What Sources in the Literature Have You Selected for Review and How?
How to Write a Literature Review: Half dozen Steps to Get You from Kickoff to Finish
Writing a literature review is often the nearly daunting part of writing an article, book, thesis, or dissertation. "The literature" seems (and often is) massive. I have constitute information technology helpful to exist as systematic every bit possible when completing this gargantuan job.
Sonja Foss and William Walters* draw an efficient and constructive mode 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 M.A. thesis, or preparing a research article for publication in any field of report. Beneath is a summary of the steps they outline likewise as a step-past-step method for writing a literature review.
How to Write a Literature Review
Footstep I: Decide on your areas of research:
Before you lot begin to search for articles or books, decide beforehand what areas you are going to research. Make sure that you only go articles and books in those areas, fifty-fifty if you come beyond fascinating books in other areas. A literature review I am currently working on, for example, explores barriers to higher pedagogy for undocumented students.
Step Ii: Search for the literature:
Conduct a comprehensive bibliographic search of books and manufactures in your area. Read the abstracts online and download and/or print those manufactures that pertain to your area of enquiry. Find books in the library that are relevant and check them out. Set a specific time frame for how long you will search. Information technology should non take more than two or three dedicated sessions.
Footstep Three: Find relevant excerpts in your books and manufactures:
Skim the contents of each book and article and look specifically for these 5 things:
ane. Claims, conclusions, and findings about the constructs you are investigating
2. Definitions of terms
3. Calls for follow-up studies relevant to your projection
4. Gaps you discover in the literature
v. Disagreement about the constructs you are investigating
When you lot find any of these 5 things, type the relevant excerpt directly into a Word document. Don't summarize, as summarizing takes longer than simply typing the excerpt. Brand certain to note the name of the author and the page number following each excerpt. Do this for each article and volume that you have in your stack of literature. When you are done, impress out your excerpts.
Stride 4: Lawmaking the literature:
Go out a pair of scissors and cut each extract out. Now, sort the pieces of paper into similar topics. Figure out what the main themes are. Place each excerpt into a themed pile. Make certain each note goes into a pile. If there are excerpts that you can't figure out where they belong, separate those and go over them again at the end to see if you need new categories. When you finish, place each stack of notes into an envelope labeled with the proper noun of the theme.
Step 5: Create Your Conceptual Schema:
Type, in large font, the name of each of your coded themes. Print this out, and cut the titles into private slips of paper. Have the slips of newspaper to a table or large workspace and figure out the best way to organize them. Are at that place ideas that become together or that are in dialogue with each other? Are there ideas that contradict each other? Motility around the slips of newspaper until you come up upwards with a way of organizing the codes that makes sense. Write the conceptual schema downwardly before you forget or someone cleans upwardly your slips of paper.
Footstep 6: Brainstorm to Write Your Literature Review:
Cull any section of your conceptual schema to begin with. Y'all can begin anywhere, because you already know the order. Discover the envelope with the excerpts in them and lay them on the table in front of you. Figure out a mini-conceptual schema based on that theme by grouping together those excerpts that say the aforementioned affair. Use that mini-conceptual schema to write up your literature review based on the excerpts that you accept in front end of you. Don't forget to include the citations every bit you write, then every bit not to lose rail of who said what. Repeat this for each section of your literature review.
In one case y'all consummate these half dozen steps, you volition have a consummate draft of your literature review. The great thing nigh this procedure is that it breaks down into manageable steps something that seems enormous: writing a literature review.
I think that Foss and Walter's organization 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 Chiliad.A. students, unless you are already familiar with the literature. It is always hard to figure out how much you demand to read for deep meaning, and how much you just need to know what others have said. That balance will depend on how much you already know.
For people writing literature reviews for articles or books, this system also could work, especially when you are writing in a field with which you are already familiar. The mere fact of having a system can make the literature review seem much less daunting, so I recommend this arrangement for anyone who feels overwhelmed past the prospect of writing a literature review.
*Destination Dissertation: A Traveler'south Guide to a Done Dissertation
Paradigm Credit/Source: Goldmund Lukic/ Getty Images
Source: https://www.wiley.com/network/researchers/preparing-your-article/writing-a-literature-review-six-steps-to-get-you-from-start-to-finish
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