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WRITING THE LITERATURE REVIEW

(refer website with same name)

Why do I have to have a Literature Review?

This is an important question to ask yourself. As well as helping you to write a good literaturereview, fully understanding the need for such work is what allows you to know you're on-

track, why what you're doing is worthwhile, and that you do have a contribution to make. In

other words, the literature review is integral to the whole thesis; it is not just a routine step

taken to fulfil formal requirements.

You need a good literature review because it:

demonstrates that you know the field. This means more than reporting what you've

read and understood. Instead, you need to read it critically and to write in such a way

that shows you have a feel for the area; you know what the most important issues are

and their relevance to your work, you know the controversies, you know what's

neglected, you have the anticipation of where it's being taken. All this would allowyou to map the field and position your research within the context.

justifies the reason for your research. This is closely connected with demonstrating

that you know the field. It is the knowledge of your field which allows you to identify

the gap which your research could fill. However, it is not enough to find a gap. You

have also to be able to convince your reader that what you are doing is important and

needs to be done.

allows you to establish your theoretical framework and methodological focus. Even if

you are proposing a new theory or a new method, you are doing so in relation to whathas been done.

The literature review becomes your springboard for the whole thesis.

I have made several attempts at beginning to write my literature review but I keep

changing it. Is there a 'correct' or proper way to organise it?

The literature review is very often, apart from the initial proposal, the first substantial piece

of writing that you are asked to do. For this reason alone, it is not surprising you may need to

try several possible arrangements of it.

Focusing the Literature Review

However, over the course of research and writing a PhD thesis, you most likely will write the

literature review more than once. As part of the process of trying to formulate their topic,

some students write a kind of literature review which is often more like a survey. This could

become more focussed as part of a proposal. Usually, once you start to work on your own

research, the literature review takes a back seat, though you should systematically keep

abreast of new developments in your field.

Then, once you are finally 'writing up', the literature review needs either a major revision, or

has to be tackled properly for the first time. Understandably, it is only now after two or threeyears of close work, that the significance of some of the literature you've glossed over earlier

might strike you. You are now better equipped to appreciate it and to review it critically.


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Also, your research findings could well mean that you need to explore parts of literature that

did not initially seem to you to be of direct relevance. Of course, the opposite also happens

and perhaps you will decide to exclude whole areas of literature now marginal to your

research.

Organising the Literature Review

The literature review is not an add-on but is absolutely integral to the whole work. So, it

should be written in such a way that, in the first place, within the context of the field, it

should set up the reader's expectations of where your work fits; it should provide the

justification of why you are doing what you are doing; if necessary, it should also establish

your theoretical framework and your methodology. A chronological organisation therefore,

although it may first suggest itself, is not usually the best way to achieve this. It is more

important to isolate the issues and highlight the findings that are relevant to what you are

doing. To get back to the question, then, the 'correct or proper way' to organise your literature

review is the way you can best fulfil these needs.

Since there is no general standard or correct structure, you have to try several possiblearrangements to organise it best. It is of course frustrating and time consuming to write the

whole literature review several times to see which way serves your purposes the best, but

there are some ways that can help you decide on the possible arrangement. Working with a

diagram, concept map, or some kind of shorter 'story' (which is more than an outline) will

capture the logic of your proposed organisation and therefore allow you to choose the clearest

way before you write. Plotting out possible structures in this way also gives you something

concrete to discuss with your supervisor or test on other readers.

Here is an example of using a story to plot the flow of ideas:

Two areas of research are relevant to the research presented in this thesis: A and B.

I will first review the literature reporting research into x within A since it is directly relevant

to my work. Here I will discuss approaches used to investigate x showing that the ways in

which x is conceptualised can be elicited in many ways. I will show that they all give usdescriptions of conceptualisation of x and assume that the different ways in which x is

conceptualised result in different (but congruent with these conceptualisations) practices.

Then I will show that the link between conception and practice has not been proven within

this stream of research, although some attempts have been made. I will then talk about

attempts to investigate this link (starting with S's study) and analyse the weaknesses of theseapproaches

While there is no correct way to organise the literature review in the sense of there being a

recipe to follow, the ingredients we discussed above have to be there. Also, there may well be

a best arrangement to serve the needs of your thesis. The literature review is so important to

the whole work, it is worth your best efforts.

Making Sense of the Literature

We do truly wish we could tell you about a reliable or simple way to make sense of the

literature. We can say, however, that you need to attend to things at two levels:


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One is establishing a system that will allow you to organise the hard copies of the articles

etc., and develop a data base for references, so you have easy access under relevant categories

and don't chase the same references repeatedly.

The other is the more demanding task of understanding and using the literature for your

purposes.

Without attending to the first task, you could easily become inefficient and frustrated.However, although it is necessary to have some way of keeping track, don't spend all your

energies on perfecting your system. It may be a good idea to attend a course for researchers

on handling information. Check whether your university's library or computer centre offers

such a course.

The other task ahead of you - of understanding, reviewing and using the literature for your

purposes - goes to the heart of your thesis. We consider this in three stages.

Making sense of the literature - first pass

When you first come to an area of research, you are filling in the background in a general

way, getting a feel for the whole area, an idea of its scope, starting to appreciate thecontroversies, to see the high points, and to become more familiar with the major players.

You need a starting point. This may come out of previous work you've done. If you're new to

the area, your supervisor could suggest fruitful starting points. Or you could pursue some

recent review articles to begin.

