Literature Review

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

One set of purposes is to explain the motivations for doing your Literature Review research. Your aims are to:

1. Convince the reader that the research area is significant / important / interesting you’re trying to convince the reader to read on and also providing context to help them see the “bigger story” of which your research is a part. From your perspective you are answering the question: Why did I think that doing research in this general area would be interesting and important (in some sense)?
2. convince the reader that we shouldn’t be (completely) satisfied with the existing literature on the topic and that your research will fill some important or interesting gap or address some important limitation or deficiency To do this you need to critique the prior literature; if there’s no gap or limitation or deficiency with the prior research, why is there a need to do more in the area? Your question: What made me think that more research in the particular sub-area that I chose was warranted?
3. Explain and justify your research hypotheses / ideas what theory and/or prior experimental results suggested to you that your hypotheses were *“are” if you are writing a research proposal] likely to be true / ideas were likely to be fruitful? This necessitates arguments, because if things are certain, you don’t have hypotheses, you have facts and there is no need to do any research!
4. Explain how the historical context for your research guided what you did But only if that is important for understanding where your research fits into a “bigger picture” or if understanding the past is helpful for understanding the present and giving direction for where your research needs to go. For example, a legal studies thesis might review the evolution of legal thinking and policy in an area in order to see what issues have been considered and addressed which will help identify what still needs to be worked on and so that new proposals take into account the lessons of the past.
5. explain and justify your choice of theoretical framework Theory guides what to look for when collecting data (because theory can be used to make predictions) and also helps you analyze and interpret what you find, so writing critically means moving beyond simply summarizing the theory to explaining how it will guide research design and data interpretation and also noting any limitations and how you intend to deal with these (see Sutton & Staw (1995) in the references for this section for some common errors in the ways some authors try to do these things). If there is a choice of theoretical perspectives you could take (sometimes captured by the phrase, “schools of thought”), then you would also need to justify your choice. Your questions: What did I need to know to design my experiments / come up with my experimental or analytical approach / come up with my research questions / interpret my findings? Why did I think the perspective I chose is the best one for investigating my research questions?
6. Convince the reader that your research methods are sound and were well thought through What approaches could have been used for your research? Why did you think the approach you chose was the best one given any constraints? Writing critically here also involves writing with an awareness of the potential limitations of your approach (see for example, http://www.cebm.net/index.aspx?o=1039), which means also explaining how you intend to control for and/or account for those possible limitations.
7. Introduce relevant terminology and provide definitions to clarify how terms are to be used When using new or contested ideas where is no universally agreed upon definition for a term or concept, it is necessary to discuss the options and explain why you decided on one particular interpretation or definition. Your question: For the purposes of this research, what exactly am I going to take X to mean and why do I think that is the best choice?