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Lit Rev

Lirev

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Maria Dahmani
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13 views2 pages

Lit Rev

Lirev

Uploaded by

Maria Dahmani
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Research Methodology

Q 01:
Doing a literature review within a dissertation or a thesis is a key
academic skill.
Write an essay where you discuss this statement and where you
answer the following questions:
What is a literature review ?
Why do you need a literature review ?
Should your literary review be critical ?
When to review the literature and ways of finding relevant
material ?

When researchers embark on a dissertation or a thesis project, they are


typically expected to encounter the messy nature of knowledge which is one
of the most intimidating aspects of a literature review. The latter, is a process
that involves a series of carefully executed and time-consuming steps.
Conducting a successful literature review requires many questions to consider
aspects to consider and prior questions of paramount importance should be
asked.

All research needs to be informed by existing knowledge in a subject


area. It is thanks to the literature review that any researcher can identify and
organize the concepts in relevant literature. Many researchers attempted to
give a suitable definition for the literature review. What they came up with, as
a result, is that it is designed to provide an overview of sources you have
explored while researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your
readers how your research fits within a larger field of study. Buttressing on
this, Denney and Tewskbury (2013) argue that a literature review is “...a
comprehensive overview of prior research regarding a specific topic ... shows
the reader what is known about a topic, and what is not known, thereby
setting up the rationale or need for a new investigation”.

Literature reviews are often found at the beginning of research articles.


This is because the literature review shows to the reader where the research
community is up to in researching that topic and highlights gaps in the
existing research. The research article then addresses those gaps through
new research. According to Western Sydney University (2017), the literature
review is “... a bit like finding pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and putting them
together. Once they are put together, you can see clearly where the missing
pieces are and what they might look like. You can then go looking for the
missing pieces.” In other words, researchers conduct a literature review to
identify the areas of a topic that have not yet been researched in detail. They
then go and do the research to fill the research gap. This is how researchers
contribute to the development of knowledge on that topic. It is evident, then,
that the need to overview the previously published works on the specific
chosen field is, without any shadow of doubt, not negligible; as it helps in
demonstrating the originality of the researcher’s work to the readers.
Additionally, from reviewing earlier and recent work, it becomes possible to
identify areas in which further research would be beneficial.
In the process of writing the literature review, critical thinking is of
paramount importance because it demonstrates to the readers/ scientific
committee that the writer is doing more than just reading and summarizing
statistical literature, but, instead, relating the piece of writing/ work to the
other works, for instance, by agreeing or disagreeing, or trying to determine
the methodology used by the author. This will be helpful when describing how
the writer’s research is related to prior research. Indeed, the whole point of
the literature review is to provide a critical analysis and summary of the
viewpoints out there, and it does include the fact that the researcher needs to
make his/her opinion known in the context of the literature. Thus, the
researcher must always remember that his/her task is “... to build an
argument, not a library.” (Rudestam,K.E., and Newton, R.R., 1992), and to show how the
outcomes relate to earlier research. (Cooper, 1989).

The beginning of reviewing the literature is likely to be done before the


writing step starts. An early review is needed in order to establish the context
and rationale for the study and to confirm the choice of the research focus
and/ or question; as the study period gets longer, it is imperative to make
sure to keep in touch with current, relevant research in the chosen field of
study, which is published during the period of the writer’s research. Besides,
when preparing the final report or thesis, relating the findings to the findings
of others, and identifying their implications for theory, practice, and research
are of utmost importance. This, however, can involve further review with
perhaps a slightly different focus from that of the initial review.

When it comes to reading and collecting the right materials, several tips should be followed. To
start with, searching electronic databases is probably the quickest way to access a lot of material.
Guidance will be available via the researcher’s department or school and via the relevant Information
Librarian. There may also be key sources of publications for your subject that are accessible
electronically, such as collections of policy documents, standards, archive material, videos, and audio-
recordings. Another tricky way of collecting the right material for one’s research is to check through
other scholars’ or researchers’ reference lists to see the range of sources that they referred to. This can
be particularly useful if you find a review article that evaluates other literature in the field. This will
then provide you with a long reference list, and some evaluation of the references it contains.
Interestingly, an electronic search may throw up a huge number of hits, but there are still likely to be
other relevant articles that it has not detected. Consequently, despite having access to electronic
databases and to electronic searching techniques, it can be surprisingly useful to have a pile of journals
actually on the desk, and to look through the contents pages, and the individual articles.

Overall, a dissertation literature review provides a critical assessment of


the sources which have been gathered and read surrounding the subject
area, and then identifies a “gap” in that literature that the research will
attempt to address. It is significant, additionally, to anyone in the world of
academia or intending to enter this world to have a significant amount of
knowledge regarding the process of literature review so as to write a
successful one.

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