Can I keep a paper in my literature review if I've only read its abstract?
Education"Where did they recruit the participants?" my supervisor asked. I looked at my draft and realised I had written about four studies without knowing that answer.
I found them while searching for my undergraduate literature review. Their abstracts appeared relevant, and I included their findings in a paragraph comparing the research. Two full papers are behind access screens; I haven't yet asked the library about them. For the other two, I saved the abstracts and forgot to return to the full text.
The draft is due in a week. I don't want to replace every difficult-to-get paper with something less relevant, but I also can't defend a comparison of methods I haven't read. How should I handle these entries now? Deleting four citations would make the paragraph shorter. Leaving them as they are would make it look more informed than it is.
