Importance of literature review in research
Farminghumanitiessocial ion» importance of literature review in research writingupdated on december 3, sik kim morea ph. A careful and thorough literature review is essential when you write about research at any level. It is basic homework that is assumed to have been done vigilantly, and a given fact in all research papers. By providing one, usually offered in your introduction before you reach your thesis statement, you are telling your reader that you have not neglected the basics of not only surveys what research has been done in the past on your topic, but it also appraises, encapsulates, compares and contrasts, and correlates various scholarly books, research articles, and other relevant sources that are directly related to your current research. Given the fundamental nature of providing one, your research paper will be not considered seriously if it is lacking one at the beginning of your paper. It creates a rapport with your audiencea literature review helps you create a sense of rapport with your audience or readers so they can trust that you have done your homework. As a result, they can give you credit for your due diligence: you have done your fact-finding and fact-checking mission, one of the initial steps of any research a student, you may not be an expert in a given field; however, by listing a thorough review in your research paper, you are telling the audience, in essence, that you know what you are talking about. As a result, the more books, articles, and other sources you can list in the literature review, the more trustworthy your scholarship and expertise will be. Depending on the nature of your research paper, each entry can be long or short. The key is to stick to the gist of the sources as you synthesize the source in the review: its thesis, research methods, findings, issues, and further discussions mentioned in the source. You have written a research paper, an original paper in your area of specialization, without a literature review. In short, you could have utilized the time, money, and other resources you have wasted on your research on something else. Had you prepared a literature review at the onset of your research, you could have easily avoided such mishap. During the compilation of your review, you could have noticed how someone else has done similar research on your topic. By knowing this fact, you can tailor or tweak your own research in such a way that it is not a mere rehashing of someone else’s original or old idea. It sharpens your research focus as you assemble outside sources, you will condense, evaluate, synthesize, and paraphrase the gist of outside sources in your own words. Through this process of winnowing, you will be able to place the relevance of your research in the larger context of what others researchers have already done on your topic in the past (see reference 1). Literature review will help you compare and contrast what you are doing in the historical context of the research as well as how your research is different or original from what others have done, helping you rationalize why you need to do this particular research (see reference 2).
Relevance of literature review in research
You are using a new or different research method which has not been available before, allowing you to collect the data more accurately or conduct an experiment that is more precise and exact thanks to many innovations of modern technology. Thus, it is essential in helping you shape and guide your research in the direction you may not have thought of by offering insights and different perspectives on the research different typesdepending on your area of specialization, a literature review can take various forms: argumentative review, integrative review, historical review, methodological review, systematic review, and theoretical review (see reference 1). This will be valuable to persuade others to join you in supporting your integrative review is composed of examinations and critical analysis on a given topic to introduce a need for a new research. For example, you can use it on the spreading of a pandemic plague, arguing how the old methods of gathering and analyzing the data were inadequate and how modern technology, such as dna analysis, will help make the same research more rly, a historical review will assess all the historical records of scholarship chronologically while methodological review examines the research methods alone—collection of data, their critical analysis, interpretation, and research results, for example. Literature review in any field is essential as it offers a comprehensive overview and recapitulation on the given scholarship from past to present, giving the reader a sense of focus as to which direction your new research is headed (see reference 3). Gbahabo 2 months ago i got a material to add to my work here, that is the integrative review. Hubpages and hubbers (authors) may earn revenue on this page based on affiliate relationships and advertisements with partners including amazon, google, and injoinstemgenetics & evolutionchemistryzoologycomputer scienceelectrical engineeringentomologymathmedical sciencemarine biologygeologymycologymicrobiologyclimatology & meteorologybotanyphysicsecologyastronomypaleontologyacademiateachingstandardized testseslstudent lifecollege & universityonline learningvocational trainingessaysagriculture & farminghumanitieshistorylinguisticslanguagesphilosophytheologyvisual artsarchaeologyarchitectureperforming artsliteraturesocial sciencespsychologylegal studiesanthropologypolitical sciencesociologyeconomicsconnect with are literature chapter 4 of the book (searching ing the literature), you learned that when undertaking any research it ant to know what has been written about the topic you wish to undertaking a literature are able to critically summarise the current knowledge in the area igation, identifying any strengths and weaknesses in previous work, g you to identify them in your own research and thus eliminate ial weaknesses, whilst bringing to the fore the potential strengths. On, a good and full literature search will provide the context to place your chapter 4, it is stressed aking a literature review requires developing a complex set of skills you can only do by undertaking literature reviews. Therefore, cing writing your research proposal, you will need to allocate time the literature that is relevant to your proposed research reading many different studies,Gain an impression important aspects of the topic;. With the style of writing that is used - particularly ethos of the area that you are researching;. The fy ideas for how you can lf from repeating any errors that have been indentified in your own reading a comprehensive review of ture is important because it:Provides an tanding of the subject and its significance to (your) practice;. There is more on the reasons a full literature search to be found in chapter 4 - searching and reviewing r, the importance of ture search and review is that your research proposal will be so easy once you have done this. Everything in your research proposal flows literature review - indeed, you may find from the literature that ons you wish to deal with in your own research have already ed, and so there is no need for you to undertake your research. In , you may decide that either there is no need to do any research, or of the literature may have pointed you in the direction of another research related to your interests/practice, etc. Because you fied gaps in the literature (even though your own topic has been d) and you want to examine sity of southern zing your social sciences research paper. The literature purpose of this guide is to provide advice on how to develop and organize a research paper in the social of research flaws to ndent and dependent ry of research terms. Choosing a research ing a topic ning a topic ing the timeliness of a topic idea. An oral g with g someone else's to manage group of structured group project survival g a book le book review ing collected g a field informed g a policy g a research proposal.
Literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are 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 , arlene. Literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, y in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to purpose of a literature review is to:Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being be the relationship of each work to the others under fy new ways to interpret prior any gaps that exist in the e conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous fy areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of the way in fulfilling a need for additional your own research within the context of existing literature [very important]. Los angeles, ca: sage, of literature is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally that become part of the lore of composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your of literature form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply imbedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. Educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below]. A form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future ological review. Review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis].
Those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem. This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. Thinking about your literature structure of a literature review should include the following:An overview of the subject, issue, or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,Division of works under review into themes or categories [e. Were the techniques used to identify, gather, and analyze the data appropriate to addressing the research problem? Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic. Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent er the following issues before writing the literature review:If your assignment is not very specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions:1. What types of sources should i review (books, journal articles, websites; scholarly versus popular sources)? The exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature review sections. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make your job easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the homer catalog for books about the topic and review the table of contents for chapters that focuses on specific issues. You can also review the indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. This is particularly true in disciplines in medicine and the sciences where research conducted becomes obsolete very quickly as new discoveries are made. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be required.
In other words, a complete understanding the research problem requires you to deliberately examine how knowledge and perspectives have changed over time. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. Ways to organize your literature your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of german economic power after the fall of the soviet your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the ic [“conceptual categories”]. Reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. For example, a review of the internet’s impact on american presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are sections of your literature you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. What other sections you include in the body is up to you but include only what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship are examples of other sections you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:Current situation: information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature y: the chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a ion methods: the criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and rds: the way in which you present your ons for further research: what questions about the field has the review sparked? Writing your literature you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence [citations] that demonstrates that what you are saying is only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Related items that provide additional information but that are not key to understanding the research problem can be included in a list of further short quotes are okay if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated cannot be easily paraphrased.
Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for your own summary and interpretation of the ize and er to summarize and synthesize your sources within each thematic paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice [the writer's] should remain front and center. Common mistakes to are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research s in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;. Do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevent sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;. Accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;. Isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the , kathleen e. Interdisciplinarily about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions to a problem or gaining a new perspective. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research an, robert. Conducting a review of the literature, maximize the time you devote to writing this part of your paper by thinking broadly about what you should be looking for and evaluating. You begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was constructed because it establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research , chris. Are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've adequately reviewed the literature:Look for repeating patterns in the research findings. If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been generated to address the research the web of science [a. Web of knowledge] citation database and google scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review. Here again, if the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the , anthea. Wanjohi:Review of literature in any study is not a cup of tea; it requires scholarly maturity.
