What Is the First Task in Doing a Literature Review?

How to Write a Literature Review: Six Steps to Get You lot from Offset to Finish

Writing a literature review is frequently the nearly daunting office of writing an article, book, thesis, or dissertation. "The literature" seems (and often is) massive. I take found it helpful to be as systematic as possible when completing this gargantuan job.

Sonja Foss and William Walters* describe an efficient and effective way of writing a literature review. Their system provides an excellent guide for getting through the massive amounts of literature for any purpose: in a dissertation, an G.A. thesis, or preparing a research commodity for publication in whatever subject field. Beneath is a  summary of the steps they outline as well as a step-past-step method for writing a literature review.

How to Write a Literature Review

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 become articles and books in those areas, even if you come across fascinating books in other areas. A literature review I am currently working on, for example, explores barriers to higher education for undocumented students.

Step Two: Search for the literature:

Conduct a comprehensive bibliographic search of books and articles in your expanse. Read the abstracts online and download and/or print those articles that pertain to your area of research. Discover books in the library that are relevant and cheque them out. Gear up a specific fourth dimension frame for how long you will search. Information technology should not take more than two or three dedicated sessions.

Footstep Three: Find relevant excerpts in your books and manufactures:

Skim the contents of each volume and commodity and look specifically for these five things:

ane. Claims, conclusions, and findings about the constructs you are investigating

2. Definitions of terms

iii. Calls for follow-up studies relevant to your project

4. Gaps yous observe in the literature

5. Disagreement near the constructs you are investigating

When y'all detect any of these five things, type the relevant extract directly into a Discussion document. Don't summarize, as summarizing takes longer than simply typing the excerpt. Make sure to annotation the name of the author and the page number post-obit each excerpt. Do this for each article and volume that you accept in your stack of literature. When you are done, print out your excerpts.

Step 4: Code the literature:

Become 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. Identify each excerpt into a themed pile. Make sure each annotation goes into a pile. If at that place are excerpts that you lot tin't figure out where they belong, separate those and become over them over again at the cease to see if y'all demand new categories. When you finish, place each stack of notes into an envelope labeled with the name of the theme.

Pace Five: Create Your Conceptual Schema:

Type, in big font, the proper name of each of your coded themes. Print this out, and cut the titles into individual slips of paper. Accept the slips of paper to a table or big workspace and figure out the best fashion 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 effectually the slips of paper until you lot come up with a fashion of organizing the codes that makes sense. Write the conceptual schema downwards before you forget or someone cleans up your slips of paper.

Step Half-dozen: Begin to Write Your Literature Review:

Choose whatsoever section of your conceptual schema to brainstorm with. Y'all can begin anywhere, because you already know the order. Find the envelope with the excerpts in them and lay them on the table in forepart of you lot. Effigy out a mini-conceptual schema based on that theme by grouping together those excerpts that say the same affair. Use that mini-conceptual schema to write up your literature review based on the excerpts that you take in front end of you. Don't forget to include the citations every bit you write, so as not to lose runway of who said what. Repeat this for each section of your literature review.

Once y'all complete these six steps, you volition have a complete draft of your literature review. The smashing thing about this process is that it breaks down into manageable steps something that seems enormous: writing a literature review.

I think that Foss and Walter'southward system for writing the literature review is ideal for a dissertation, because a Ph.D. candidate has already read widely in his or her field through graduate seminars and comprehensive exams.

It may be more challenging for Thou.A. students, unless you are already familiar with the literature. It is always difficult to figure out how much y'all need to read for deep pregnant, and how much you just need to know what others have said. That residue volition depend on how much you already know.

For people writing literature reviews for articles or books, this arrangement also could work, particularly when you are writing in a field with which you are already familiar. The mere fact of having a organisation can brand the literature review seem much less daunting, so I recommend this system for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the prospect of writing a literature review.

*Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation

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Source: https://www.wiley.com/network/researchers/preparing-your-article/writing-a-literature-review-six-steps-to-get-you-from-start-to-finish