How to Write a Review About a State
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.
In that location are 5 fundamental 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—it analyzes, synthesizes, and critically evaluates to give a articulate motion picture of the state of knowledge on the subject area.
What is the purpose of a literature review?
When you lot write a thesis, dissertation, or research paper, you lot will likely take to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives yous a chance to:
- Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
- Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
- Position your piece of work in relation to other researchers and theorists
- Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
- Evaluate the current country 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 apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research.
Pace one – Search for relevant literature
Before you begin searching for literature, you demand a clearly defined topic.
If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or inquiry newspaper, you will search for literature related to your enquiry trouble and questions.
Make a list of keywords
Beginning by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables yous're interested in, and list whatever synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.
- Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
- Torso image, self-perception, cocky-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's library catalogue
- Google Scholar
- JSTOR
- EBSCO
- Projection Muse (humanities and social sciences)
- Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
- EconLit (economics)
- Inspec (physics, engineering and figurer science)
You can also use boolean operators to assist narrow down your search.
Make sure to read the abstruse to find out whether an commodity is relevant to your question. When you observe a useful book or article, you tin check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.
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Step 2 – Evaluate and select sources
You 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 enquiry question.
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 research use 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 confirm, add together to, or claiming established knowledge?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the enquiry?
Make sure the sources y'all utilize are credible, and make sure yous read whatsoever landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.
Take notes and cite your sources
As you read, you should also begin the writing procedure. Have notes that you can later comprise into the text of your literature review.
It is important to go on track of your sources with citations to avert plagiarism. It tin be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile total commendation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.
Stride iii – Identify themes, debates, and gaps
To begin organizing your literature review'due south argument and structure, be sure y'all sympathise the connections and relationships betwixt the sources you've read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:
- Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do 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 there 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 step will assistance y'all piece of work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.
- Nigh inquiry has focused on young women.
- There is an increasing involvement in the visual aspects of social media.
- Just there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your ain enquiry.
Stride iv – Outline your literature review's structure
There are diverse approaches to organizing the torso of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, simply each theme is discussed chronologically).
Chronological
The simplest arroyo is to trace the development of the topic over fourth dimension. Notwithstanding, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply list and summarizing sources in club.
Endeavor to clarify patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Requite your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.
Thematic
If you take plant some recurring central themes, yous can organize your literature review into subsections that address unlike aspects of the topic.
For example, if you are reviewing literature virtually inequalities in migrant health outcomes, cardinal 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 use a multifariousness of research methods, you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from dissimilar approaches. For example:
- Await at what results take emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
- Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
- Split up the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources
Theoretical
A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework. You tin can use it to hash out various theories, models, and definitions of primal concepts.
You might fence 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
Similar whatever other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction, a principal body, and a conclusion. What yous include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.
Introduction
The introduction should clearly institute the focus and purpose of the literature review.
Torso
Depending on the length of your literature review, y'all might want to split the body into subsections. Y'all tin use a subheading for each theme, fourth dimension menses, or methodological arroyo.
As you write, y'all tin 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 simply 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: employ transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts
Conclusion
In the decision, yous should summarize the key findings you have 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. Not a language expert? Bank check out Scribbr's professional Proofreading & Editing service!
Free lecture slides
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Frequently asked questions
- What is the purpose of a literature review?
-
There are several reasons to deport a literature review at the beginning of a enquiry project:
- To familiarize yourself with the current state of noesis on your topic
- To ensure that y'all're not simply repeating what others have already washed
- To place gaps in noesis and unresolved problems that your research tin 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 inquiry and what new insights it volition contribute.
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