my confidence” (R2P9). Another participant stated “I feel like my research brain has been challenged but has also grown, which is great” (R1P18). Developing an identity as a writer was seen in quotes like: “would not have thought [it] was possible” (R1P15) and by overcoming “the first major hump of getting something on paper” (R5P11). By the end of each retreat, many participants were about to “complete draft 1, which is epic” (R1P1).

Legitimate peripheral participation

Sanctioning writing time enabled newcomers, including graduate research students, and academics at Lecturer level to dedicate time to the activities of the community of practice. The writing retreats provided “protected time to write” (R1P17) which offered teaching-intensive academics a “different focus” from their usual work (R1P10) and “guilt free time to write” (R1P18). Sanctioned writing time away from the usual competing responsibilities of academia allowed a collective and “concentrated effort to publish” (R1P15). An important aspect to engaging in protected writing time was the “emphasis that the facilitators put on protecting our time” (R1P16) which was “genuinely sanctioned” (R2P5) giving them a “licence to focus on [our] manuscripts” (R2P5). Dedicated writing time to “immerse yourself into the writing” (R2P2) was described as “very rare” (R1P20) whilst “being given permission” (R3P11) to spend dedicated time writing meant that everyone was on “equal footing” (R5P11). One participant identified that the retreats “demonstrated how much I can write” (R5P13) without distractions by “allowing the other tasks to wait” (R5P13). Whilst mostly positive, not everyone found the writing time allocated suitable or productive, with some participants finding it difficult to “maintain momentum for 3 days straight” (R6P2) whilst others “struggled to write and [then became] despondent” (R2P7).

For retreat participants, “access to such experienced academics” (R1P1) was central to believing they could achieve writing success, especially for novice academics. There was a perceived “commitment to staff development” (R1P11) evident in “time to discuss writing” (R2P2) with “like minded people” (R2P8). One participant identified that they “did not have [the] knowledge” to “choose a journal [or] write a manuscript” (R3P10) prior to attending, but “learnt an incredible amount” (R3P10) about these aspects during the retreat, reaching a first draft of their manuscript by the end. The “opportunity to learn new skills” (R3P13) from “experts sharing their experience” (R3P14) supported participant development of writing for publication. Participants were able to “gain advice and then have time to focus and write” (R6P5) with one research student sharing how their supervisor encouraged them to attend and “provided support so that [they] could finish [their] draft” (R6P1).

Participants appreciated the indulgence of writing, with one participant savouring the “sacred time to write” (R1P13) whilst another enjoyed the “beautiful inspiring location” (R2P8). All participants were complimentary to those “who made it possible” (R3P7). The “exec [executive] support to switch off emails” (R3P5) and focus specifically on writing for publication was also valued. One participant described their gratitude at “an otherwise impossible opportunity to write” (R5P8) whilst another appreciated “quarantined time to write” (R6P3) that came with being “away from campus” (R6P3). The retreats were also described as a “fantastic initiative” (R6P10) to exist in the “research space” (R1P9) to focus on writing. Participants who attended “looked forward to next year” (R5P2) and further opportunities to apply for a scholarship to attend another writing retreat. Despite the reality that research and writing for publication are core to the role of an academic, participants repeatedly described their gratitude at the “opportunity…to be away from work” (R5P10) where they could focus on writing for publication.

Quantitative results

Data on the quantity and quality of research outputs arising from each participant or team was included up until 19th February 2024.

Quantity of publications

Each of the writing retreats has generated high-quality research outputs. A total of 81 publications over six writing retreats were planned. Of these, 60 had been published (74%), 5 were under review (6%), 5 had not yet been submitted (6%), and 11 were abandoned (13%). Of the 11 publications that were abandoned, three were planned from Masters research and two from PhD research. The remaining six abandoned publications were planned to be written by academics at Lecturer level, with two of these academics leaving the university shortly after attending their respective writing retreat. Of the four-remaining abandoned publications, reasons were not provided. A summary of the research output data is included in Table  3 .

