contact stakeholders in the financial planning industry directly
and have them submit their research and to conduct an
environmental scan using academic databases and search
engines. Six hundred and two (602) institutions were directly
contacted and asked to submit research. This number included
572 universities, 3 journals, 19 financial planning associations
and 12 other industry related institutions from Canada, the
United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and
Australia.
Description of Review
The environmental scan was accomplished by searching
for different keywords in academic databases over the study’s
timeframe. ProQuest was used, at the University of Waterloo,
to perform the search across a collection of databases (for a
complete listing of the databases used, see Appendix A). The
results of this methodology could be potentially biased due to
the selection of keywords. To reduce this bias each category,
subcategory, and the general term “financial planning” were
used as keywords.
Once collected, the research was grouped into specific
categories and sub-categories that had been previously selected
by PlanPlus and the FPSC Foundation (see Appendix B). This
was done based on the titles of the research if they contained
certain keywords. Also the abstract was reviewed if further
scrutiny was necessary. Because of the nature of the search
methodology, duplicates were common and were removed.
From 2003 through 2010 the literature search returned 1,978
papers and articles from 379 different sources.©2011, IARFC. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.