Writing Literature Reviews

You will need a question to answer to give clarity, direction and  cohesion to your work.  Your research question will focus your concentration. Spending time on your research question will be worthwhile.

For most students, the most confusing aspect of research is finding the right problem. It should be original and interesting. Consider:

• What are the important elements of the topic we want to investigate?
• Is there important evidence in these areas?
• What has been done before?
• What gaps are there?

Defining the parameters of your work will also help focus your question and subsequently your searching.  The inclusion and exclusion criteria are the formal  boundaries of your question. They formalise the types of studies that you want to include in your review. These characteristics will help reduce the number of studies to be reviewed to a focused, manageable sum.

You are not required to present all of the research in the topic area. You are instead supposed to show the reader enough information to enable them to understand why your dissertation exists, what it will add to the research base and to understand the justification for your research question.

The development of your search strategy lays the foundations of your review, and dictates the success of it.  A clear, organised search strategy will provide your review with credibility, rigour and transparency.  Use the library services and resources to develop and undertake your literature searches. Consider using Refworks to manage, store and produce your reference list.

Ensure you are including academic, credible and reliable literature. This might include academic text, journal articles and grey literature.  Typically, literature review articles are not included with a literature review, but they can be helpful for citation chaining, which involves using the reference list within a good paper to suggest related or cited by papers.

Make sure you record your searches and what is found, especially if a PRISMA is to be produced.

Having selected the included information sources for your review,  we now synthesise the sources in a two part process:

1. Critically evaluate the information, analysing and evaluating their argument, methods, findings and conclusions
2. We synthesise the information,  to provide our own conclusions and recommendations

Analysis and evaluation

When reading your included sources, it is important to read with a critical eye.  The point of analysis is not to passively supply summaries of the information, rather read them deeply and critically evaluate them. For further guidance on critical analysis and synthesis visit our guide.

When reading our sources we need to apply some deeper level thinking. This includes:

• Discussing the author's ideas- are their arguments valid?
• Analysing their implications- is the language misleading?
• Critically evaluating the sources- is the  methodology sound? What  inferences does the author draw from their findings?

These thoughts should be communicated in our notes, to be incorporated into our analysis. You should also be identifying common themes and threads, and might want to convert your individual source notes into a table or matrix to guide your analysis. You might also want to use a  critical appraisal tool to guide your assessment of each source.

Synthesising

Next, we want to synthesing the ideas into a form that reflects our perspective and understanding. Synthesing involves bringing together knowledge to provide a new perspective, as an integrated whole. Appreciate where the connections lie within the literature. From your summary table you will develop your discussion.

Structure

If you review is part of a dissertation or research project, then you will dedicate a chapter to your literature review.

Most stand alone reviews tend to be structured like an empirical dissertation:

• Introduction
• Methodology
• Findings
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• References

Refer to your module handbook for guidance on the structure of your literature review.

Language and Style

We need to be certain not to loose our reader through our extended body of work.  Aim to write with precision and clarity.  Check grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and spelling.  De-clutter sentences and check all paragraphs are fully developed using the PEEL structure.

There are many possible functions for language in a literature review.  Vocabulary can indicate relationships and differing functions. The Manchester Phrase Bank is a great tool to help you  decide upon your academic language for different functions.