A literature review examines existing contributions around a topic, question, or issue in a field of study. These contributions can include peer reviewed articles, books, and other published research. Literature reviews can be used to give an overview of a field of research to describe theories, explore methodologies, and discuss developments in a field by drawing on research from multiple studies.
A literature review can be used to:
A good literature review has a clear scope - don't try to collect everything about a topic that has ever been published! Instead focus in on what you want to know more about your specific research topic. A good literature review might also:
A well conducted literature review can set up your final research product. Many researchers will write literature reviews at the beginning of their research article to situate their research within the larger context in their field or topic. This demonstrates that they have awareness of their topic and how they are building upon the topic. Keeping good notes when you are conducting your review can help set you up for success when you begin work on your final research product. When conducting your literature review AVOID:
A strong literature review organizes existing contributions to a conversation into categories or “themes.” There are multiple ways to approach targeting a literature review to achieve your specific learning goals. Common types of reviews include:
Published literature reviews are called review articles, however, research articles often contain brief literature reviews at the beginning to give context to the study within that article.
By reviewing published literature reviews you can more easily ground yourself in a topic, it's main themes, and find relevant literature for your own review.
Tip: When identifying main themes related to your topic, look at the headers in a research article. Some authors choose to list their literature review themes as headers to organize their review. Others might choose to name their themes in the first few sentences of each paragraph in their review. Sometimes a literature review, especially if it is brief, will be included in the introduction or some other beginning part of the article.
An Evidence-Based Management Framework can help direct your literature review process.
"Evidence-Based" is a term that was originally coined in the 1990s in the field of medicine, but today its principles extend across disciplines as varied as education, social work, public work, and management. Evidence-Based Management focuses on improving decision-making process.
While conducting a literature review, we need to gather evidence and summarize it to support our decisions and conclusions regarding the topic or problem. We recommend you use a 4 step approach of the Evidence-Based Management Framework while working on a literature review.
During the "Ask" step, you need to define a specific topic, thesis, problem, or research question that your literature review will be focusing on.
It may require first to gain some knowledge about the area or discipline that your topic, thesis, problem, or research question originate from. At this moment, think about a type of a literature review you plan to work on. For example are you reviewing the literature to educate yourself on a topic, to plan to write a literature review article, or to prepare to situate your research project within the broader literature?
Use this to determine the scope of your literature review and the type of publications you need to use (e.g., journals, books, governmental documents, conference proceedings, dissertations, training materials, and etc.).
A few other questions you might ask are:
During the “Acquire” step, you are actively gathering evidence and information that relates to your topic or problem.
This is when you search for related scholarly articles, books, dissertations, and etc. to see “what has been done” and “what we already know” about the topic or problem. While doing a literature review in business, you may also find it helpful to review various websites such as professional associations, government websites offering industry data, companies’ data, conference proceedings, or training materials. It may increase your understanding about the current state of the knowledge in your topic or problem.
During this step, you should keep a careful records of the literature and website resources you review.
During the “Appraise” step, you actively evaluate the sources used to acquire the information. To make decisions regarding the relevance and trustworthiness of the sources and information, you can ask the following questions:
During this step, you may decide to eliminate some of the material you gathered during the “Acquire” step. Similarly, you may find that you need to engage in additional searches to find information that suits your needs. This is normal—the process of the "Appraisal" step often uncovers new keywords and new potential sources.
During the “Aggregate” step, you “pull together” the information you deemed trustworthy and relevant. The information gathered and evaluated needs to be summarized in a narrative form—a summary of your findings.
While summarizing and aggregating information, use synthesis language like this: