A Review Process That Involves Stastical Analysis of Previously Published Studies Is Known as
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, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.
There are five key 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 expert literature review doesn't just summarize sources—information technology analyzes, synthesizes, and critically evaluates to requite a articulate motion picture of the land of knowledge on the subject.
What is the purpose of a literature review?
When you write a thesis, dissertation, or research paper, you will likely take to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing noesis. 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
- Testify how your enquiry addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
- Evaluate the current state of inquiry and demonstrate your cognition of the scholarly debates around your topic.
Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to employ for graduate school or pursue a career in research.
Pace 1 – Search for relevant literature
Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic.
If y'all are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research newspaper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions.
Make a list of keywords
Start by creating a list of keywords related to your inquiry question. Include each of the primal concepts or variables you're interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You tin add to this list as you notice new keywords in the process of your literature search.
- Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
- Torso image, cocky-perception, self-esteem, mental health
- 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 manufactures include:
- Your university'southward library catalogue
- Google Scholar
- JSTOR
- EBSCO
- Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
- Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
- EconLit (economics)
- Inspec (physics, technology and figurer science)
You can besides utilise boolean operators to help narrow down your search.
Make certain to read the abstract to detect out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful volume or article, you can check the bibliography to discover other relevant sources.
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Step 2 – Evaluate and select sources
Yous probable 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, inquire yourself:
- What question or problem is the writer addressing?
- What are the key concepts and how are they divers?
- What are the key theories, models, and methods?
- Does the research utilize established frameworks or take an innovative arroyo?
- What are the results and conclusions of the study?
- How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it ostend, add together to, or challenge established knowledge?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the inquiry?
Brand sure the sources you use are credible, and make certain yous read whatever landmark studies and major theories in your field of inquiry.
Take notes and cite your sources
As you read, you lot should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can afterward incorporate into the text of your literature review.
It is important to keep runway of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism. It can exist helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you lot compile full commendation information and write a paragraph of summary and assay for each source. This helps you remember what yous read and saves time afterward in the process.
Step three – Identify themes, debates, and gaps
To begin organizing your literature review's argument and construction, exist sure y'all understand the connections and relationships between the sources you've read. Based on your reading and notes, you tin can await for:
- Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do sure approaches go more or less popular over fourth dimension?
- Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
- Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
- Pivotal publications: are in that location whatsoever influential theories or studies that inverse the direction of the field?
- Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?
This step volition assist yous work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.
- Most research has focused on young women.
- There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
- Merely there is notwithstanding a lack of robust inquiry on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that yous could address in your own research.
Step iv – Outline your literature review's structure
There are diverse approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you tin can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, just each theme is discussed chronologically).
Chronological
The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if y'all choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.
Endeavor to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the management of the field. Give your estimation of how and why certain developments occurred.
Thematic
If you accept found some recurring central themes, you tin organize your literature review into subsections that accost different aspects of the topic.
For example, if you are reviewing literature virtually inequalities in migrant health outcomes, central themes might include healthcare policy, linguistic communication barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.
Methodological
If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a diverseness of inquiry methods, you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from unlike approaches. For case:
- Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
- Discuss how the topic has been approached past 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 can utilise it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of central concepts.
You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical arroyo, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.
Step 5 – Write your literature review
Like whatsoever other bookish text, your literature review should have an introduction, a primary body, and a determination. 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.
Trunk
Depending on the length of your literature review, you might desire to split the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.
As you lot write, you tin can follow these tips:
- Summarize and synthesize: requite an overview of the master points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
- Analyze and interpret: don't just 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: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts
Conclusion
In the decision, you lot should summarize the key findings you accept taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.
When you've finished writing and revising your literature review, don't forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Non a language expert? Cheque out Scribbr'south professional person Proofreading & Editing service!
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Oftentimes asked questions
- What is the purpose of a literature review?
-
There are several reasons to bear a literature review at the offset of a inquiry project:
- To familiarize yourself with the current state of cognition on your topic
- To ensure that you're not just repeating what others have already done
- To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can accost
- To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
- To provide an overview of the fundamental 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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