How to Do Research for a Literature Review
How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Video, & Template
What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of electric current knowledge, assuasive you lot to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.
There are five central steps to writing a literature review:
- Search for relevant literature
- Evaluate sources
- Identify themes, debates and gaps
- Outline the structure
- Write your literature review
A skilful literature review doesn't just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes, and critically evaluates to give a clear motion picture of the land of cognition on the discipline.
What is the purpose of a literature review?
When you lot write a thesis, dissertation, or research newspaper, you lot volition probable have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:
- Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
- Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
- Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
- Bear witness how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
- Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.
Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to utilize for graduate school or pursue a career in research.
Footstep i – Search for relevant literature
Before you begin searching for literature, you need a conspicuously defined topic.
If yous are writing the literature review department of a dissertation or research newspaper, you lot will search for literature related to your inquiry problem and questions.
Make a list of keywords
Starting time by creating a listing of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the fundamental concepts or variables you're interested in, and list whatever synonyms and related terms. You can add together to this list equally you lot discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.
- Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
- Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental wellness
- Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth
Search for relevant sources
Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:
- Your university's library catalogue
- Google Scholar
- JSTOR
- EBSCO
- Projection Muse (humanities and social sciences)
- Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
- EconLit (economic science)
- Inspec (physics, applied science and information science)
You can besides utilize boolean operators to help narrow down your search.
Brand certain to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you detect a useful volume or article, yous can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.
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Step two – Evaluate and select sources
Yous likely won't be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.
For each publication, ask yourself:
- What question or problem is the writer addressing?
- What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
- What are the cardinal theories, models, and methods?
- Does the research apply established frameworks or take an innovative arroyo?
- What are the results and conclusions of the study?
- How does the publication chronicle to other literature in the field? Does it ostend, add to, or challenge established noesis?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the enquiry?
Make certain the sources you use are credible, and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.
Take notes and cite your sources
Equally you read, you should too brainstorm the writing process. Take notes that y'all can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.
Information technology is important to keep rail of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism. Information technology tin can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and assay for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time subsequently in the process.
Step iii – Identify themes, debates, and gaps
To begin organizing your literature review'southward statement and structure, exist sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources y'all've read. Based on your reading and notes, you can expect for:
- Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches get more or less popular over time?
- Themes: what questions or concepts recur beyond the literature?
- Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
- Pivotal publications: are there whatever influential theories or studies that inverse the direction of the field?
- Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are at that place weaknesses that need to be addressed?
This step volition help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) evidence how your own research volition contribute to existing knowledge.
- Almost enquiry 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 own research.
Step 4 – Outline your literature review'south structure
There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall construction might be thematic, only each theme is discussed chronologically).
Chronological
The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid but listing and summarizing sources in order.
Effort to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why sure developments occurred.
Thematic
If you take found some recurring cardinal themes, you tin can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.
For case, if you are reviewing literature virtually inequalities in migrant health outcomes, central themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.
Methodological
If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that apply a variety of research methods, you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:
- Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
- Hash out 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 lot can use it to hash out various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.
Y'all might fence for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine diverse theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.
Step v – Write your literature review
Like any other bookish text, your literature review should take an introduction, a main torso, and a conclusion. What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.
Introduction
The introduction should conspicuously establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.
Body
Depending on the length of your literature review, y'all might desire to split the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, fourth dimension period, or methodological approach.
Every bit you write, you tin can follow these tips:
- Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the primary points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
- Clarify and interpret: don't only paraphrase other researchers—add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
- Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
- Write in well-structured paragraphs: utilise transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts
Conclusion
In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.
When y'all've finished writing and revising your literature review, don't forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr'south professional Proofreading & Editing service!
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Frequently asked questions
- What is the purpose of a literature review?
-
There are several reasons to comport a literature review at the beginning of a research project:
- To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
- To ensure that you lot're not just repeating what others have already done
- To place gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your enquiry can accost
- To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
- To provide an overview of the primal findings and debates on the topic
Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing inquiry and what new insights it volition contribute.
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