What do literature reviews do

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge. There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:.

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute. The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation.

After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology. Have a language expert improve your writing. Check your paper for plagiarism in 10 minutes. Do the check.

Generate your APA citations for free! APA Citation Generator. Home Knowledge Base Dissertation How to write a literature review. What is your plagiarism score? Compare your paper with over 60 billion web pages and 30 million publications. Body image issues have been widely associated with social media usage, particularly in young women.

What is a literature review? What is the purpose of a literature review? Where does the literature review go in a dissertation? Is this article helpful? Shona McCombes Shona has a bachelor's and two master's degrees, so she's an expert at writing a great thesis. She has also worked as an editor and teacher, working with students at all different levels to improve their academic writing.

Other students also liked. Developing your theoretical framework In the theoretical framework, you define key concepts and discuss relevant theories, showing how your research fits in with established ideas. How to write a research methodology The methodology lets readers assess the reliability of your research. However, you have also found article C, which contradicts the argument presented in resource A.

One way to synthesise these texts, is to group together the texts supporting your key resource articles B and D , and explain that article C presents contradictory results. Then, you would need to examine the methodological differences or any other possible reasons for the contradictory results.

Another way of managing sources and arguments presented in them is to use a literature review matrix also called synthesis matrix. Literature review matrix is a table in which you can represent the views, ideas, or data according to thematic categories that correspond to your research project. As you fill out your matrix, you will begin to get a clearer view of how different sources are related, and recognise patterns that may not have been immediately visible before.

For example, you may see a correlation between sample sizes and types of conclusions, or between specific kinds of aims and the methods chosen to address them. Because information is arranged in thematic columns, you can get a useful overview of all aims, or all methods at a glance. You can add new columns as your understanding improves. Thus the review matrix can also be a powerful tool for synthesising the patterns you identify across literature, and for formulating your own observations.

Literature reviews exist within different types of scholarly works with varying foci and emphases. Short or miniature literature reviews can be presented in journal articles, book chapters, or coursework assignments to set the background for the research work and provide a general understanding of the research topic.

However, the focus of a literature review in a graduate research thesis is to identify gaps and argue for the need for further research. Depending on the purpose of the writer and the context in which the literature review will be presented, a selective or comprehensive approach may be taken. In the selective approach, a single or limited number of sources are reviewed e. A comprehensive approach requires the review of numerous books and articles e.

Within a thesis, a literature review may appear in a single chapter — often being the first independent chapter after the introduction. However, reviews of literature may also be dispersed across several chapters, each of which may focus on a different theme, concept, theory or method.

As a result, a thesis can contain multiple reviews based upon thematic, conceptual, theoretical and methodological considerations. What is the purpose of conducting a literature review? What function does a literature review serve within a thesis? This is a cyclical process. It is usually one of the first tasks that graduate research students undertake, and one of the last to be completed. A literature review written in the early stages of research is likely to change because you need to review and revise it from time to time and ensure it is up to date.

You will probably find yourself engaging with the literature in different ways at different stages of your research. The review you conduct in your first year helps you to refine and justify your research questions. Your written report demonstrates your familiarity with the research in your field.

Reviewing and revising your literature review during the period of your research is also necessary, to keep it up to date by including reviews of the most recent relevant publications.

You will also need to revisit your literature review in the final stages of your research to relate your own findings to what other scholars have previously found in your area. At this stage you may need to explore fields that were not included in your preliminary review. After selecting a topic to investigate, you will begin to locate and read sources.

Literature reviews can be found in a variety of formats; examples include:. Stand-alone articles published in a scholarly journal. A chapter in a thesis or dissertation. A section found in scholarly works like journal articles. Where did this information come from? Some information on this page was found in the following sources:. The literature review. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period.

Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not. A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized.

This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory?

Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review. A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement one that makes an argument , but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:. The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine. More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc. And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:. Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper.

Create an organizational method to focus this section even further. To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:.