Need a Topic/Title and Research Proposal outline in Power Point format.

Week 13: Conducting

Critical Literature

Review

CONDUCTING CRITICAL LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1. Introduction

What is a literature review?

A literature review is:

“… a systematic method for identifying, evaluating and interpreting the …work produced by

researchers, scholars and practitioners.” (Fink, 1998, p.3)

“An examination of the research that has been conducted in a particular field of study”

(Ferfolja & Burnett, 2003, p.1)

A literature review

• surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources (e.g. dissertations, conference

proceedings) relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory.

• provides a short description and critical evaluation of work critical to the topic.

• offers an overview of significant literature published on a topic.

(Lyons, 2005)

Literature reviews is defined as:

Hart (2003, p.13) further adds that “literature is the selection of available documents…and

the effective evaluation of these documents in relation to the research being proposed.

1.2 Why to conduct a literature review?

“…without it you will not acquire an understanding of your topic, of what has already been

done on it, how it has been researched, and what the key issues are.” (Hart, 1998, p.1)

Conducting a literature review is important because:

• It determines the need for actually doing the proposed research

 For example, even if there are similar studies published, the researchers might

suggest the need for similar studies or replication

•It narrows down the problem.

 It can be overwhelming getting into the literature of a field of study. Thus, a literature

review is important to understand where you need to focus your efforts.

•It generates hypotheses or questions for further studies (Mauch & Park, 2003)

Literature Reviews are conducted for Various Reasons.

Some of them are:

1. For a review paper

2. For the introduction (and discussion) of a research paper, master’s thesis or dissertation

3. To embark on a new area of research

4. For a research proposal

Conducting a literature review is a helpful way to:

• Get background knowledge of the field of inquiry

• Understand Facts

• To search for Eminent scholars

• To read about Parameters of the field

• To understand the most important ideas, theories, questions and hypotheses.

• To gain Knowledge of the methodologies common to the field and a feeling for their

usefulness and appropriateness in various settings.

(Mauch & Park, 2003)

1.3. The process of Literature review

The process consists of four basic steps as these are presented in figure 1 below:

Figure 1: The literature review process

Steps for conducting a literature review

• Choose a topic of your interest

• Define your research question

• Decide on the scope of your review

• Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches

• Conduct your searches and find the literature

• Review the literature

Step 1: Choose a topic

a) First, you need to choose a research interest. This might be based on your professional and

personal experience, your current interest or background knowledge.

b) Select a research interest from the everyday interest:

c) Use the research interest to choose the research topic:

Important note: Remember that you need to formulate and define the gap in the

knowledge or the problem. Which topic or field is being examined and what are its

component issues?

Step 2: Search and Choose the Literature

a) Find materials relevant to the research subject.

Use keywords and key phrases

Searching the literature involves reading and refining your problem. So you need to define

what you need to know.

Where can the appropriate literature be found?

Mostly from primary sources of literature such as:

• Academic journals

• Conference proceedings

• Theses and dissertations and

• Government pamphlets

Important note: You need to evaluate the data you search: determine which literature

makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic

Step 3: Analyze and interpret the literature:

• Discuss the findings and conclusions of the relevant literature

• Develop your own argument and critique of the literature to ensure that it support your own

thesis/ideas/points of view.

Step 4: Write the Review

• During this step, you need to compose and refine the literature you read.

• The written literature review becomes a work that accurately carries the research that can be

understood by the intended audience

Begin your literature review …

• Introduce your Literature Review by defining or explaining your research problem

Note: In the introduction, explain why the topic is important and give the reader an idea of

where you are going in your paper.

In order to construct the literature review:

• Summarize individual studies or articles

 Use as much or as little detail as each merits according to its comparative importance

in the literature

 Length demonstrates significance

 Don’t need to provide a lot of detail about the procedures used in other studies

 Most literature studies only describe the main findings, relevant methodological

issues, and/or major conclusions of other research

• Discuss major areas of agreement of disagreement

• Make logical interpretations from the literature reviewed

 If there is no discussion of the relevance of the overview to other work in the field, or

if there is no interpretation of the literature it may signal that the author has not

thoroughly examined the topic of interest

Table 1: Organization of the Review

Introduction to the literature review

 Content – what is covered  Structure –how is organized  Boundaries- what is outside of its scope

Body of the literature review

SECTION 1

The most important topic or a key concept

 Discussed and evaluated  Summarized and related to your research

project

SECTION 2:

The next important topic or a key concept

 Discussed and evaluated  Summarized and related to your research project

ADDITIONAL SECTIONS

 Follow the same pattern

Conclusion

From each of the section summaries,

 Highlight the most relevant points  Related these back to the need for research  Reiterate what these mean for the research design

1.4. Important tips:

1) Generally speaking write in the past tense, expect when you need to discuss their

significance- then use the present tense.

2)An organizational scheme should be used to arrange the literature:

Organizational Schemes:

• Topical order

• Chronological order

• Problem-cause-solution order

• General-to-specific order

• Known-to- unknown order

• Comparison and contrast order

• Specific to general order

Summary:

An effective Literature review:

• Places each work based on its contribution to the understanding of the subject under review

• Describes the relationship of each work to the others under consideration

• Identifies new ways of interpretation and shed light on any possible gaps in previous

research studies

• Resolves the conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies

• Identifies areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort

• Points the way forward to further research

• Places one’s original work (in the case of theses or dissertations) in the context of existing

literature.

Note: Make sure that you are accurate and thorough

• Your review acts as a guide to the audience and the reader

• Thus, it is very important to make your review:

• Accurate: e.g. citations correct, findings attributed to authors correct.

Ensure that someone is able to track down the article and that you have provided a reliable

presentation

Complete: for example try to include all important papers and not every paper which is

written around the topic of interest.

Finally, make sure that you manage the references you find and use in your review and you

create a full reference list by the end of the review.

• Organize and store your references so as to save a significant amount of work

• Make in-text citations based on required referencing styles (e.g. APA or Harvard) according

to the University rules and regulations

• Create a list of references based on the required reference style.

References

Burge, C. (2005) Experimental Molecular Biology: Biotechnology II, Spring 2005.

(Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCouseWare), Available at:

http://ocw.mit.edu. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

Fink, A. (1998). Conducting literature research reviews: from paper to the internet.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hart, C. (1998). Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science research

imagination. Sage.

Lyons, K. (2005). UCSC library - how to write a literature review. Available at

http://library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/literaturereview.html

Mauch, J., & Park, N. (2003). Guide to the successful thesis and dissertation: A handbook for

students and faculty . CRC Press.

Ridley, D. (2012). The literature review: A step-by-step guide for students. Sage.

Additional Reading

Randolph, J. J. (2009). A guide to writing the dissertation literature review. Practical

Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 14, 1-13.