Literature Review: EDG 680: Steps for Conducting a Lit Review

Conducting a literature review is usually recursive, meaning that somewhere along the way, you'll find yourself repeating steps out-of-order.

That is actually a good sign.  

Reviewing the research should lead to more research questions and those questions will likely lead you to either revise your initial research question or go back and find more literature related to a more specific aspect of your research question.

("Steps for Conducting a Lit Review," West Florida University)

There are four stages similar to information research for beginning a literature review.

• Problem formulation— what is the subject/topic or area being reviewed and what are its component issues?  
• Literature search—finding materials relevant to the subject being explored. (Talk to the Library)
• Data evaluation—determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the subject and letting go of information clutter.  Not everything is relevant.
• Analysis and interpretation—discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature. You will have to explain to whoever is marking your work why you felt that piece of literature was worth adding.

("How to Start," Accra Institute of Technology)

Your literature review should be guided by a central research question.  Remember, it is not a collection of loosely related studies in a field but instead represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

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.

("Steps for Conducting a Lit Review," University of West Florida)

• Determine your scope - Use filters/limits (e.g. demographics, language, date range, study type, geographic region) to reduce the number of articles you need to review.
• Come up with initial keywords for the concepts of your question. 
• Start with the most recent material and work backwards. This allows you to not only find good recent studies but also points out that seminal reference everyone else quotes.
• Repeat the search in other databases.  Remember to evaluate as you search - simply gathering isn't the goal, you want to find sources you can use.
• Assess whether you have enough literature or if you need to choose another topic.

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

Tip: This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

Seek clarification from your instructor:

• Roughly how many sources should you include?
• What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
• Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
• Should you evaluate your sources?
• Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

("Steps for Conducting a Lit Review," University of West Florida)

("Search the Literature," Georgia State University)

Try a Synthesis Matrix

As you read, you'll encounter various ideas, disagreements, methods, and perspectives which can be hard to organize in a meaningful way.  A synthesis matrix helps you record the main points of each source and document how sources relate to each other.

See the tab above labeled Writing / Organizing for examples of how to do this.

Narrow and Focus

• Broad Issues & Background

  Begin by establishing context, or background, for the argument explored in the rest of the paper. Convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic.
• Theme/s of Your Research

  Next, narrow the focus: Discuss literature that aligns with the specific focus of your paper. Give an overview of literature that relates to the theme/s of your research.
• Direct Relevance

  Spend the most time discussing the sources which are most directly relevant to your research. This lets the reader see what came before, and how you will contribute to the field by moving research forward.

   

  ("How to Start," Accra Institute of Technology)

Tips: 

• 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).  Most databases will let you save and print out your searches!
• 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.

("Steps for Conducting a Lit Review," University of West Florida)

We suggest that you keep track of your citations / research by using a great tool. 

See our helpful guide:

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions. Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited?; if so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

• Again, review the abstracts carefully.  
• Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.

("Steps for Conducting a Lit Review," West Florida University)

You've done the research and now your ready to put your findings down on paper.   When preparing to write your review, first consider how will you organize your review.  SEE our writing tab and also COURSE page for info.

Draft an outline for your review.  Read more about developing an outline here at the Purdue OWL site.

Summarize & Synthesize

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to the understanding of the topic.
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration, noting contradictory studies.
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
• Point the way forward for further research.

A good literature review shows signs of synthesis and understanding of the topic. There should be strong evidence of analytical thinking as illustrated through the connections you make between the literature being reviewed. Think of it this way- a literature review is much more than a book review. It is a document where you present your sources and their overall relationship to your thesis statement.

Conversely, a poor literature review will simply list and identify the sources. In essence, it will appear to be a glorified annotated bibliography.

("Writing the Review," Loma Linda University)

("Write the Review," Georgia State University)