Question

Reviewing literature is an essential part of the research process. Using practical example, illustrate the steps in developing literature review.

Answer 1

Writing a literature review is often the most difficult part of writing an article, book, thesis, or dissertation. Below are the steps for writing and developing a literature review.

Decide on the areas of research:

Before beginning to search for articles or books, should decide beforehand what are the areas for research. Make sure to get articles and books in only those areas, even after coming across fascinating books in other areas. A literature review that I recently worked on, for example, explores barriers to higher education for undocumented students.

Search for the literature:

Conduct a comprehensive bibliographic search of books and articles in the respective area. After reading the abstracts online, download and/or print those articles that pertain to the area of research. Find relevant books in the library and check them out. Set a specific time frame for how long the search will happen. It should'nt take more than two or three dedicated sessions.

Find relevant excerpts in the books and articles:

Skim the contents of each book and article and look specifically for below five things:

1. Claims, conclusions, and findings about the constructs that are being investigated

2. Definitions of terms

3. Calls for follow-up studies that are relevant to the project

4. Gaps, if any, noticed in the literature

5. Disagreement if any about the constructs being investigated

Upon finding any of these five things, type the relevant excerpt into a Word document. There is no need to summarize, as that takes longer than simply typing the excerpt. Make sure to note the author's and the page number following each excerpt. This should be repeated for each article and book that is there in the stack of literature. When it is finished, print out the excerpts.

Code the literature:

Take a pair of scissors and cut each excerpt out. Now, sort these pieces of paper into similar topics. Then figure out the main themes. Place each excerpt in a themed pile. Make sure each note goes into a particular pile. If there are excerpts that can’t be figured out where they belong, separate those and go over them again at the end to see if new categories are needed. When it's done, place each stack of notes in an envelope labeled with the name of the theme.

Create Your Conceptual Schema:

Type, in large font, the name of each of the coded themes. Print this and cut the titles into individual slips of paper. Then take the slips of paper to a table and figure out the best way to organize them. Are there ideas that go together or are in dialogue with each other? Are there ideas that are contradicting each other? Move around the slips of paper till the time one comes up with a way of organizing the codes that makes sense. Write the conceptual schema down before forgetting or someone cleans up these slips of paper.

Begin to Write Your Literature Review:

Choose any section of the conceptual schema to begin with. We can start anywhere, because the order is already known. Get the envelope with the excerpts in them and lay them on the table. Figure out a mini-conceptual schema based on that theme by grouping together the excerpts that mention the same thing. Use that mini-conceptual schema to write the literature review based on the excerpts that are there in front of you. Do not forget to include the citations while writing, so as to keep track of who said what. This should be repeated for each section of the literature review.

Upon completion of these six steps, we will have a complete draft of the literature review