A literature review is more than just a chapter in your dissertation. It is one of the formative sections of your research. It is considered to be foundational for your research wherein relevant theoretical frameworks, research papers, principles, assumptions and others, are evaluated. Scholars can centre their research upon the literature being analysed. It can furthermore, enable you to take a solid approach.
We advise you to focus on presenting a crisp literature review. However, writing a literature review can be challenging. You need to extensively read the research papers and conduct the analysis on the basis of the socio-political environment, which is ever-changing. Before you seek expert dissertation help from any online sources, you should attempt doing it yourself.
Here we have provided a succinct and complete guide on how to draft the perfect literature review.
What is Literature Review?
Before deep-diving into the world of literature review, we should know what it is. Literature Review is nothing but the collation of surveys, critical evaluation and assessment of existing research within a particular domain.
According to eminent academic Arlene Fink, literature reviews are the means by which an overview of multiple research sources can be provided in a succinct manner. Furthermore, it can also demonstrate the manner in which particular research fits into the larger field of study in a holistic manner.
Why is a good literature review important?
Literature reviews comprise a summarization of certain important sources. Particularly in social sciences, literature reviews encompass both summarization and synthesis. Synthesis can be more complicated since it includes the reorganization of data. Documenting a well-researched and critically evaluated literature review is important since it gives scholars an opportunity to newly interpret an old piece of research. Furthermore, it is also crucial since it enables scholars to evaluate gaps in the literature. Scholars also get the opportunity of resolving conflicts among research studies, which might seem contradictory. Literature reviews also give you the opportunity of identifying the different research areas in order to prevent the issues of duplication.
Types of Literature Review
Before conducting an analysis of the literature and documenting the literature review, you need to know about the different types of literature reviews. Depending upon your requirement and the field of research you can select the approach.
1. Argumentative Review: This form of the literature review is undertaken to either support or refute a particular scope of argument, assumption or philosophy. The primary purpose of this form of literature is to create a study that is established on the basis of contrarian viewpoints. Despite argumentative literature reviews being capable of introducing a legitimate course of the discussion, they can also introduce additional biases that cannot be ignored.
2. Integrative Review: Within the scope of an integrative literature review, criticism is conducted in an integrated manner, thereby creating certain identical hypotheses. It is the best-suited form of literature review for academic research, as it introduces clarity and rigour.
3. Historical Review: It is the form of literature review where different issues, concepts, phenomena, and others are analyzed over a period of time. It shows familiarity with multiple sectors of development and also provides a specific direction for further research.
Steps in writing a well-researched and critical literature review
There are essentially five steps in composing the best critical literature review.
• Step 1: Explore Relevant Literature
After comprehending the research objectives, you need to search for the most accurate research papers. First of all, make a list of the keywords based on the research question. The key concepts along with other variables should be undertaken into consideration when conducting a search. Next, the relevant sources to be utilized to search for pertinent studies should include legitimate sites like Google Scholar, JSTOR, and EBSCO for general subjects. A plethora of research papers is available on these sites. To narrow down the search result you can use Boolean operators.
• Step 2: Evaluation of Selected Sources
Out of the plethora of research papers that you have longlisted you need to select a handful. In order to make its way into the shortlist it should address the following questions,
- Are the key concepts being discussed in the publication relevant to the research topic?
- What are the primary models and methods being utilized and are they linked to the research topic?
- Does the research paper have results and conclusions related to the research questions being evaluated?
If the papers answer these questions, they should be considered relevant sources.
• Step 3: Thereafter, you need to identify the significant trends, patterns, themes, conflicts and contradictions, along with gaps being showcased in the study.
• Step 4: In the next step, you should outline the structure of the literature review. In this step, you need to decide if you should undertake the argumentative, integrative or historical approach. Depending upon the research topic and the scope of the study, you should select the type of literature review.
• Step 5: Lastly, How to Write a Literature Review
Here is the recommended structure that can be followed when writing a literature review.
Introduction: The research topic should be emphasized.
Body: Following this, in the body, summarization, analysis and critical evaluation of different research papers will be conducted. It should be written within well-structured paragraphs. It is recommended that you do not beat around the bush when writing literature reviews.
Conclusion: Writing a proper conclusion is a must when writing the literature review. You should summarize the different points of research of different papers and align the same with your research topic, in this step.
In order to document a properly researched literature review, these steps need to be undertaken.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What kind of dissertation help is provided by Treat Assignment Help, UK?
The experts at Treat Assignment Help provide the following dissertation writing help:
• Law Dissertation Help, and
• English Dissertation Help, among others.
2. Why shouldn’t you choose cheap dissertation writing services?
Cheaper dissertation writing services are not worth it, as they will not fetch you good grades. Furthermore, in the service thorough evaluations of literature are not conducted resulting in lower grades. Thus, we do not recommend cheap dissertation services by non-experts.
