CATHARINE OWENS

04 May CATHARINE OWENS

The role of the literature review

Your literature review gives your readers an understanding of the evolution of scholarly research on your topic.

In your literature review you will:

•survey the scholarly landscape

•provide a synthesis of the issues, trends, and concepts

•possibly provide some historical background

Throughout the literature review, your emphasis should fall on the current scholarly conversation. This is why the rubric often specifies that you need resources from peer-reviewed journals, published within the last five years of your anticipated graduation date. It’s in these recent, peer-reviewed journals that the scholarly debate is being carried out!

The literature review also shows the “gap” in the conversation — and how your own doctoral study will fill that gap and contribute to the scholarly knowledge. This is where you make the case for the importance and usefulness for your own work.

Searching comprehensively

Your literature review should be as comprehensive as possible — you want to include all of the relevant resources dealing with your topic. Missing important articles or researchers will significantly weaken your scholarship! So, searching comprehensively becomes important.

To ensuring comprehensiveness:

•Identify the databases that will cover your topic

◦Spend some time reading the descriptions of the databases in your subject area

◦Contact the Library to get advice from a librarian on appropriate databases

◦Some topics cross over subject/theoretical boundaries, and librarians can suggest databases that you may not have considered

•Search in more than one database

◦Some of our databases are huge, containing thousands of journals, but no single database covers every journal relevant to a topic

◦Searching in each relevant database, one at a time, gives you a better sense of control over your search, as well as a more accurate idea of the journals/databases that you’ve covered

Using a multi-database search (such as Thoreau) is not necessarily recommended; in doing so, you lose the ability to use subject terms and search limits that may be unique to each database.

•Explore resources outside of the databases:

◦Government websites

◦Professional organizations

◦Research groups

◦Think tanks

These can all be important sources of statistics and reliable information. These will not be peer-reviewed resources (i.e. since they are not journals, they do not employ the same sort of editorial process that results in peer-review). Evaluating for reliability is important!

Beyond the Library: Google Scholar

Google Scholar provides a good way to take your search beyond the databases; it searches very broadly and will pull in resources you may not have discovered before.

Google’s definition of scholarly includes government sites, think tanks, research organizations, journal websites, and of course colleges and universities.

Unfortunately, there is no way to limit your Google Scholar search to only peer-reviewed resources — so, you will need to invest time and skill in evaluating the resource, before deciding if it’s something that can be included.

Learn more with our Google Scholar guide.

Scholarly/peer-reviewed resources

The standards for scholarly rigor set in the rubric require you to focus your research in the scholarly (i.e. peer-reviewed) journals, most of which are found in our research databases. Discover databases in your field of study on our Articles by Topic page.

Being able to verify that a resource is peer-reviewed is very important as it helps to show you are meeting scholarly rigor.

The most reliable way is to verify peer-review is to look up the journal in Ulrich’s Periodical’s Directory.

Ulrich’s can tell you, authoritatively, if the journal follows a peer-reviewed (or “refereed”) editorial process.

Finding other dissertations/doctoral studies

Finding dissertations and doctoral studies can be useful. While these are not peer-reviewed resources, they are valuable sources of information and citations that can inform your own work.

Literature review process

The literature review process is an iterative one. In this process you will:

1.Choose a topic.

2.Search for current literature on the topic.

3.Evaluate the literature you find.

4.Search for more literature, using what you learned in the evaluation step to inform your search.

5.Once you have exhausted the literature, synthesize and summarize it.

For more information

See these guides for more on these topics:

• Find Full Text

• Google Scholar

• Keyword Searching: Finding Articles on Your Topic

• Peer Review

Basics of Literature Reviews

A literature review is a written approach to examining published information on a particular topic or field. Authors use this review of literature to create a foundation and justification for their research or to demonstrate knowledge on the current state of a field. This review can take the form of a course assignment or a section of a longer capstone project. Read on for more information about writing a strong literature review!

Students often misinterpret the term literature review to mean merely a collection of source summaries, similar to annotations or article abstracts. Although summarizing is an element of a literature review, you will want to approach this assignment as a comprehensive representation of your understanding of a topic or field, such as what has already been done or what has been found. Then, also using these sources, you can demonstrate the need for future research, specifically, your future research.

There is usually no required format or template for a literature review. However, there are some actions to keep in mind when constructing your review:

1. Include an introduction and conclusion . Even if the literature review will be part of a longer document, these paragraphs can act as bookends to your material. Provide background information for your reader, such as including references to the pioneers in the field in the beginning and offering closure in the end by discussing the implications of future research to the field.

2. Avoid direct quotations. Just like in an annotated bibliography, you will want to paraphrase all of the material you present in a literature review. This assignment is a chance for you to demonstrate your knowledge on a topic, and putting ideas into your own words will ensure that you are interpreting the found material for your reader. Paraphrasing will also ensure your review of literature is in your authorial voice.

