The state of the art of an investigation, TFG, TGM, project or thesis, refers to the state of the investigations or works that already exist on the subject on which it is desired to investigate. That is, it refers to the existing information sources that address topics similar to the one proposed in the thesis or research work..
Since every research project must provide new information or results on a particular topic, it is necessary to build a state of the art.
In the state of the art, reference should be made to similar works, which have had different results, or which were carried out under different conditions. The objective is to validate the research, showing that it will generate knowledge and it is not a copy of another research.
To make the section on the state of the art, it is vitally important to have determined, in advance, the research question. This will allow the researcher to focus on the current situation and the categories of the topic on which he intends to investigate..
Additionally, it is necessary to make a state of the art in order to put the reader in context about the antecedents that exist on the subject to be studied by the research that is going to be carried out..
Article index
The structure that the state of the art section should have is as follows:
The objective of the introduction is to put the reader in context about the antecedents of the topic to be dealt with in the investigation and to delimit the field of action of the same.
In addition, there is a brief description of the order of the studies to which reference will be made..
In this section, the names of the referenced investigations and a brief description of the results obtained are placed..
The order in which the information is included can be chronological, geographic or by keywords.
Finally, in the conclusions section, the discoveries that were obtained when studying the different investigations are exposed.
For the preparation of a state of the art, the first thing to do is look for pre-existing works on the research that you want to carry out, and study them exhaustively. This will make it possible to cite the different investigations, and establish the reasons why the study will be carried out..
Once this is done, the introduction is written, detailing the antecedents found in the area to be studied and the limits of the investigation.
The following is an introductory example for a research paper titled, The effects of drip irrigation in water-scarce coffee plantations:
This section provides an exhaustive review of research that talks about the effects of drip irrigation in various types of plantations..
In order to highlight the lack of information regarding the use of drip irrigation in coffee plantations, we will first review which artificial irrigation methods have been implemented so far in coffee plantations..
Later, we will talk about the existing studies on the amount of water that should be used to moisten the soil in areas with water scarcity.
Then, the consulted research works are cited in order, stating the objective of each one, along with the conclusions they reach..
An example of this section would be as follows:
According to a study carried out by González (2018), the amount of water per hectare that a coffee plantation needs for its proper development is 10,000 liters per year.
According to the research carried out by Nieto (2019), the most widely used artificial irrigation method in coffee plantations is to extract water through pipes from nearby basins or rivers to take them to the plantations.
In this way, due to the lack of control in the amount of water used, there is an excessive consumption of the resource, which can reach 60% waste per hectare..
Finally, based on the discoveries obtained by the different studies, the conclusions that could be reached are explained. An example of this section would be:
After making an extensive review on the subject of interest for this research, it is possible to conclude that there is no clear information on the effects of drip irrigation in coffee plantations, since it is usually used in other types of plantations.
Additionally, the exact amount of water that should be used to irrigate coffee crops in conditions of water scarcity is not known..
Next, an example of the state of the art is presented for an investigation about tourism in the city of Cartagena, Colombia. To make its structure easier to understand, the introduction, the researches consulted and the conclusions will be marked (this is not necessary to mark it in the state of the art of a work).
This section details the previous research that has been carried out on tourism in Cartagena, Colombia.
The problem derived from the activity of tourism as a transformer of urban space has been studied by researchers such as James Sperk in his book Economies of tourism (2012), in which a theoretical observation is made about the social interactions that occur in cities. related to tourism.
On the other hand, Lodato (2008) makes a superficial reference in his text New spaces for leisure, tourism as a new way of generating spaces, from the injection of foreign money in local settings.
In both cases, tourism as an activity that transforms space has been approached only theoretically. To date, there is no research that addresses the issue based on fieldwork, of an ethnographic nature..
For the specific case of the city of Cartagena, Colombia, existing research only speaks of the transformation of the city in relation to the planning of its urban landscape (Urban Planning of Cartagena, 2015). However, there are no documents that speak of its transformation as a product of tourism.
Taking into account the collected material, it can be seen that the investigations carried out on the problems posed by the injection of foreign capital in the dynamics of tourist cities are approached theoretically and without focusing on a particular city..
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