Too much to handle

At this stage there seems to be masses of literature relevant to your research. Or you may

worry that there seems to be hardly anything. As you read, think about and discuss articles

and isolate the issues you're more interested in. In this way, you focus your topic more and

more. The more you can close in on what your research question actually is, the more you

will be able to have a basis for selecting the relevant areas of the literature. This is the only

way to bring it down to a manageable size.

Very little there

If initially you can't seem to find much at all on your research area - and you are sure that

you've exploited all avenues for searching that the library can present you with - then there

are a few possibilities:

You could be right at the cutting edge of something new and it's not surprising there's little

around.

You could be limiting yourself to too narrow an area and not appreciating that relevantmaterial could be just around the corner in a closely related field. Unfortunately there's

another possibility and this is that there's nothing in the literature because it is not a

worthwhile area of research. In this case, you need to look closely with your supervisor at

what it is you plan to do.

Quality of the Literature

This begins your first step in making sense of the literature. You are not necessarily closely

evaluating it now; you are mostly learning through it. But, sometimes at this stage students do

ask us how they can judge the quality of the literature they're reading, as they're not experts.

You learn to judge, evaluate, and look critically at the literature by judging, evaluating andlooking critically at it. That is, you learn to do so by practising. There is no quick recipe for


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doing this but there are some questions you could find useful and, with practice, you will

develop many others:

Is the problem clearly spelled out?

Are the results presented new?

Was the research influential in that others picked up the threads and pursued them?

How large a sample was used?

How convincing is the argument made?

How were the results analysed?

What perspective are they coming from?

Are the generalisations justified by the evidence on which they are made?

What is the significance of this research?

What are the assumptions behind the research?

Is the methodology well justified as the most appropriate to study the problem?

Is the theoretical basis transparent?

In critically evaluating, you are looking for the strengths of certain studies and the

significance and contributions made by researchers. You are also looking for limitations,

flaws and weaknesses of particular studies, or of whole lines of enquiry.

Indeed, if you take this critical approach to looking at previous research in your field, your

final literature review will not be a compilation of summaries but an evaluation. It will then

reflect your capacity for critical analysis.

Making sense of the literature - second pass

You continue the process of making sense of the literature by gaining more expertise which

allows you to become more confident, and by being much more focused on your specific

research.

You're still reading and perhaps needing to re-read some of the literature. You're thinking

about it as you are doing your experiments, conducting your studies, analysing texts or other

data. You are able to talk about it easily and discuss it. In other words, it's becoming part of

you.

At a deeper level than before,

you are now not only looking at findings but are looking at how others have arrived at

their findings;

you're looking at what assumptions are leading to the way something is investigated;

you're looking for genuine differences in theories as opposed to semantic differences;

you also are gaining an understanding of why the field developed in the way it did; you have a sense for where it might be going.

First of all you probably thought something like, "I just have to get a handle on this".

But now you see that this 'handle' which you discovered for yourself turns out to be

the key to what is important. You are very likely getting to this level of understanding

by taking things to pieces and putting them back together.

For example, you may need to set up alongside one another four or five different definitions

of the same concept, versions of the same theory, or different theories proposed to account

for the same phenomenon. You may need to unpack them thoroughly, even at the very basic

level of what is the implied understanding of key words (for example 'concept', 'model',

'principles' etc.), before you can confidently compare them, which you need to do before

synthesis is possible.


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[This is basically an introductory section, which starts with a statement of the

problem in very broad terms, alerting us to the fact that not everything is rosy,

and proceeds to sketch in specific aspects.]

Without doubt, one of the most widely discussed of these is [thiscloses in on what the focus of the problem is]Like most fundamental

issues in physics, this question leads to challenges at several levels ofthought. At thephilosophicallevel this issue poses questions about. At thephysicallevel we are forced to examine . At the

mathematicallevel many questions are raised about the completenessand logical consistency .

[The text moves on to specify issues at various levels. Although the focus is

sharper, the coverage at the same time opens out.]

An important instance in which all of these challenges converge

occurs with the concept of 'angle' in the description of quantumsystems

[Thus the text has set up the situation where all aspects of the problem--

theoretical, practical, etc.--are brought together.]

Whatever the pattern which fits your work best, you need to keep in mind that what you are

doing is writing about what was done before. But, you are not simply reporting on previous

research. You have to write about it in terms of how well it was done and what it achieved.

This has to be organised and presented in such a way that it inevitably leads to what you want

to do and shows it is worth doing. You are setting up the stage for your work.

For example, a series of paragraphs of the kind:

"Green (1975) discovered .";"In 1978, Black conducted experiments and discovered that .";

"Later Brown (1980) illustrated this in ";

demonstrates neither your understanding of the literature nor your ability to evaluate other

people's work.

Maybe at an earlier stage, or in your first version of your literature review, you needed a

summary of who did what. But in your final version, you have to show that you've thought

about it, can synthesise the work and can succinctly pass judgement on the relative merits of

research conducted in your field. So, to take the above example, it would be better to say

something like:

"There seems to be general agreement on x, (for example, White

1987, Brown 1980, Black 1978, Green 1975) but Green (1975) sees x

as a consequence of y, while Black(1978) puts x and y as . WhileGreen's work has some limitations in that it ., its main value lies in

."

Approaching it in this way forces you to make judgements and, furthermore, to distinguish

your thoughts from assessments made by others. It is this whole process of revealing

limitations or recognising the possibility of taking research further which allows you to

formulate and justify your aims.

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