Discussion Thread: Literature Review Types and Primary Steps
Serenity3203
Chapter1forHtdylr.pptx
PowerPoint 1 Starting
Chapter 1 from
How to do your literature review
How to do your literature review
11 Chapters
11 PowerPoints
Chapter and PowerPoint overview
| 1 | Starting |
| 2 | Scanning, skimming, saving and storing |
| 3 | Sources, quality and criticality |
| 4 | Scoping |
| 5 | Searching and screening |
| 6 | Structuring a narrative review |
| 7 | Systematising |
| 8 | Strategising: comparing systematic, realist and narrative reviews |
| 9 | Synthesising: storyline and theory |
| 10 | Synthesising and analysing |
| 11 | Scribing, concluding and stopping |
This is PowerPoint 1 for Chapter 1 …
We will look at
What a literature review is for
The process of doing a review
Types of literature review
What counts as literature
The shape of a review
The nature of an Introduction to a literature review
Setting a question
Whether to use AI
All of this is discussed in much more detail in Chapter 1 of How to do your literature review
What is a literature review for?
To identify themes and lines of agreement among authors
To identify disagreements, controversies or dilemmas in the literature
To bring together – to integrate – different sources of information on a topic
To synthesize these different sources of information
To pinpoint gaps in the literature
To discover and discuss the main methods of research being used in the area
To critically reflect on the nature and quality of the literature on the topic.
To draw conclusions from the literature and comment on the validity of those conclusions.
The process of a literature review …
You get a ‘feel’ of the area by reading around. You set a prima facie question. (Chapters 1-3)
Finding core references, drawing a mindmap, revising your prima facie question. (Chapter 4)
Deciding how you will structure your review – thematic, funnelled, chronological, etc.
(Chapters 6-8)
Gathering more information using databases and AI tools.
Organising your references and selecting the best. (Chapter 5)
Weaving your findings into a narrative. Engaging with theory. (Chapters 9-11)
Scan Scope Search Structure Synthesise
A literature review may be …
A project in itself – a freestanding literature review
Or
Part of a broader research project
There are two types of literature review
The narrative review
The systematic review
Each has different purposes. Neither is superior to the other. We’ll look at each in detail in subsequent PowerPoints.
What counts as literature?
books
authored books
chapters in edited books
journal articles
peer review journals
professional journals
conference and symposium proceedings
dissertations and theses
newspaper and periodical articles
websites
blogs and vlogs
social media
research reports
university repositories of their staffs’ published and unpublished material
patent databases
court records
10
What’s the shape of a review?
Chapter or section headings
Percent of wordage
Begin with an Introduction
The Introduction to your literature review has to …
introduce the reader to your thinking about the topic and its associated literature.
translate your thinking, your interests and your purposes into initial research questions for your literature review.
tell the reader briefly about any changes in direction that have happened as the review has progressed.
outline the potential ways in which you could go about doing the review.
First set a question, or a thesis statement
Your prima facie question may be revised
Revised question(s)
Prima facie question(s)
Initial reading around
What makes a good question for a literature review?
Clear It has to be unambiguous and easily understood
Specific It has to be sufficiently specific for it to be clear what constitutes an answer
Answerable We can see what literature needs to be collected to answer it
Should you use AI
There are AI tools such as Elicit.com that are good at helping you to search
They are less good at weaving together sources into a narrative
They can’t triangulate
They can’t understand how sources fit (or don’t fit) together
They can’t offer lines of reasoning that help to answer a research question
Summary
Literature reviews tell you what is known about a topic and help you to contextualize your own work.
Literature reviews either contribute to a broader project in which you do your own fieldwork, or they can be freestanding projects, without additional fieldwork.
There are narrative and systematic reviews. In a narrative review the onus is on you to select appropriate literature and assess it, whereas with the systematic review you use a specialised procedure to search for and select appropriate literature.
There are several steps involved in doing a literature review: scanning, scoping, searching, structuring, and synthesising. They’re about gradually focusing down on the subject that you are interested in, searching and synthesising the literature, and ultimately concluding with a write-up that has cohesion.
The Introduction to your review is important. It maps out the area for your work, and it helps you shape your questions.
For a literature review that informs a broader project, it will normally occupy 20-30 percent of the wordage for the project write-up. For a freestanding review, it’s 100 percent.
The research question or thesis statement will be at the heart of your review. Right at the beginning of your work, you will set a start-up question, a prima facie question, which may be changed as you scope the area.
Activity
| Topic | |
| Background | |
| Dimensions of the issue | |
| Question or thesis statement |
Look at Table 1.1 in How to do your literature review. It sketches out background features to an issue and some dimensions to pursue in an introductory chapter.
Think of a topic in your own area of interest. Now:
sketch out a background to the issue
outline various dimensions to the issue
offer a question or statement based on these …
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