My Advisor Asked Me to Write Literature Review Article

The Literature Review | A Complete Step-by-Stride Guide

Published on 22 Feb 2019 by Shona McCombes. Revised on 3 May 2021.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you lot to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.

Conducting a literature review involves collecting, evaluating and analysing publications (such every bit books and journal manufactures) that relate to your research question. There are five main steps in the process of writing a literature review:

1. Search for relevant literature
2. Evaluate sources
3. Identify themes, debates and gaps
4. Outline the structure
5. Write your literature review

A skillful literature review doesn't simply summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear moving picture of the state of noesis on the subject field.

Why write a literature review?

When y'all write a dissertation or thesis, y'all will have to conduct a literature review to situate your enquiry within existing knowledge. The literature review gives yous a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Testify how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might besides take to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will await slightly different in each example, only the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps.

Step 1: Search for relevant literature

Earlier you brainstorm searching for literature, yous need a conspicuously defined topic.

If you are writing the literature review department of a dissertation or research paper, yous volition search for literature related to your enquiry objectives and questions.

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you lot will accept to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Research question case

What is the affect of social media on body image among Generation Z?

Make a list of keywords

Offset by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. Include each of the cardinal concepts or variables you're interested in, and list whatever synonyms and related terms. You can add to this listing if you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

Keywords example

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Trunk prototype, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Utilise your keywords to brainstorm searching for sources. Some databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university's library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• JSTOR
• EBSCO
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and estimator science)

You can employ boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

• AND to detect sources that contain more than than ane keyword (e.chiliad. social media AND torso epitome AND generation Z
• OR to find sources that contain one of a range of synonyms (east.k. generation Z OR teenagers OR adolescents)
• NOT to exclude results containing certain terms (due east.g. apple tree NOT fruit)

Read the abstruse to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, y'all can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, accept note of recurring citations. If the aforementioned authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make certain to seek them out.

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Step ii: Evaluate and select sources

Yous probably won't exist able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you'll take to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or trouble is the author addressing?
• What are the primal concepts and how are they divers?
• What are the fundamental theories, models and methods? Does the inquiry use established frameworks or take an innovative arroyo?
• What are the results and conclusions of the report?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it ostend, add to, or challenge established cognition?
• How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its central insights and arguments?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you lot utilise are apparent, and brand sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You tin can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the commodity has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The telescopic of your review will depend on your topic and bailiwick: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should as well begin the writing process. Take notes that you lot can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It's important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism. It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where y'all compile full reference information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you lot remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

Y'all can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

Step 3: Identify themes, debates and gaps

To begin organising your literature review's argument and structure, you need to understand the connections and relationships betwixt the sources you've read. Based on your reading and notes, you lot can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): exercise sure approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where exercise sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are at that place whatever influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This pace volition help yous piece of work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) bear witness how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

Example of trends and gaps

In reviewing the literature on social media and body image, you notation that:

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly-visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat – this is a gap that you could accost in your ain enquiry.

Pace four: Outline your literature review's structure

In that location are various approaches to organising the body of a literature review. Y'all should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you tin combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if yous choose this strategy, be careful to avoid only listing and summarising sources in social club.

Endeavour to analyse patterns, turning points and fundamental debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

Thematic

If you lot have found some recurring cardinal themes, you can organise your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For instance, if yous are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, linguistic communication barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If yous draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods, you might desire to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results accept emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Talk over how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework. You tin employ it to talk over various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Step v: Write your literature review

Similar whatever other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion. What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

Introduction

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Dissertation literature review

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central trouble or inquiry question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. Y'all can emphasise the timeliness of the topic ("many recent studies have focused on the problem of x") or highlight a gap in the literature ("while there has been much research on x, few researchers take taken y into consideration").

Stand-alone literature review

If yous are writing a stand-alone paper, give some background on the topic and its importance, discuss the telescopic of the literature you will review (for example, the time menstruum of your sources), and state your objective. What new insight will you draw from the literature?

Body

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. Y'all can use a subheading for each theme, fourth dimension period, or methodological arroyo.

Every bit you lot write, make sure to follow these tips:

• Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
• Analyse and interpret: don't simply paraphrase other researchers – add together your own interpretations, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature equally a whole.
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources.
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: utilise transitions and topic sentences to describe connections, comparisons and contrasts.

Case of a paragraph in a literature review

Conclusion

In the conclusion, you should summarise the key findings you accept taken from the literature and emphasise their significance.

Dissertation literature review

If the literature review is role of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your enquiry addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have fatigued on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead direct into your methodology section.

Stand up-alone literature review

If you are writing a stand-alone newspaper, you can discuss the overall implications of the literature or make suggestions for future research based on the gaps you have identified.

Oftentimes asked questions virtually literature reviews

What is the purpose of a literature review?

In that location are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the first of a research project:

• To familiarise yourself with the current land of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you lot're not just repeating what others have already done
• To place gaps in cognition and unresolved bug that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the cardinal findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your piece of work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

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