• Magnitude of interest in the topic, either positive or
negative.
• Specific responses on each topic.
Like the literature scan itself, the raw results are difficult
to use. As an example, both Post-Modern Portfolio Theory and
Job Change/Loss had 40 respondents that listed them as topics
requiring more research, but there were 24 people who felt that
Post-Modern Portfolio Theory was over-researched and only 9
who felt Job Change/Loss was over-researched. We therefore
created a “weighting factor” (see Appendix G that outlines the
methodology) that looked at the overall interest in the topic
based on total responses, the net difference on the responses as
either positive or negative, and the degree of consensus on the
topic as well as the volume of articles that were tracked during
the literature survey. We felt that topic areas with high
consensus of opinion provided a stronger reading of a topic’s
appropriateness (Importance Weight).
In Table 5 – Importance Weight, you can see the
weighting of specific topics based on the combined factors of
the consensus level. The Importance Weight only considers
the opinions of the respondents, while in the following section
Importance Rank further considers the volume of articles
collected in each category. A 100% Consensus would mean all
votes on that topic were consistent for More or Over
Researched and the net score for the topic which indicated the
magnitude of the opinion on that topic area. The categories
towards the top of the table indicate that ‘More Research’ is
needed. The categories towards the bottom indicate ‘Less
Research’ is needed. If the Importance Weight is near zero, no