Where Does the Literature Review Go Within a Paper
What Is a Literature Review | Footstep-by-Step Guide & Examples
A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current noesis, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.
Writing a literature review involves finding relevant publications (such as books and journal articles), critically analyzing them, and explaining what yous institute. There are five key steps:
- Search for relevant literature
- Evaluate sources
- Identify themes, debates and gaps
- Outline the structure
- Write your literature review
A good literature review doesn't only summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes, and critically evaluates to requite a clear picture show of the state of noesis on the subject.
What is the purpose of a literature review?
When y'all write a thesis, dissertation, or enquiry newspaper, y'all will have to acquit a literature review to situate your research inside existing noesis. The literature review gives you a take 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
- Bear witness how your inquiry addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
You might also accept to write a literature review as a stand-solitary consignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of inquiry and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.
The content volition look slightly dissimilar in each case, but the procedure of conducting a literature review follows the same steps.
Writing literature reviews is a specially important skill if you desire to use for graduate school or pursue a career in research.
Step one: Search for relevant literature
Earlier you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic.
If you are writing the literature review department of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions.
If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to directly your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be accountable without collecting original data. You lot should be able to answer information technology based only on a review of existing publications.
Make a list of keywords
Start past creating a listing of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you're interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You tin add to this list if yous discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.
- Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
- Torso image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental wellness
- Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth
Search for relevant sources
Employ your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:
- Your academy's library catalogue
- Google Scholar
- JSTOR
- EBSCO
- Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
- Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
- EconLit (economics)
- Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)
You tin use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:
- AND: to find sources that contain more than ane keyword (due east.g. social media AND torso image AND generation Z)
- OR: to observe sources that contain one of a range of synonyms (e.yard. generation Z OR teenagers OR adolescents)
- NOT: to exclude results containing sure terms (e.g. apple tree Not fruit)
Read the abstract to find 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.
To identify the most important publications on your topic, take annotation of recurring citations. If the aforementioned authors, books or manufactures go on appearing in your reading, brand sure to seek them out.
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Stride two: Evaluate and select sources
You probably won't exist able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic—you'll accept to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.
For each publication, ask yourself:
- What question or problem is the author addressing?
- What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
- What are the key theories, models and methods? Does the inquiry use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
- What are the results and conclusions of the study?
- How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it ostend, add to, or claiming established knowledge?
- How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?
Make sure the sources you utilise are apparent, and make sure you lot read whatsoever landmark studies and major theories in your field of inquiry.
You tin observe out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar—a loftier commendation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly exist included in your literature review.
The scope of your review will depend on your topic and field of study: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, just 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, yous should also brainstorm the writing process. Take notes that you can subsequently contain into the text of your literature review.
It is important to go on track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism. It can exist helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile total citation data and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you lot call back what you lot read and saves time later in the process.
Step 3: Identify themes, debates, and gaps
To brainstorm organizing your literature review's statement and construction, you lot demand to understand the connections and relationships between the sources you've read. Based on your reading and notes, you tin look for:
- Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches get more than or less popular over time?
- Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
- Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
- Pivotal publications: are in that location any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
- Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are at that place weaknesses that need to exist addressed?
This step will help you lot work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicative) 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.
- But there is even so a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.
Step 4: Outline your literature review's structure
There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy earlier you commencement writing.
Depending on the length of your literature review, yous tin combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall construction might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).
Chronological
The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over fourth dimension. Withal, if you choose this strategy, exist careful to avoid merely listing and summarizing sources in social club.
Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that take shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.
Thematic
If you have establish some recurring key themes, you tin organize your literature review into subsections that accost different aspects of the topic.
For example, if yous are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal condition, and economic access.
Methodological
If you depict your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a multifariousness 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
- Discuss 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 can apply it to discuss 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 5: Write your literature review
Similar any 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 constitute the focus and purpose of the literature review.
Torso
Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to dissever the body into subsections. You tin use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.
As you write, you can follow these tips:
- Summarize and synthesize: requite an overview of the main 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
Determination
In the determination, you lot should summarize the key findings you lot take taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.
When you lot've finished writing and revising your literature review, don't forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a linguistic communication expert? Check out Scribbr'southward professional Proofreading & Editing service!
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Often asked questions
- What is the purpose of a literature review?
-
There are several reasons to deport a literature review at the beginning of a research project:
- To familiarize yourself with the current land of knowledge on your topic
- To ensure that you're not just repeating what others have already done
- To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved bug that your research can address
- To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
- To provide an overview of the central findings and debates on the topic
Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.
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