How do literature review

Book an appointment. Narrow your topic and select papers accordingly Consider your specific area of study. Four Steps to Narrow Your Research Topic Video This 3-minute video provides instructions on how to narrow the focus of your research topic. There is also a downloadable PDF version. Search for literature Define your source selection criteria ie. Using keywords, search a library database. Reference lists of recent articles and reviews can lead to other useful papers.

Include any studies contrary to your point of view. Develop a thesis or purpose statement Write a one or two sentence statement summarizing the conclusion you have reached about the major trends and developments you see in the research that has been conducted on your subject. Templates for Writing Thesis Statements This template provides a two-step guide for writing thesis statements.

Write the paper Follow the organizational structure you developed above, including the headings and subheadings you constructed. Make certain that each section links logically to the one before and after.

Structure your sections by themes or subtopics, not by individual theorists or researchers. Prioritize analysis over description. For example, look at the following two passages and note that Student A merely describes the literature, whereas Student B takes a more analytical and evaluative approach by comparing and contrasting.

You can also see that this evaluative approach is well signaled by linguistic markers indicating logical connections words such as "however," "moreover" and phrases such as "substantiates the claim that," which indicate supporting evidence and Student B's ability to synthesize knowledge.

Review your work Look at the topic sentences of each paragraph. The topic sentences of each paragraph should indicate the main points of your literature review. Make an outline of each section of the paper and decide whether you need to add information, to delete irrelevant information, or to re-structure sections. Conduct your searches and find the literature. Keep track of your searches! Review the literature.

Tips: Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow. Is it manageable? Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later. If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor.

Find Databases via Research Guides Librarians create research guides for all of the disciplines on campus! Take advantage of their expertise and see what discipline-specific search strategies they recommend! Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time. Write down the searches you conduct in each database so that you may duplicate them if you need to later or avoid dead-end searches that you'd forgotten you'd already tried.

Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others. Ask your professor or a scholar in the field if you are missing any key works in the field.

Use RefWorks to keep track of your research citations. See the RefWorks Tutorial if you need help. The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time. As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism. It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process. Want to check your literature review for plagiarism? Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:.

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and if applicable show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge. There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review.

You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically.

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred. If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access. If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:.

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research. Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion.

What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach. Example of a paragraph in a literature review Body image issues have been widely associated with social media usage, particularly in young women.

The relation between media depictions and body image concerns is well-established; a meta-analysis by Grabe, Ward and Hyde concluded that exposure to mass media is linked to body image dissatisfaction among women.

However, in an era of rapidly changing digital technologies, the mass media paradigm is no longer adequate for understanding how people engage with images, and the findings of older studies like this one may not be generalizable to younger generations. In light of this changing landscape, researchers have become increasingly interested in the specific effects of social media.