How to Preparing a Strategy to Create the Review of the Literature

How to Write a Literature Review: Half dozen Steps to Go You from Start to Finish

Writing a literature review is often the most daunting function of writing an article, book, thesis, or dissertation. "The literature" seems (and often is) massive. I have found it helpful to exist every bit systematic as possible when completing this gargantuan task.

Sonja Foss and William Walters* draw an efficient and effective fashion of writing a literature review. Their system provides an excellent guide for getting through the massive amounts of literature for whatsoever purpose: in a dissertation, an M.A. thesis, or preparing a research article for publication in any field of study. Beneath is a  summary of the steps they outline equally well as a step-by-step method for writing a literature review.

How to Write a Literature Review

Footstep One: Determine on your areas of research:

Before you begin to search for articles or books, decide beforehand what areas you are going to research. Brand sure that you only go articles and books in those areas, fifty-fifty if y'all come beyond fascinating books in other areas. A literature review I am currently working on, for example, explores barriers to college didactics for undocumented students.

Step Two: Search for the literature:

Behave a comprehensive bibliographic search of books and manufactures in your expanse. Read the abstracts online and download and/or print those articles that pertain to your area of research. Find books in the library that are relevant and check them out. Set a specific fourth dimension frame for how long y'all will search. Information technology should not take more than 2 or three dedicated sessions.

Stride Three: Discover relevant excerpts in your books and manufactures:

Skim the contents of each volume and article and await specifically for these five things:

i. Claims, conclusions, and findings about the constructs yous are investigating

ii. Definitions of terms

3. Calls for follow-up studies relevant to your project

4. Gaps you observe in the literature

5. Disagreement well-nigh the constructs you are investigating

When you find any of these v things, type the relevant excerpt directly into a Give-and-take document. Don't summarize, as summarizing takes longer than simply typing the extract. Make certain to note the name of the author and the page number following each excerpt. Do this for each article and volume that you have in your stack of literature. When you are washed, print out your excerpts.

Stride Four: Code the literature:

Go out a pair of scissors and cut each excerpt out. At present, sort the pieces of paper into similar topics. Figure out what the main themes are. Place each extract into a themed pile. Brand sure each note goes into a pile. If there are excerpts that yous tin can't figure out where they belong, separate those and go over them again at the end to come across if you need new categories. When yous stop, place each stack of notes into an envelope labeled with the name of the theme.

Step Five: Create Your Conceptual Schema:

Type, in large font, the name of each of your coded themes. Print this out, and cut the titles into individual slips of newspaper. Take the slips of paper to a table or large workspace and figure out the all-time way to organize them. Are there ideas that go together or that are in dialogue with each other? Are there ideas that contradict each other? Movement effectually the slips of paper until you come upwardly with a way of organizing the codes that makes sense. Write the conceptual schema downwardly earlier you forget or someone cleans upwardly your slips of paper.

Step Half-dozen: Begin to Write Your Literature Review:

Choose any section of your conceptual schema to begin with. You tin can begin anywhere, because y'all already know the club. Find the envelope with the excerpts in them and lay them on the table in front of you. Effigy out a mini-conceptual schema based on that theme by group together those excerpts that say the same affair. Use that mini-conceptual schema to write up your literature review based on the excerpts that you have in front of you. Don't forget to include the citations as you lot write, then as not to lose runway of who said what. Repeat this for each section of your literature review.

One time y'all complete these six steps, you will take a complete draft of your literature review. The peachy thing well-nigh this procedure is that information technology breaks down into manageable steps something that seems enormous: writing a literature review.

I think that Foss and Walter'south system for writing the literature review is ideal for a dissertation, because a Ph.D. candidate has already read widely in his or her field through graduate seminars and comprehensive exams.

It may be more challenging for 1000.A. students, unless yous are already familiar with the literature. It is always hard to effigy out how much you need to read for deep pregnant, and how much you just need to know what others have said. That balance will depend on how much you already know.

For people writing literature reviews for articles or books, this system also could piece of work, specially when you are writing in a field with which y'all are already familiar. The mere fact of having a system tin make the literature review seem much less daunting, so I recommend this arrangement for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the prospect of writing a literature review.

*Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation

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Source: https://www.wiley.com/network/researchers/preparing-your-article/writing-a-literature-review-six-steps-to-get-you-from-start-to-finish