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Module 2 Writing a Literature Review Sara Gabai, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Thailand E-mail address: gabaisara@gmail.com
Lesson 2.1: Introduction to Writing a Literature Review
Issues to be discussed: 1. What is a Literature Review? 2. Why write a Literature Review?
Lesson 2.2: Conducting a Literature Review
Issues to be discussed: 1. How do I get started? 2. Where do I search for my sources and how do I organize my research?
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Module 2 Writing a Literature Review
Objectives of Module 2:
Writing a Literature Review is often considered one of the most difficult tasks for students undertaking research. The objectives of this module are to enhance students’ understanding of what is a Literature Review and why do they need to incorporate a Literature Review in their Thesis or Dissertation. This module also provides guidelines on how to get started in constructing a good literature review and searching for online and offline sources. It will also provide online tools students may use to plan and organize their sources, citations and bibliography.
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Highlight Contents of Module 2: Lesson 2.1: Introduction to Writing a Literature Review
Issues to be discussed: 1. What is a Literature Review? 2. Why write a Literature Review?
Lesson 2.1.1 What is a Literature Review? Before we explain what is a Literature Review, we must first answer the question: what do we mean by the word “Literature�? Literature, in this context, is any source of recognized and reliable information. Any information that you include in your literature review must be credible within the academic and scholarly community. Information retrieved from advertising material, newspaper articles, or quotes from friends or strangers is not considered reliable or scholarly knowledge. On the other hand, edited books, journal articles, monographs, online databases, conference proceedings, dissertations, empirical studies, government reports, historical records, statistical handbooks, policy guides may be considered reliable scholarly work. Now that we have defined literature, we can define literature review. A literature review is a selected analysis and critical description of existing literature that is relevant to your research topic. After your introduction, the literature review is the first part of your research paper. In the literature review you will show how existing research relates to your investigation and research question(s). Before you can write a research paper, you need to make sure that you are not repeating work that has already been Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University
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Module 2 Writing a Literature Review
done by others. You need to demonstrate to your readers that you are aware of how your research fits into and fills any gaps in the currently existing body of literature. Avoid re-inventing the wheel; there is nothing worse than to discover that your research has already been done! A literature review can appear as: Part of a research paper introduction; Part of a thesis introduction; A section in a research proposal. A Literature Review should: Contain the works that you consulted in order to develop your research; Provide justification and a background for your research; Show the relationship between key concepts, existing theories and approaches, and your hypothesis and research question(s); Question what views need to be further tested; Question the need to study further the research problem; Question what research methods seem unsatisfactory; Provide evidence that may help explain your findings later; Guide readers to understand the contribution that you are making in your chosen research field of study by pointing out the existing gaps and inconsistencies;
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A Literature Review should NOT: Be a summary of everything you have read on the topic; Be a chronological description of what was discovered in your field of study.
Why is this example bad? It is a summary of previous research; It is organized by listing authors, presented using chronological order, instead of being organized using the research, key concepts and theories.
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Module 2 Writing a Literature Review
It does not evaluate the summarized research; It does not show any relationship between theories; It is not critical; It does not relate to the writer’s research.
Why is it good? It grouped similar information; It shows the relationship between different works; It is organized around ideas and not researchers. School of Communicatio n Arts
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(Main Source: Asian Inst. of Technology) Lesson 2.1.2 Why write a Literature Review? Literature reviews are undertaken for several reasons. If your goal is to produce a relevant piece of research, then getting the literature review right is an essential. These are some good reasons to undertake a literature review: To identify gaps or omissions in what has already been published; To avoid re-inventing the wheel; To identify other people working in the same field; To increase your breadth of knowledge; To identify most important works in your research field or area; To help you analyze and interpret the results of your research (Gabbott, 2004) A literature review can also help you: Identify a testable hypothesis; Identify measuring tools or instruments; Create citations and your bibliography or page of references.
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Module 2 Writing a Literature Review
Bibliography: Gabbott, M. (2004) ‘Undertaking a Literature Review in Marketing’. The Marketing Review. (4), 411-429
Asian Inst. of Technology cited in IDEA Student Center and Gordon Leadership Center Grad Talk. Available at: http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/student/student_grad/docs/How_to_Write_an_Effec tive_Literature_Review.pdf
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Lesson 2.2: Conducting a Literature Review Issues to be discussed: 1. How do I get started? 2. Where do I search for my sources and how do I organize my research?
2.2.1 How do I get started? Writing a literature review is often the most difficult part of writing an article, book, thesis or dissertation because the literature seems and often is massive. So, how do we get started? Your first step in writing your literature review is defining your specific research area. If you have already created a thesis (a statement about what you think is happening in your text) or a research question (a question about what you think might be happening in your text), then your research area has already been defined. If you have not created a thesis or hypothesis, what are you waiting for? You’ll need to know what you’re looking for before you can begin your literature review. Once you have a working thesis or hypothesis, you can start your reading and research process.