3. Organize by topic or theme rather than by author. When compiling multiple sources, our tendency as writers can be to summarize each source and then compare and contrast the sources at the end. Instead, organize your sources by your identified themes and patterns. This organization helps demonstrate your synthesis of the material and inhibits you from creating a series of book reports.

4.  Use headings . APA encourages the use of headings within longer pieces of text to display a shift in topic and create a visual break for the reader. Headings in a literature review can also help you as the writer organize your material by theme and note any layers, or subtopics, within the field.

5. Use comparative terms. A literature review can be lengthy and dense, so you will want to make your text appealing to your reader. Transitions and comparison terms will allow you to demonstrate where authors agree or disagree on a topic and highlight your interpretation of the literature.

Synthesizing your sources

In order to demonstrate your knowledge on a field through a review of literature, the key component is synthesis. To synthesize is to combine independent elements and form a cohesive whole; in essence, your literature review should integrate your sources and

· Identify patterns

· Critically discuss strengths and weaknesses of sources or the field

· Compare and contrast methods, approaches, and findings of authors

· Evaluate and interpret what is known in your field and what, if anything, is missing

A Metaphor for Synthesis

Imagine you are at a dinner party with other researchers and theorists from your field. Everyone is sitting around the table and discussing the state of your field of research. The beginning portion of your literature review would be similar to those dinner party guests who started the conversation by discussing foundational research and theories. The body of your literature review could take many forms: What guests are agreeing, and which are arguing? What are the debatable issues, and are there any subtopics of those key topics? Does one particular guest keep interrupting the table’s conversation? The final portion of your literature review would be similar to the host of the dinner party ending the debate with a comprehensive speech that touches on all opinions yet provides closure for the conversation.

Commentary v. opinion

In order to synthesize your sources, you must first analyze them to help provide rationale for why they are a part of your literature review and what role they play within your field. It can be difficult, however, to demonstrate analysis without inserting one’s opinions or beliefs.

Consider the following, analysis-free excerpt. This approach is typical of a student looking to avoid opinion in the paper:

….is to deny the student (Sigree, 1999).       As Harper (2001) noted, instructors cannot identify every one of their students’ emotional intelligences (EI). Faculty members do not have the time, and students simply are not that forthcoming with their learning preferences (Harper, 2001). Furthermore, as Harper warned, if instructors decide to attempt a complete analysis of every student’s EI, they will inevitably hold the entire class back. After all, taking time to adequately diagnose a student’s EI means less time for helping students meet the expectations set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act (Harper, 2001).       Finkelstein and Kramer’s (2002) findings…

There is no analysis or critique in this excerpt. There is strong paraphrasing, and this passage provides a decent overview of Harper, but it addresses only Harper’s ideas and does not explain why this information is important and how it relates to the author’s overall purpose for the paper. The reader needs to know the answer to “So what, and who cares?”

What is missing from this summary is context and analysis. Consider the following revision:

….is to deny the student (Sigree, 1999).      Harper (2001), however, disagreed with Sigree’s (1999) assertion. Harper noted that despite the obvious benefits of diagnosing a student’s emotional intelligence (EI; Jones & Hammer, 1998; Mooney, 1998; Sigree, 1999), instructors cannot identify every one of their students’ EIs (Harper, 2001). Faculty members do not have the time, and students are not that forthcoming with their learning preferences (Harper, 2001).       For Harper (2001), though, the real issue was not with instructors’ belief in EI, but rather in how this belief affected classroom logistics. Instructors who follow Earnhart’s (1996) advice to “Take the time to understand how each of your students learn” (p. 33) are being impractical, Harper argued. Taking time to adequately diagnose a student’s EI means less time for helping students meet the expectations set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act (Harper, 2001). Although Earnhart’s (1996) vision is ideal, Harper takes a more practical stance.      With Harper’s (2001) concerns in mind, I cannot endorse Finkelstein and Kramer’s (2002) findings…

Here, the author is synthesizing the literature. We know, based on the author’s direction, how Harper interacts with the other literature on the topic. We know that Harper is probably in the minority, and we know what the author’s take on Harper is. Finally, we know how and why the author is using Harper: Harper will be used to refute Finkelstein and Kramer, which presumably is the author’s intent or thesis. Notice how the author demonstrated analysis and synthesis in just a few additional sentences. Note, also, that the author includes an “I” statement in the passage but did not insert his or her opinion.

LIterature review matrix

As you read and evaluate your literature there are several different ways to organize your research. Courtesy of Dr. Gary Burkholder in the School of Psychology, these sample matrices are one option to help organize your articles. These documents allow you to compile details about your sources, such as the foundational theories, methodologies, and conclusions; begin to note similarities among the authors; and retrieve citation information for easy insertion within a document.

You can review the sample matrixes to see a completed form or download the blank matrix for your own use.