How to Do a Thorough and Efficient Literature Review

How to Write a Literature Review: Six Steps to Get You from Start to End

Writing a literature review is often the about daunting office of writing an article, book, thesis, or dissertation. "The literature" seems (and often is) massive. I have institute it helpful to be every bit systematic equally possible when completing this gargantuan task.

Sonja Foss and William Walters* depict an efficient and effective style of writing a literature review. Their system provides an excellent guide for getting through the massive amounts of literature for any purpose: in a dissertation, an K.A. thesis, or preparing a enquiry commodity for publication in any field of study. Below is a  summary of the steps they outline as well as a step-by-pace method for writing a literature review.

How to Write a Literature Review

Step One: Determine on your areas of research:

Earlier you begin to search for articles or books, decide beforehand what areas you lot are going to enquiry. Brand sure that you merely get articles and books in those areas, even if yous come across fascinating books in other areas. A literature review I am currently working on, for example, explores barriers to college education for undocumented students.

Footstep Ii: Search for the literature:

Conduct a comprehensive bibliographic search of books and articles in your expanse. Read the abstracts online and download and/or print those manufactures that pertain to your expanse of research. Notice books in the library that are relevant and check them out. Set a specific fourth dimension frame for how long y'all will search. It should non take more than ii or three dedicated sessions.

Step Three: Discover relevant excerpts in your books and articles:

Skim the contents of each book and article and look specifically for these five things:

1. Claims, conclusions, and findings about the constructs you are investigating

2. Definitions of terms

3. Calls for follow-up studies relevant to your projection

4. Gaps yous notice in the literature

five. Disagreement about the constructs y'all are investigating

When you find any of these five things, blazon the relevant excerpt directly into a Word document. Don't summarize, equally summarizing takes longer than simply typing the excerpt. Make sure to note the proper noun of the author and the page number following each excerpt. Do this for each article and volume that you lot have in your stack of literature. When yous are done, impress out your excerpts.

Step Four: Code the literature:

Go out a pair of scissors and cut each extract out. Now, sort the pieces of paper into similar topics. Figure out what the chief themes are. Place each excerpt into a themed pile. Make certain each note goes into a pile. If there are excerpts that yous can't figure out where they belong, separate those and go over them again at the end to see if you lot need new categories. When y'all finish, place each stack of notes into an envelope labeled with the name of the theme.

Step Five: Create Your Conceptual Schema:

Type, in big font, the name of each of your coded themes. Print this out, and cutting the titles into individual slips of paper. Take the slips of newspaper to a table or large workspace and figure out the all-time style to organize them. Are there ideas that get together or that are in dialogue with each other? Are at that place ideas that contradict each other? Move around the slips of newspaper until yous come up with a manner of organizing the codes that makes sense. Write the conceptual schema down before yous forget or someone cleans upward your slips of paper.

Step Six: Begin to Write Your Literature Review:

Cull any section of your conceptual schema to begin with. You can begin anywhere, because you already know the club. Observe the envelope with the excerpts in them and lay them on the table in front of you. Figure out a mini-conceptual schema based on that theme by group together those excerpts that say the same thing. Use that mini-conceptual schema to write upward your literature review based on the excerpts that y'all have in forepart of you lot. Don't forget to include the citations as you write, so equally not to lose track of who said what. Repeat this for each department of your literature review.

In one case you consummate these six steps, you lot will take a complete draft of your literature review. The bang-up thing about this process is that it breaks downwards into manageable steps something that seems enormous: writing a literature review.

I recall that Foss and Walter's system for writing the literature review is ideal for a dissertation, considering a Ph.D. candidate has already read widely in his or her field through graduate seminars and comprehensive exams.

Information technology may be more than challenging for G.A. students, unless you are already familiar with the literature. Information technology is always difficult to figure out how much yous need to read for deep meaning, and how much you merely need to know what others have said. That rest will depend on how much you already know.

For people writing literature reviews for articles or books, this system also could work, especially when yous are writing in a field with which you are already familiar. The mere fact of having a organisation can brand the literature review seem much less daunting, and then I recommend this organisation for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the prospect of writing a literature review.

*Destination Dissertation: A Traveler'southward Guide to a Done Dissertation

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Source: https://www.wiley.com/network/researchers/preparing-your-article/writing-a-literature-review-six-steps-to-get-you-from-start-to-finish