Why Do You Think the Literature Review Can Determine the Theory That May Be Used in a Study?
How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Video, & Template
What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. Information technology provides an overview of current cognition, allowing you to place relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.
There are v key steps to writing a literature review:
- Search for relevant literature
- Evaluate sources
- Identify themes, debates and gaps
- Outline the structure
- Write your literature review
A good literature review doesn't just summarize sources—information technology analyzes, synthesizes, and critically evaluates to give a articulate moving picture of the country of knowledge on the subject field.
What is the purpose of a literature review?
When y'all write a thesis, dissertation, or inquiry paper, you lot volition likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing cognition. The literature review gives y'all a chance to:
- Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
- Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your enquiry
- Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
- Evidence how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
- Evaluate the electric current country of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.
Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you lot want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research.
Footstep i – Search for relevant literature
Before you lot begin searching for literature, you lot demand a clearly defined topic.
If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your enquiry trouble and questions.
Make a listing of keywords
Outset by creating a list of keywords related to your inquiry question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you're interested in, and listing whatsoever synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as yous discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.
- Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
- Torso image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
- Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth
Search for relevant sources
Utilise your keywords to brainstorm searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and manufactures include:
- Your academy'due south library catalogue
- Google Scholar
- JSTOR
- EBSCO
- Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
- Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
- EconLit (economics)
- Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)
You can also use boolean operators to help narrow downwardly your search.
Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an commodity is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.
What can proofreading do for your paper?
Scribbr editors not just correct grammar and spelling mistakes, only also strengthen your writing by making certain your paper is free of vague language, redundant words and awkward phrasing.
See editing instance
Pace 2 – Evaluate and select sources
You likely won't be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will exist necessary to evaluate which sources are almost relevant to your research question.
For each publication, ask yourself:
- What question or problem is the writer addressing?
- What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
- What are the key theories, models, and methods?
- Does the enquiry use established frameworks or take an innovative arroyo?
- What are the results and conclusions of the written report?
- How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the enquiry?
Make certain the sources you use are credible, and make certain you lot read whatever landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.
Take notes and cite your sources
Every bit you read, you should as well brainstorm the writing procedure. Take notes that y'all can afterward contain into the text of your literature review.
Information technology is important to continue track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism. It can be helpful to brand an annotated bibliography, where y'all compile total citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps yous remember what you read and saves time later in the procedure.
Footstep 3 – Identify themes, debates, and gaps
To brainstorm organizing your literature review'southward argument and structure, exist sure y'all empathize the connections and relationships betwixt the sources y'all've read. Based on your reading and notes, yous tin can look for:
- Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches get more or less popular over fourth dimension?
- Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
- Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where practice sources disagree?
- Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that inverse the management of the field?
- Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to exist addressed?
This step volition help you lot work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicative) prove how your own research volition contribute to existing knowledge.
- Most research has focused on young women.
- There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
- Only at that place is however a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that y'all could address in your own research.
Step 4 – Outline your literature review's structure
At that place are various approaches to organizing the trunk of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, y'all tin combine several of these strategies (for instance, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).
Chronological
The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over fourth dimension. However, if you lot choose this strategy, be conscientious to avert simply list and summarizing sources in guild.
Endeavour to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Requite your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.
Thematic
If you lot accept found some recurring cardinal themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that accost different aspects of the topic.
For case, if yous are reviewing literature near inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economical access.
Methodological
If you lot draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of enquiry methods, you might want to compare the results and conclusions that sally from different approaches. For case:
- Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative enquiry
- Discuss how the topic has been approached past empirical versus theoretical scholarship
- Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources
Theoretical
A literature review is oftentimes the foundation for a theoretical framework. You can use it to talk over diverse theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.
You lot might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.
Step 5 – Write your literature review
Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction, a main trunk, and a conclusion. What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.
Introduction
The introduction should conspicuously establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.
Torso
Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to separate the body into subsections. You can apply a subheading for each theme, time menses, or methodological approach.
As y'all write, you tin follow these tips:
- Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
- Clarify and interpret: don't just paraphrase other researchers—add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
- Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
- Write in well-structured paragraphs: utilise transition words and topic sentences to describe connections, comparisons and contrasts
Conclusion
In the conclusion, you should summarize the primal findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.
When you've finished writing and revising your literature review, don't forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language skillful? Bank check out Scribbr's professional person Proofreading & Editing service!
Free lecture slides
This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students nigh writing a literature review.
Scribbr slides are free to employ, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.
Open up Google Slides Download PowerPoint
Oftentimes asked questions
- What is the purpose of a literature review?
-
There are several reasons to acquit a literature review at the showtime of a research project:
- To familiarize yourself with the electric current state of noesis on your topic
- To ensure that y'all're not just repeating what others accept already washed
- To identify gaps in noesis and unresolved problems that your research can address
- To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
- To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic
Writing the literature review shows your reader how your piece of work relates to existing research and what new insights information technology will contribute.
Is this article helpful?
You have already voted. Thanks :-) Your vote is saved :-) Processing your vote...
lewistherefecance.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/
0 Response to "Why Do You Think the Literature Review Can Determine the Theory That May Be Used in a Study?"
Post a Comment