Reading strategies are just as important as writing strategies. In the book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success, Wendy Belcher argues that it is just as important to develop effective reading strategies as it is to develop effective writing strategies, because it is impossible to read every published
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Module 2 Writing a Literature Review
work in your area of research. One of the distinctions Belcher makes is between theoretical literature and contextual or background literature. When writing a literature review, it is crucial to distinguish between: Theoretical literature: scholarly writing that helps you to build and sharpen your conceptual focus; Contextual or background literature: articles and books that are closely related to your area or subject of research. Making this distinction is important because you will have to read closely every work that forms part of your core theoretical framework, but can often do a quicker read of those articles that are part of your background literature. For example, a search on “media development” in Google Scholar turns up 4,250,000 results/ sources. Of course, you will never be able to read all of those. Again, you have to decide what the core literature (theoretical literature) is and draw from that to come up with your own working definition of media development to make your own conceptual framework. In their book, Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation, Sonja Foss and William Walters describe a highly efficient way of writing a literature review in SIX STEPS:
1. Step One: Decide on your areas of research: Before you begin to search for articles or books, decide beforehand what areas you are going to research. Make sure that you only get articles and books in those areas, School of Communicatio n Arts
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even if you come across fascinating books in other areas.
Ask yourself: What research has already been done on this topic? What are the sub-areas of the topic you need to explore? What other research (perhaps not directly on the topic) might be relevant to your investigation? How do these sub-topics and other research overlap with your investigation? Note down all your initial thoughts on the topic. It is important to do this before you start reading so that you don’t waste time on unfocussed and irrelevant reading.
2. Step Two: Search for the literature: Conduct a comprehensive bibliographic search of books and articles in your area. Read the abstracts online and download and/or print those articles that are relevant to your area of research. Find books in the library that are relevant and check them out. Try to set a specific time frame for how long you will be consulting your books or resources.
3. Step Three: Find relevant excerpts in your books and articles: Skim the contents of each book and article and look specifically for these five things:
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• • • • •
Module 2 Writing a Literature Review
Claims, conclusions, and findings about the constructs you are investigating; Definitions of terms; Calls for follow-up studies relevant to your project; Gaps you notice in the literature; Disagreement about the constructs you are investigating.
As you continue your search, you’re likely to encounter sources that are perfect, agreeing with every idea you propose. You’re just as likely to encounter sources that seem to prove the exact opposite of what you’re proposing. Should you trash and delete a source just because the author disagrees with the point you are trying to make? Absolutely not! Your literature review doesn't have to consist only of pieces that offer favorable theses to your research. You can include those authors who argue against your thesis. If you can, in your analysis, create a compelling argument against those who would oppose you, you can make your analysis that much stronger.
When you find any of these five things, type the relevant excerpt directly into a Word document. Don’t summarize, as summarizing takes longer than simply typing the excerpt. Make sure to note the name of the author and the page number following each excerpt. Do this for each article and book that you have in your stack of literature. When you are done, print out your excerpts.
Before you write, you will need to create some kind of order, a way to organize the works you find in a way that makes sense to your readers. The literature should not be a simple list of works. You need to make sure you understand and are able to
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justify why you are including each item in your literature review. You should be able to summarize the works you’ve chosen, but you should also be able to critique and comment on those works.
Steps 4 and 5 may be a way to organize your literature:
4. Step Four: Code the literature Get out a pair of scissors and cut each excerpt out. Now, sort the pieces of paper into similar topics. Figure out what the main themes are. Place each excerpt into a themed pile. Make sure each note goes into a pile. If there are excerpts that you can’t figure out where they belong, separate those and go over them again at the end to see if you need new categories. When you finish, place each stack of notes into an envelope labeled with the name of the theme.
5. Step Five: Create Your Conceptual Schema Type, in large font, the name of each of your coded themes. Print this out, and cut the titles into individual slips of paper. Take the slips of paper to a table or large workspace and figure out the best way to organize them. Are there ideas that go together or that are in dialogue with each other? Are there ideas that contradict each other? Move around the slips of paper until you come up with a way of organizing the codes that makes sense. Write the conceptual schema down before you forget or someone cleans up your slips of paper!
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6. Step Six: Begin to Write Your Literature Review: Choose any section of your conceptual schema to begin with. You can begin anywhere, because you already know the order. Find 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 grouping together those excerpts that say the same thing. Use that mini-conceptual schema to write up your literature review based on the excerpts that you have in front of you. Don’t forget to include the citations as you write, so as not to lose track of who said what. Repeat this for each section of your literature review. Once you complete these six steps, you will have a complete draft of your literature review. The great thing about this process is that it breaks down into manageable steps something that seems enormous like writing a literature review. When you have finished your literature review, you should have in your mind a very clear picture of what there is to know about your topic, and how your research makes that picture even clearer. Tips: Be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question you are developing; Synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known; School of Communicatio n Arts
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Identify areas of controversy in the literature ; Formulate questions that need further research.