Quality of publications

Of the 60 published research outputs, 43 (71%) were published in Q1 or Q2 journals, with a further 11 (18%) published in Q3 or Q4 journals, and the remaining six (10%) not ranked in Clarivate. For the 60 research outputs published, the median impact factor in Clarivate was 3.19 (IQR 2.38–3.91). The highest ranked research output, based on journal quartile ranking and impact factor, was a systematic review published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (Q1; IF 44.54; measured in Clarivate) by an Assistant Lecturer following the July 2020 writing retreat.

The range of Altmetric scores for all of the 60 published research outputs was 0–67, with the highest score (67) being for a qualitative systematic review protocol on diagnostic overshadowing and severe mental health published in the journal JBI Evidence Synthesis in 2021. The range of Google Scholar citation scores for the 60 published research outputs was 0–33, with the highest cited article being a scoping review about the nurses’ role in antimicrobial stewardship published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies in 2021.

There are diverse approaches to enhancing writing for publication for academics described in the literature [ 16 ], with semi-structured writing retreats offering a balance of research training, dedicated writing time and socialisation which is of benefit to novice writers [ 17 ]. We envisaged that a series of semi-structured writing retreats could offer protected time to write high-quality publications for busy academic staff and novice researchers. By offering opt-in research training sessions tailored to the skill mix and experience of participants at each writing retreat, we created a supportive atmosphere where “inevitable stumblings” when writing for publication became opportunities for shared growth and development among participants [ 9 ]. This supportive and collegiate environment saw a sustained decrease in the number of abandoned publications among graduate research students and academics at Lecturer level after the second writing retreat in 2019. Allocation of experienced mentors, regular peer-review of drafts, and targeted training sessions were part of the suite of planned activities to support writers to achieve publication submission.

The research found that writing retreats are experienced as a form of community of practice, for like-minded people who come together to share an experience to achieve an objective, in this case, to focus on developing writing high-quality publications. Mutual engagement is fundamental to communities of practice – people will come together with a common goal or interest and build a foundation on which everyone can participate in meaningful practice [ 9 ]. Retreat participants could simultaneously complete drafts and provide and receive feedback on manuscripts, feeding on “common knowledge, energy and a commitment to shared understandings” [ 18 ]. Our participants felt motivated by writing in the presence of their colleagues or fellow students because they were all working towards publishing their research outputs. Our flexible approach meant that writing retreat participants could spend time strengthening their social connections which facilitated a sense of collective engagement in the writing process.

Identity of participation [ 9 ] is crucial in forming communities of practice, it is illustrated by retreat participants seeing themselves as writers by being actively and collectively engaged in writing. Prioritisation of writing was evident in the tension participants experienced when they described wanting to attend more opt-in research training sessions but felt conflicted as they were also focussed on quantifiable writing progress. Progress on manuscripts which had sat latent for months highlights that participants could be writers when they were encouraged and given space and opportunity to write in an environment that was purposefully free of usual academic work distractions.

Protected writing time offered legitimate peripheral participation , allowing participants the opportunity to engage in focused writing for publication. Everyone who attended the writing retreats was exposed to the full scope of writing for publication, including the challenges to writing faced by even the most experienced academics. Witnessing the challenges of senior academics was important for novice writers, because it demonstrated the vulnerability involved in writing for publication including the non-linear iterative nature of the writing process. By removing the constraints of everyday work, everyone was able to participate fully in the writing process, sharing the writing experience and providing constructive feedback to improve writing.

The quantity and quality of publications arising from the six writing retreats demonstrates success of this investment in researcher development. A total of 60 research outputs have been published, with 71% in Q1 or Q2 ranked journals. Increased research outputs are essential in the current climate where quantity and quality of research output is directly associated with funding opportunities, attraction of research students and university rankings [ 19 ].