Good review of literature is a sign of professional maturity; it shows one’s grasp of the field, one’s methodological sophistication in critiquing others’ research, and the breadth and depth of one’s reading (krathwohl , 1988). Are a number of reasons why review of related literature remains core component of any scientific study. These include but not limited to the following:Firstly, review of literature acts as a stepping-stone towards achievement of the study objectives. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her ly, literature reviews provide a solid background to back one’s investigation. The review plays a critical role in analyzing the existing literature and giving justification as to how one’s research fits into the existing body of knowledge. This implies that the literature review provides the general understanding which gives meaning to the discussion of findings, conclusions, and recommendations. This allows the author to demonstrate how his / her research is linked to prior efforts and how it extends to build on better y, literature reviews help the researcher to avoid duplication, identify the gaps in other studies with the goal of filling them, borrow from the research design and methodology used to investigate that particular problem and to interpret his or her own general terms, the literature review helps to provide a context for the research, justify the research, ensure the research hasn’t been done, show where the research fits into the existing body of knowledge, enable the researcher to learn from previous theory on the subject, illustrate how the subject has previously been studied, highlight flaws in previous research, outline gaps in previous research, show that the work is adding to the understanding and knowledge of the field, help refine, refocus or even change the temptation of being shallow, (and even to copy and paste) in review of literature is high. Thus, students of research, practitioners and scholars too are encouraged to shun away from being drawn into scholarly ohl , d. How to prepare a research proposal: guidelines for funding and dissertations in the social and behavioral se ny: syracuse university this:click to share on twitter (opens in new window)click to share on google+ (opens in new window). Projects organization (kenpro) is a membership organization whose mission is to strengthen the capacities of individuals and organizations in the fields of project management, it, research & all posts by kenpro→. Posts subscriptionemail subscriptionsubscribequick library a-z ting a literature ts of conducting a literature ting a literature ts of conducting a literature in conducting a literature y of the ture review tutorial (american university library). Of conducting a literature there might be many reasons for conducting a literature review, following are four key outcomes of doing the ment of the current state of research on a topic. Once a researcher has determined an area to work with for a research project, a search of relevant information sources will help determine what is already known about the topic and how extensively the topic has already been fication of the experts on a particular topic. One of the additional benefits derived from doing the literature review is that it will quickly reveal which researchers have written the most on a particular topic and are, therefore, probably the experts on the topic. From the number of articles written by the author and the number of times the writer has been cited by other authors, a researcher will be able to assume that the particular author is an expert in the area and, thus, a key resource for consultation in the current research to be fication of key questions about a topic that need further research. In many cases a researcher may discover new angles that need further exploration by reviewing what has already been written on a topic. For example, research may suggest that listening to music while studying might lead to better retention of ideas, but the research might not have assessed whether a particular style of music is more beneficial than another. A researcher who is interested in pursuing this topic would then do well to follow up existing studies with a new study, based on previous research, that tries to identify which styles of music are most beneficial to ination of methodologies used in past studies of the same or similar topics.
It is often useful to review the types of studies that previous researchers have launched as a means of determining what approaches might be of most benefit in further developing a topic. By the same token, a review of previously conducted studies might lend itself to researchers determining a new angle for approaching completion of the literature review, a researcher should have a solid foundation of knowledge in the area and a good feel for the direction any new research should take. Should any additional questions arise during the course of the research, the researcher will know which experts to consult in order to quickly clear up those le a t:marketing and student outreach librarian(904) :facebook pagepinterest pagetwitter pageyoutube : steps in conducting a literature review >>. Review, literature survey, original research, research, survey of the gift to the carpenter library ensures success.
