Literature Review in Research

Literature Review

• A literature review, in the context of research, is a summary of published and unpublished research articles relevant to a particular study.
• It involves a systematic approach to identifying, searching, analyzing, and organizing documents containing information related to the research problem.
• In a general context, "literature" refers to novels, stories, and poetry.

Importance of Literature Review

• Demonstrates the researcher's understanding of the field.
• Provides a framework for the research, building upon existing knowledge and strengthening it with emerging trends.
• Guides the planning of further research and helps to avoid mistakes made by previous researchers.
• Identifies effective research strategies and measurements.
• Helps in interpreting research data.

Steps in Reviewing Literature

• Identifying sources
• Searching for relevant material
• Reading research papers
• Writing up the literature review
• Organizing literature in a dissertation.

Sources of Literature

• General Sources: Provide an overview of a topic and provide leads to more information, such as daily newspapers, periodicals and magazines.
• Secondary Sources: Provide information "once removed" from the original work, such as books on specific subjects.
• Primary Sources: Present the original work or experience, such as journals, abstracts, scholarly books and resources like ERIC.

Searching the Literature

• Several online resources, such as EMERALD, JStore, EBSCO Host, ScienceDirect, CNKI etc., are employed for comprehensive access to journals and articles.

Searching for Literature — Using Boolean Terms

• Use Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT) to refine searches and find relevant articles.
• Use phrases in quotes (" ") to search for exact phrases.
• Use parenthesis for complex search strings with multiple terms.
• Exclude articles with specific terms using the NOT operator.

How to Read a Paper

• Summarize and critically review papers.
• Look for the author and year, title of the paper, purpose/objective of the study and the theory.
• Identify variables, research approach, population, sampling technique, sample size, data collection method, statistical procedure, analytical tool and findings in the paper.

Organizing Literature Review

• Chronological: Presenting articles in order of publication.
• Topical/Thematic: Grouping articles according to their subjects or themes.
• Inverted Pyramid: A structure that emphasizes the most important information at the beginning and details later.