Writing retreats provide space and time for dedicated writing, but also opportunities for shared learning, and commitment to changing practice, to not only legitimise, but encourage writing by academics as part of their everyday work, even when they return to their usual work. However, time and space for writing can be difficult to obtain and may not be universally experienced by academics. This study demonstrated that semi-structured writing retreats provided the necessary elements to build and sustain a culture where writing for publication is part of academics and research students core work.

Strengths and limitations

Both strengths and limitations exist for this study. Unlike previous studies, a strength of this study is that it reports on longitudinal data from six retreats over three years, and therefore can demonstrate the success of this research investment over a period of time [ 8 , 20 , 21 ]. Another strength of this paper is that it describes the range in the quality of the research outputs, whereas many previous studies have only identified the number of outputs from each retreat [ 4 , 22 ] or focused only on participant experiences [ 20 , 23 , 24 , 25 ].

Limitations included missing data (participant experiences) from the February 2021 writing retreat which is common in retrospective studies [ 26 ]. Another limitation is the reliance on the manual collection of publication data with some outputs potentially not identified. To mitigate this limitation, two authors (JB & GB) independently cross-matched participant attendance against research output data with a third author (LB) checking any discrepancies. Finally, the qualitative phase of this study included free-text responses from an online survey. It has been argued that analysis of free-text responses in online surveys “rarely meets the bar for rigorous qualitative work” due to the superficiality of the responses [ 27 ], including typically being devoid of context, personal meaning, emotional and social nuances and multiple layers of description [ 27 ]. Despite this limitation, and acknowledging that it would be useful to interview participants to gain rich accounts of their experiences, we believe this study adds to our understanding of the effectiveness of academic writing retreats.

Conclusion.

This research contributes to our understanding of the effectiveness of semi-structured writing retreats on writing for publication for nursing and midwifery academics and research students, which is currently underreported in the literature. This study demonstrates that semi-structured writing retreats can develop nursing and midwifery academic and research student writing for publication. Writing for publication is essential to disseminate research findings, academic success and raise the profile of nursing and midwifery research, therefore we argue that semi-structured writing retreats should be prioritised as an investment in writing for publication, a core but underappreciated component of the research process. Finally, this research provides an effective structure for those considering establishing their own semi-structured writing retreats to support academic writing for publication.

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due ethics restrictions.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge all the senior academics who contributed to the writing retreats as facilitators during the period of this study: Professor Niels Buus, Associate Professor Helen Hall, Associate Professor Lisa Kuhn, Associate Professor Wendy Pollock, and Professor Helen Rawson. The authors would also like to thank all of the writing retreat participants who shared their experiences. We would also like to thank Emma Craige for her meticulous effort with collecting the publication data and Emeritus Professor Debra Griffiths (immediate past Head of School) for her support of the writing retreats.

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and affiliations.

School of Nursing and Midwifery, Sub-Faculty of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, 47-49 Moorooduc Highway, Frankston, VIC, 3199, Australia

James Bonnamy, Julia Morphet, Philip L. Russo & Gabrielle Brand

Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University, 553 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, VIC, 3004, Australia

Lyndal Bugeja

Cabrini Research, Cabrini Health, 154 Wattletree Road, Malvern, VIC, 3144, Australia

Philip L. Russo

Nursing and Midwifery, Avondale University, 582 Freemans Drive, Cooranbong, NSW, 2265, Australia

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Contributions

James Bonnamy: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Investigation, Formal Analysis, Project Administration, Visualisation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing. Lyndal Bugeja: Conceptualisation, Formal Analysis, Visualisation, Writing – Review & Editing. Julia Morphet: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Visualisation, Writing – Review & Editing. Philip L Russo: Conceptualisation, Validation, Writing – Review & Editing. Gabrielle Brand: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Investigation, Formal Analysis, Validation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing.

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Correspondence to James Bonnamy .

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Bonnamy, J., Bugeja, L., Morphet, J. et al. Transforming researchers into writers through a series of semi-structured writing retreats: a mixed methods study. BMC Nurs 23 , 611 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-024-02261-9

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Received : 03 March 2024

Accepted : 13 August 2024

Published : 02 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-024-02261-9

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