Model 3 Revise

Literature Review Guidance

Overview: A literature review is an evaluative account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. The purpose of a literature review is not to create an original argument and support your position with scholarly research (this is the typical college research paper assignment), but instead to summarize and synthesize the available research in the field to assess the value of the research already done by others, identify prevalent trends and discover what research remains to by done in a particular subject area. Literature reviews direct the formation of new research questions and are routinely included in the opening sections of scholarly research reports. A successful literature review must be defined by a guiding concept such as your research objective, the problem or issue you wish to discuss. A literature review is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries (this is an annotated bibliography).

In addition to leaving you a better informed researcher in a particular specialized subject area, writing a literature review helps you develop and demonstrate two valuable skills:

Research: the ability to scan the literature efficiently to identify a set of useful articles and/or books and to obtain those materials.

Critical Evaluation: the ability to apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies.

In the introduction, you should:

· Define or identify the general topic, issue, or area of concern, thus providing an appropriate context for reviewing the literature.

· Point out overall trends in what has been published about the topic; or conflicts in theory, methodology, evidence, and conclusions; or gaps in research and scholarship; or a single problem or new perspective of immediate interest.

· Establish the writer's reason (point of view) for reviewing the literature; explain the criteria to be used in analyzing and comparing literature and the organization of the review (sequence); and, when necessary, state why certain literature is or is not included (scope).

In the body, you should:

· Group research studies and other types of literature (reviews, theoretical articles, case studies, etc.) according to common denominators such as qualitative versus quantitative approaches, conclusions of authors, specific purpose or objective, chronology, etc.

· Summarize individual studies or articles with as much or as little detail as each merits according to its comparative importance in the literature, remembering that space (length) denotes significance.

· Provide the reader with strong "umbrella" sentences at beginnings of paragraphs, "signposts" throughout, and brief "so what" summary sentences at intermediate points in the review to aid in understanding comparisons and analyses.

In the conclusion, you should:

· Summarize major contributions of significant studies and articles to the body of knowledge under review, maintaining the focus established in the introduction.

· Evaluate the current "state of the art" for the body of knowledge reviewed, pointing out major methodological flaws or gaps in research, inconsistencies in theory and findings, and areas or issues pertinent to future study.

· Conclude by providing some insight into the relationship between the central topic of the literature review and a larger area of study such as a discipline, a scientific endeavor, or a profession.