To complete a literature review, you must spend a lot of time reading and thinking about the material. Most students find this the most time-consuming and difficult part of preparing a research paper. Additionally, you may be required to write it without any guidance.
To begin with, a well-written literature review in research is customary. It helps judge other studies’ credibility and justify your research to your lecturer. It also describes the new insights that your study will bring to the field.
Authors must be able to use and conversant with a wide range of academic materials. Synthesizing and summarizing the background information requires a systematic approach.
Keep reading this thorough guide to grasp the essentials of writing a literature review paper.
What is a Literature Review?
To do a literature study, one must first read and then critically examine various works written about the topic at hand. It consists of a literature review that summarizes the current status of research and state of the art in data and knowledge.
You can find books, academic journals, and the popular press to help you find the solution to your research question. It’s more than just a literature review. An analysis and evaluation of the existing literature’s key concepts, approaches, views, and gaps are also included.
Nonetheless, a literature review does not depend entirely on previous studies. The author further explains the study’s significance and investigates the topic from many perspectives.
Difference between a literature review and an annotated bibliography
Literature reviews, or synopses of related scholarly works, are commonplace in academic writing, such as dissertations, theses, and research papers. Literature reviews provide overviews of pertinent theories and approaches and identify gaps in the existing research. A literature review needs an introduction, body, and conclusion like any other academic paper.
An annotated bibliography is a list of sources that provides a brief evaluation (or annotation) of each source used. If you have a paper due that calls for a lot of research, chances are your teacher will assign this as homework.
What is the purpose of a literature review?
Whether you’re writing a research paper, thesis, or dissertation, it’s essential to demonstrate that you’ve familiarized yourself with the literature review purpose and understand its intended function.
The initial stage in any research project should be to develop a working theory and methodology.
This section places the author’s work in the context of similar studies and scholarly works.
Doing so will allow you to identify a gap in the current body of knowledge and start working to fill it.
It resolves contradictions seen in earlier studies. The amount of time spent on a literature review is usually proportionate to its length. Let’s pretend you have to write a 10-page report on your findings. The literature review calls for at least five or six sources.
However, to avoid any last-minute issues, it is best to consult the professor beforehand about the necessary criteria.
Steps to Writing a Literature Review
So, what are the fundamentals of writing a literature review? The steps to creating a literature review are essential if you want a high mark on your research paper.
Read some of the resources that are relevant to the topic
- Review writing begins with zeroing down on an area of interest
You can’t write a proper literature review without first locating valuable resources to draw on. It should be pertinent to the topic and issues you’re trying to answer. Likewise, you can use the keywords to find related content in other libraries or online databases.
To find the right books, journals, and articles, search the following academic databases:
If you have to write a review on top of your regular schoolwork, you should develop a study topic to use as a framework for your paper.
- To respond to this question, you must refrain from producing novel data.
Instead, it would help if you perused the current literature to find the solution. Furthermore, it is recommended that you compile a glossary of terminology associated with the topic and the research issue. Credible sources can be found in reference lists of reputable articles and the sources themselves. You probably won’t be able to discover every last detail there is to know about your preferred topic. Start with the abstract to see if the paper is worth reading.
- Give yourself plenty of time to evaluate the reliability of your sources
Create a list of references and check that no authors, articles, or books are utilized more than once in the literature review.
Evaluate the trustworthiness of your resources
Reading everything that has ever been written on a particular subject is an impossible task. Instead, you should assess the most relevant sources to your ideas if you want to progress in your research.
- After reading each source, please answer the following questions.
- For example, what problem or question has the author been trying to solve?
- How well-defined are the core concepts in this area?
- Which points of view, methods, and approaches are covered?
- Whether the study used a new or established technique is crucial to its reliability.
- What, if any, are the most critical findings from this investigation?
- To what other pieces of writing does this literature refer?
- Can new questions be posed as a result of this study?
- Is there room for expansion in the existing corpus of knowledge?
- There should be some discussion of the most important arguments.
- Critically evaluate the study’s strengths and weaknesses.
Make sure the information you’re using comes from reputable and official sources. Researching supporting texts like books, journals, and papers is an excellent technique to back up an argument.
The length of the literature review is strongly affected by the topic and the area of study. For example, science majors often review recently published books and articles. However, students pursuing degrees in the humanities should also read up on the history and various arguments around the topic.
It’s time to dive into the research and reading that will ultimately shape your work. To use later in the review’s body text, jot down some remarks.
It is essential to cite your sources correctly when conducting research. On top of that, it helps with making an annotated bibliography.
Identify the connections
Create an outline of your literature review’s argument and structure to get a head start on writing it. This requires making connections between the various references listed in the abstract.
