for a printer friendly pdf version of this guide, click here the focus of the study guide is the literature review within a dissertation or a thesis, but many of the ideas are transferable to other kinds of writing, such as an extended essay, or a report. The ability to review, and to report on relevant literature is a key academic skill. A literature review: situates your research focus within the context of the wider academic community in your field reports your critical review of the relevant literature and identifies a gap within that literature that your research will attempt to address.

To some extent, particularly with postgraduate research, the literature review can become a project in itself. It is an important showcase of your talents of: understanding, interpretation, analysis, clarity of thought, synthesis, and development of argument. The process of conducting and reporting your literature review can help you clarify your own thoughts about your study. It can also establish a framework within which to present and analyse the findings. After reading your literature review, it should be clear to the reader that you have up to date awareness of the relevant work of others, and that the research question you are asking is relevant.

However, don’t promise too much! be wary of saying that your research will solve a problem, or that it will change practice. It would be safer and probably more realistic to say that your research will ‘address a gap’, rather than that it will ‘fill a gap’. When readers come to your assignment, dissertation, or thesis, they will not just assume that your research or analysis is a good idea they will want to be persuaded that it is relevant and that it was worth doing. They will ask questions such as: what research question s are you asking? why are you asking it/them? has anyone else done anything similar? is your research relevant to research/practice/theory in your field? what is already known or understood about this topic? how might your research add to this understanding, or challenge existing theories and beliefs? these are questions that you will already probably be asking yourself. You will also need to be ready to answer them in a viva if you will be having one. It is important that your literature review is more than just a list of references with a short description of each one.

The study guides: what is critical reading? and what is critical writing? are particularly relevant to the process of critical review. Merriam 1988:6 describes the literature review as: ‘an interpretation and synthesis of published work’. This very short statement contains some key concepts, which are examined in the table below. Virginia cano 1 introduction in this article we will talk about the importance of literature reviews as a way of summarsing the state of the art of a field. We will examine ways of constructing literature reviews and we will see in the links provided examples of literature reviews.

2 definition of literature review a critical summary and an assessment of the current state of knowledge or current state of the art in a particular field. The ability to carry out a literature review is an important skill for any student. It will provide you with a context in which to place your assignments regardless of the module you are studying. Practically any assignment in any module you take will involve reading what other people have written on the subject of your assignment, gathering information to refute or support specific arguments, and writing about yourfindings. For small scale projects, like module assignments , you will not be expected to provide a definitive account of the state of research in your selected topic. You will be required to provide evidence that you have read a certain amount of relevant literature in the topic, that you have understood that literature, and that you can summarize the material you have read in a coherent way.

In order to do a literature review you will need to spend time reading the literature relevant to the topic you are researching. Understanding the literature in your research topic will prevent you from repeating previous errors, or redoing work which has already been done. It will also give you insights into aspects of your topic which might be worthy of exploration and future research. 3 purpose of a literature review there are several purposes to writing a literature review.

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To provide the reader with an up to date account and discussion of the research findings in a particular topic. This might sound pretty esoteric but you will find that in writing a literature review you will learn about the ways other people have constructed their own research projects. You might be able to see the methods that other more experienced researchers have used and you might decide to follow on their footsteps and copy their methodological approach. You might also be able to detect conflicting points of view expressed by different authors. These conflicting points of view might be the indicators of diverging theories within the same topic.

You need to be aware of these conflicting theories as well as of the arguments supporting these theories in order for you to assess their value and make up your own mind on the topic. Being aware of the theories will help you later in your life as a student when you will have to design a larger research project like your dissertation. You might also be able to discuss relevant research carried out in the same topic. It is important to be able to discuss relevant research because very often it is very difficult as students and as researchers to keep abreast of everything that is published every year in a topic. The job of the writer of the literature review is to summarize and discuss the major documents published in that topic over a stated period of time. The discussion will take into account the methods and the results or findings of the most relevant research.

The reviewer will assess whether the methodology is appropriate and whether the results seem valid. The reviewer therefore evaluates the quality of the research as opposed to merely listing documents. The reviewer may also discuss material published in other fields which are related to the main topic. This process is very important since very often research in the social sciences is multidisciplinary, i.e.

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For example in order to be able to research and write a literature review on a question like ‘why do teenagers smoke? ‘ the reviewer might need to read material from journals in psychology, medicine, and sociology. You need to read because it will give you ideas, and because it might improve your writing style. You need to decide: where to read what to read whom to read how to find what you need to read your university or college library might be your first port of call in deciding where to read, but as you progress in your course you might need to read in other libraries.

You might also chose to photocopy material from these libraries and read it at home. The advantage of using photocopies is that you can underline the material and make notes. Books, journals, reports, popular media, computer based material, internal reports, letters, conference proceedings etc. You will probably need to read all these when you are constructing a literature review.