A literature review is a comprehensive summary and critical assessment of existing research studies relevant to a specific research area.
If you’re writing a research paper, chances are you’ll need to conduct some form of literature review. When conducting a literature review, you will need to figure out what kind of review will be the most helpful and know how to conduct it. Both can be challenging tasks, especially if you’re new to this. Literature reviews are great in helping you:
- Examine the existing body of research on your topic
- Highlight gaps in the literature where your research could make an important contribution
- Help you better position your research project as it progresses
You can make your project informative with this guide, which will take you through 10 questions to help you conduct literature review.
10 Focused Questions You Need To Answer Before Writing An Effective Literature Review:
A literature review is not something that you can do in one sitting. Before beginning, sort some questions about how to conduct literature review. These will help you ensure that you’re doing the process correctly and present accurate information to those who will read your report later.
What Is Your Problem Statement?
Before you conduct literature review, it’s important to clearly define your thesis problem or research question. It should be a single sentence that outlines what problem or issue you’re trying to solve with the review you are conducting. In other words, your problem statement should explain the problems in the current literature and their impact. However, if you are facing issues in problem statement, you should get British dissertation help.
Identify the Target Audience:
Before beginning your literature review, you need to figure out the audience you want to reach. For your literature review to be effective, it needs to speak directly and personally to the target audience to read minds.
What Sources Are Relevant And Credible?
There are several types of sources you can use to conduct literature review. These include journal articles, conference papers, technical reports, white papers and online content. If you don’t know what source is relevant to your topic, ask your supervisor or someone who knows more about it. If they don’t know either, Google it! Other researchers have likely had similar questions when doing their research. Check and ensure that you’re using credible sources. One of your primary goals in conducting a literature review is to find research that can serve as good evidence for your thesis.
What are the Primary and Secondary Sources of Your Literature Review?
Before we dive into how to conduct literature review, you first need to decide what qualifies as a source. In academia, information is typically obtained in one of two ways:
Primary sources
It is crucial to separate primary and secondary sources when conducting literature. Primary sources are original materials generated by individuals who participated in or observed an event. It can be journals, books or academic papers.
Secondary sources
In contrast, secondary sources summarise and analyse the primary data. It may include blogs, news articles, magazines, books by non-academics, etc. In other words, if someone wrote it themselves, you can use it as a source.
Is Your Research Problem A Critical Analysis Or Interpretation Based?
It would be best to decide whether your research topic is a critical analysis or an interpretation. The question also suggests starting with a brief definition of these terms. That would work well in your introductory paragraph, although I don’t think they need to be stated explicitly at first. If people are reading through to get an idea of what literature reviews are, they’ll be able to read between the lines and pick up on these concepts as you set them out more clearly throughout your post.
Did You Identify The Latest Themes And Literature Gaps?
To conduct literature review, you must identify how your idea will fit in with existing literature and which themes are covered in your area of interest. You should try to answer questions such as: what previous studies have been done? What research questions remain unanswered? Are there any key gaps in research or knowledge? Developing a solid understanding of what has been covered makes it easier to decide where your study will make an original contribution.
What Are The Study’s Strengths, Limitations And Shortcomings?
It is also one of the most important questions you should ask yourself. A literature review allows one to consider a study’s findings and draw conclusions about its relevance and influence. But as with any research paper, weaknesses or limitations can also serve as opportunities for improvement. Remember, if a study has several limitations that can’t be overcome, it may not be worth conducting an extensive literature review.
Did You Outline Your Literature Review?
One of the most important questions you must ask yourself when conducting a literature review is what outline you need to follow. That will give you an idea of what should go into each section and how long it should be. Are your topics organised logically?: Ensure that you understand where each section falls within your research.
Will My Literature Review Be Relevant, Appropriate And Useful?
To ensure that your literature review will be useful, you need to know what questions your target audience has about your topic and how it will address them clearly and concisely. Think about why you are writing it; who will benefit from it? Will it be useful to the audience? Who else has done similar research already?
Which Reference Management Software Should You Use For Your Literature Review?
If you’re doing a dissertation literature review, you should consider using a program to track your sources; if you want to take advantage of all the reference management software offers, we recommend Mendeley. It is free to download and can be connected to your Dropbox account for easy file sharing.
Conclusions:
The results of your literature review will depend on why you are conducting it. Specific questions need answering if you want to add to a study by applying its findings. When writing your report or thesis, conducting a literature review takes time and effort. Having all the right information and sources listed in an outline beforehand is best. For this purpose, you must address the above question before conducting a comprehensive literature review for your thesis or research program. Best of Luck!