Consider the following questions as you do your analysis
- Which ideas and methods tend to peak and trough in popularity over time?
- Answering the question, “what recurring thoughts are there?”
- Disagreement and dispute: where do the sources differ from one another?
- Gaps: what areas have been overlooked or require more excellent research in the current literature?
- Is there any seminal work that may change how this field is studied?
- By applying these standards, you can zero down on the specific contribution you make to the pool of knowledge.
Pick a design
There are a variety of approaches to organizing the literature review. Depending on your available time, you can arrange the content in a chronological, thematic, methodological, or theoretical approach.
In this section, we’ll go over the several approaches to review structure in further detail.
- Chronological
This is the simplest possible structure for a literature review. But don’t stop at a simple summary and a few citations from the literature. Instead, it would help if you looked at the essential debates, studies, and trends that have shaped the field’s evolution. Discuss your interpretation of what happened and why you think it happened that way.
- Thematic
The review may be broken down into more digestible bits using this strategy, which is why it is helpful. Each segment will cover a specific facet of the selected topic and stand independently.
- Methodological
It helps compare the outcomes of different studies’ data collection efforts. Perhaps the following hypotheses can be tested: the qualitative approach was more successful than the quantitative.
A thorough treatment of the topic incorporates empirical evidence and theoretical frameworks.
There should be a divide between the works that deal with history and those that deal with culture.
- Theoretical
A literature review provides a forum for discussing a wide range of hypotheses and core ideas. This is a theoretical strategy that can be defended. In a similar vein, a new theoretical framework might be developed by the integration of preexisting ones.
Start sifting through the books
A literature review needs an introduction, body, and conclusion like any other academic paper. The objectives and goals of your literature review will dictate the specific information that should be included in each section.
- Introduction literature review
The scope and objectives of this review are outlined in the introductory paragraph.
If your literature evaluation is for a thesis or dissertation, restate the core research topic. Thus, it’s vital to briefly recall the entire situation by highlighting the gaps in the appropriate literature.
It is essential to include background information for a literature review that stands on its own. Describe the scope of the available literature and how it relates to your study objectives. However, you shouldn’t discount previous research’s role in supporting your conclusions.
- Body literature review
Make sure to break the main body into sections for each topic or research method. Put these suggestions to use as you write the core of your literature review.
Integrate the most crucial details from each source into a cohesive whole.
Make an effort to develop your conclusions rather than merely report the results of other people’s research.
Give background on how your findings fit into the bigger picture of what you know.
Describe the strengths and weaknesses of the research methods you employed.
Use transitions and topic sentences to make the transitions between the paragraphs in the body of your writing flow more effortlessly.
- Conclusion literature review
Restate your primary points and why they are crucial in the final paragraph.
In the final chapter of your dissertation or thesis, you should discuss the voids in the existing literature and how your work helps to fill them. Describe the thinking and methods that went into developing your study’s foundation.
However, a genuinely independent literature review will conclude with some commentary on the study’s broader implications and suggestions for future research.
Editing and rewriting
After completing the writing, proofread it to catch any errors you missed. Proofread your report for errors and completeness with this handy tool.
Examples of Literature Reviews and Guidance on How to Compose Your Own
As you work to define a literature review and create your own, the above guidelines will be an invaluable resource. Here are some samples and examples to help you get a feel for the review’s format.
If you want your literature review to be flawless, you need to steer clear of these common mistakes.
- Many students fail to investigate and define central concepts adequately.
- The literature you cited is irrelevant to the problem at hand.
- Excessive reliance on secondary sources without primary source verification.
- Accept the findings of prior studies that have used questionable methods or analysis without question.
- You did not give enough information about how you found the research paper.
- I rely solely on statistical findings without considering chi-squared or meta-analytic methods.
Frequent Asked Questions
How few sources should a literature review contain?
Ten literature reviews are needed to finish a single paper. For a 100-page report, that means consulting at least 100 separate works for information.
The question is, how do you even begin to write the introduction to the literature review?
The introduction’s literature review should introduce the topic, justify the study’s relevance, summarize relevant literature to set the study in context, and call attention to any knowledge gaps in the existing literature. It will also demonstrate, concerning prior studies, how its findings expand our understanding of the topic.
To Conclude
Literature reviews are difficult and time-consuming to write. This demanding coursework is appropriate for advanced high school or college students. Some students lack the innate ability to express themselves on paper, while others view writing as a boring chore. They take stock of the challenge and make the call to bring in the big guns.
Professional writers at nursingtermpapers.com have what it takes to get your paper done quickly and accurately. Send us a message saying, “please write my literature review,” and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Working with us makes buying a literature review more accessible than ever before. Please let us know if you’d like a sample literature review.
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