Ask yourself: 1. What is my specific thesis, problem, or research question? 2. What type of review am I doing? Issues of: theory? Methodology? Quantitative research? 3. What is the scope of my research? 4. What types of publications am I using? 5. Has my research been wide enough, narrow enough? 6. Number of sources appropriate to length of paper or thesis? 7. Have I critically analyzed the literature I used? - Follow through on a set of concepts and questions; - Compare items to each other; - Assess strengths and weaknesses instead of just listing facts; - Did I integrate different articles into each paragraph? 8. Have I sited studies contrary to my perspective? 9. Will readers find the literature review relevant, appropriate, and useful?
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Module 2 Writing a Literature Review
2.2.2. Where do I search for my sources and how do I organize my research? It’s easy to think that the best way to search for texts is to use the Internet – to ‘Google it’. There are useful online tools that you may use, like Google Scholar. However, for most literature reviews you will need to focus on academically authoritative texts like academic books, journals, research reports, and government publications. Searching Google will give you thousands of hits, however, few of them authoritative, and you will waste time sorting through them. The most comprehensive form of research is performed in the library, where there is a wide range of materials for your research. * Always make a note of what you read – author, title, date, publisher, pages in order to provide references. Did you know that through the STOU e-Library, you can access for FREE databases with thousands of peer-reviewed articles from any discipline? STOU membership to these databases enables you to download for free peer-reviewed scholarly articles. It is important to consult these kinds of articles when you conduct your research – because of their reliability and recognition in academia. Quoting “Wikipedia” in your research, for example, is not appropriate.
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Visit asean-commarts.stou.ac.th and check the e-Library section or get in touch with STOU Library staff.
Recommended Scholarly Sources: Journal articles (surveys, research papers) provide technical up-to-date information (last 2 years) about a research topic. Books Recent research monographs can be useful in your literature review. Do not include citations of textbooks in your literature review, but you can use them in later sections of your paper.
Conference proceedings. They provide information about the latest/unpublished research. In general, these are less reliable than a journal paper. Always cite the journal paper version, if available.
Government or corporate reports. Depending on your field of study, these reports may be a useful source of information. They may outline general research lines a particular organization is interested in funding. Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University
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Theses and dissertations. Can be useful sources of information. However, they can be difficult to obtain and parts of the research presented may have to be treated with caution.
Specialized magazines. Sometimes these are considered as reputable as a journal. Other types of magazines can provide a good starting point to find more reputed work.
Other sources include newspapers and the Internet.
Create your own fully searchable library Today the Internet and new software applications make researchers’ lives much easier than in the past. Instead of creating many folders on your computer to store your research articles and the sources you have found for your literature review, there are online applications that enable you to gather all your research into one place, access it from multiple devices (online and offline), search key words to speed up your search, and generate citations and bibliographies in any academic style you prefer. One program that I recommend you to use when starting your research process and literature review is Mendeley. This program is used by over 3 million of students worldwide for organizing, writing, collaborating and promoting research. It allows you School of Communicatio n Arts
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to create your own fully searchable library.
Click here to sign up for free: http://mendeley.com and download the program on your computer.
Getting Started with Mendeley – and how to create your Library
Click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv6_HuCYExM
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Module 2 Writing a Literature Review
What is a Bibliography? A literature review is not an annotated bibliography. However, it is important to also understand what is a bibliography to make sure you note down all the correct information you will need when referencing your sources. A bibliography is: A list of relevant works you have consulted during the preparation of your research, thesis or dissertation; It must include all the publications quoted from or referred to in the text; Should come at the end of the work and should be in alphabetical order.
Click on the tutorial to see how an APA Sample Works-Cited Page looks like.
Tutorial You can choose different Citations Styles: APA – American Psychological Association (usually used in social sciences) MLA – Modern Language Association (usually used in humanities) Chicago Style (usually used in humanities, arts)
Online Citations Generators To create citations for your paper in any chosen style, you can use online tools such School of Communicatio n Arts
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as:
1. CitationBuilder 2. KnightCite 3. CitationMachine 4. Also Mendeley allows you to create citations – see above.
Key Video Lecture
ATM University Writing Center. Get Lit: The Literature Review. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1hG99HUaOk
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Module 2 Writing a Literature Review
Assignment of Module 2 In this assignment you will review some of the literature that covers your research area of study or question.
1) You should decide on a question to use in your literature review. It should be a question that you are interested in and appears likely to have some substantive literature available on the topic. (Do not hesitate to consult with your professors on this). 2) Submit a list of seven (7) sources that you propose to use for your literature review. (I will not expect that the seven sources listed in this submission will be necessarily the same seven you will use in your final thesis). All sources must follow the APA Reference Style, they must be submitted in alphabetical order and follow the format of a formal literature cited list (see example in the APA Style tutorial).
Choose sources from: - Scholarly journals (at least 4); - Review papers or chapters in edited scholarly books (at least 2). Check also online from Google Books; - Web sources (select 1 trusted online source) Overall you will have 7 sources.
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Your main purpose is to show what is known already about your topic. Before you show what others have said about your topic, you must understand your topic well!
3) Once you complete your list of sources, write a brief summary (100 words) for each source. Your assignment is to focus on a summative annotated bibliography with your short summaries highlighting the main points of each source and how these are related to your research question. USE YOUR OWN WORDS when summarizing the sources.
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