Guiding concept may be research objective, problem statement, thesis statement, etc.
What do we mean when we say it is “not a basic summative report?” – you should not just go article by article and simply write short descriptions of each article. It is a synthesis. A literature review is meant to be the product of more advanced study. Your final review needs to show that you analyzed the literature critically and organized each piece you include within a theme or argument. You probably won’t include every book or article you found on your topic; deciding what to include and what to leave out is part of your critical analysis
Regardless of the type of literature review you are doing – every lit review must do these four things
We will use this process with some adjustments – especially in the survey and critique sections. These two steps will be combined to make the process more understandable and more quickly usable in the time we have available.
If you are confused, be sure and ask for clarification on your assignment from your professor. Discussions with your professor outside of class can also result in identification of topics you did not think of.Talking about your ideas can help you clarify your thoughts. If you can’t explain your topic to someone in a coupld of sentences, you have not focused it enough.Academic journals, blogs, listservs, and associations are great places to look for topic ideas. Looking for what’s hot in your discipline can help you identify topics that will be of interest to other researchers, where there are gaps in the literature, and areas that are likely to have current research available. If you are interested in getting your research published, scanning the professional environment in your area can be especially useful.Focus focusfocus! You will probably be refining your topic as you search the literature and develop your lit review, BUT you should still start with as focused a topic as possible. This will save you time and help you write a more focused, cogent review.If you are doing the literature review for your dissertation, selecting a topic is a much bigger issue that we have time to cover here. Again, I would advise you speak with your professor, but there are also a lot of books available in the library about topic selection and refinement.
All academic disciplines have their own vocabulary that is sometimes difficult for students to understand at first. When you use the databases and are reading the literature in your field, pay attention to what terminology is used – what words are the authors using to describe concepts? These are the words you need to use when you search the databases. If you are not getting results relevant for your research topic, you are probably not using the best keywords for your search.` ` `` `
Remember this is an ongoing process. You should continue to monitor the literature at every step in the research process.
We often don’t think of literature reviews in terms of arguments. However, thinking about it and addressing lit reviews from this perspective ensures that you will be critically analyzing and synthesizing the literature rather than approaching it simplistically, falling into the trap of creating a summary of prior research
A lit review seeks to answer a research question. when beginning your lit review, analyze the type of data needed to answer your research question. Knowing the type of claim needed to answer your research question will let you know the kinds of arguments you need to be looking for as you gather and analyze the literature.