2500+ words Essay

How to write a literature survey

 

This is your long-term homework. It is worth 30% of your final grade, so you want to do this right. Each one of you will select one question from the list to be posted tonight. Also, each question will be assigned to only one person (there is plenty questions for everybody). The questions will be assigned on a first-come-first-served basis. So do not wait too long. The way you claim a topic is by going to the module’s newsforum and posting a comment under the “Topics for the literature survey” (to be setup tonight), saying something like “I’ll take #X on topic Y. Firstname Lastname.” That way, everyone can see that the topic is taken and the date and time on that comment will ensure that it’s assigned on a first-come first-served basis.

 

The literature surveys are due on Monday 13th January 2020, 15:00, by Turnitin.

 

Some pointers:

·  A proper literature survey should include the most important papers but cover a bit more than just those, so that there is some context. If you’ve surveyed less than 15 papers relevant for your topic, you’re failing in your assignment.

o   You know what that means. This day, the 7th October, there are 14 weeks to deadline. So pace yourself. On average, you need to locate, read and digest about 1-2 papers per week, every week (counting Reading week) between now and deadline, if you want to do this right.

·   Your source  for the papers surveyed  will be academic literature , and that  exclusively  so. Neither Time, nor Newsweek, nor Teen People or any other popular periodicals are admissible here. You want to write a review of serious in-depth research of the topic you’ve chosen.

·  The course reading list can be your starting point. It contains references to many papers which themselves contain references to still other relevant papers. It will be getting steadily updated throughout the semester. Try Jstor.org, SSRN.com, even Google Scholar. If you really hit a snag and seem to be unable to move forward, email me and we’ll figure something out.

·  Do not hesitate to email me, if you don’t know where to start or if you become confused as to where to go next. If you do things right, you may be a little overwhelmed at first, seeing how much stuff there is on various topics. I can help you sift through that at first (but I’m only going to do that if I first see some initiative on your part).

·   DO NOT  write your survey as a series of self-contained paragraph-per-paper summaries. The whole point of research is the ongoing conversation between researchers – comparing results, methods, competing hypotheses etc. Moreover, such approach would tempt you to just copy-paste the abstract into your review and I would certainly not look kindly upon that (it qualifies as plagiarism). Instead, try to group your reviewed papers by their particular topic or by their methodology, or even by year of publication, if you can discern a clear thread of research progress through time.

·  Some of the questions you will want to address in your write-up are:

o   Why is this issue interesting and important? (Does it – be it divorce, domestic violence or what have you – happen to a large chunk of the population? Or does it happen to a minority but with particularly damaging consequences? Has there been a big shift or a recent change of trend that has put this issue front and center?)

o   What is the dataset they are using? (Census returns? One-time survey? A follow-up survey? Government statistics?)

o   What is the unit of observations? (Individuals? Couples? Counties? States?)

o   What problems might the dataset have? (Is it representative? If it is deliberately focusing on some particular group – say, college students – does that help the researcher answer the question he/she is asking?)

o   What is the source of the data? (Questionnaire? Direct observation in real life? Observation under some experimental conditions? Historical documents?)

o   What are the major claims of each paper your survey (obviously, this is the whole point of writing a literature survey)?

o   What is method used? (Is it a theoretical paper, with a model and all? What sort of statistical analysis does it employ, if any? Is it a literature survey? Is it a historical narrative that relies primarily on anecdote?)

o   How has our understanding of the issue at hand evolved? (Is there a difference between the older literature and the more recent one? Have new methods shown some previously “undisputed” opinions to have been erroneous? Do the papers line up along the battle lines of some long-standing controversy?)

o   Are there any policy implications emerging from the research? (Which laws does the research suggest need to be changed?)

o   What is missing from the papers? (Is there any particular question that the research entirely ignores? Is it for lack of data?)

·  If you want to see how literature surveys are done by real pros, you can look at Croson and Gneezy (2009) or Guinanne (2011) as examples.

·  At the very end, having taken a full measure of the field, you can write your own opinion, explaining in one paragraph which papers you found most convincing and most interesting and whether the research has changed your view on the issue.

·   DO REMEMBER  to include a proper list of references. For how-to tips, look at how they are done in regular academic papers and do the same thing. Look at how I have done it in the syllabus. It is useless to have a survey of the literature if the reader then cannot actually locate the pieces you are citing. I can guarantee you that messing up or omitting your reference list will certainly cost you points.

 

The grading of this assignment is going to be highly bimodal. What that means is that if you do a decent job (even if it’s not perfect), you are likely to get high/close-to-full marks on this assignment (and remember it’s 30% of the final grade). On the other hand, if you visibly screw around, cut corners and try to punt your way through this, I swear I will gladly kill off your grade for the assignment and then dance on its grave, singing ‘Hallelujah’. This is not the kind of assignment where you can come whining “I really tried hard, it just did not work out for me”. No, the way this assignment is set up, it rewards actual trying hard: it is a long slog through lots of reading material with gradual but sure build-up of learning that can then be easily converted into a piece of your own.

 

Good luck and have fun.