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How to Write a Literature Review: Six Steps to Go Yous 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 take found it helpful to exist as systematic as possible when completing this gargantuan task.
Sonja Foss and William Walters* describe an efficient and effective way of writing a literature review. Their system provides an fantabulous guide for getting through the massive amounts of literature for any purpose: in a dissertation, an M.A. thesis, or preparing a inquiry article for publication in whatever subject area. Below is a summary of the steps they outline as well as a pace-by-step method for writing a literature review.
How to Write a Literature Review
Step One: Make up one's mind on your areas of research:
Earlier you begin to search for articles or books, make up one's mind beforehand what areas you are going to enquiry. Make sure that you only become articles and books in those areas, even if you come beyond fascinating books in other areas. A literature review I am currently working on, for example, explores barriers to higher instruction for undocumented students.
Step Ii: Search for the literature:
Conduct a comprehensive bibliographic search of books and articles in your area. Read the abstracts online and download and/or print those manufactures that pertain to your area of inquiry. Observe books in the library that are relevant and check them out. Set a specific time frame for how long y'all will search. It should non take more than two or 3 defended sessions.
Pace Iii: Discover relevant excerpts in your books and manufactures:
Skim the contents of each book and article and await specifically for these v things:
1. Claims, conclusions, and findings virtually the constructs you are investigating
ii. Definitions of terms
three. Calls for follow-up studies relevant to your projection
iv. Gaps you observe in the literature
5. Disagreement about the constructs you are investigating
When yous notice any of these 5 things, type the relevant extract direct into a Word document. Don't summarize, as summarizing takes longer than only typing the excerpt. Make sure to annotation the name of the author and the page number following each excerpt. Exercise this for each article and book that yous have in your stack of literature. When you are washed, impress out your excerpts.
Footstep 4: Lawmaking the literature:
Get out a pair of scissors and cut each excerpt out. Now, sort the pieces of paper into similar topics. Figure out what the main themes are. Identify each excerpt into a themed pile. Brand sure each note goes into a pile. If in that location are excerpts that you tin can't figure out where they vest, separate those and get over them again at the end to see if you need new categories. When you end, place each stack of notes into an envelope labeled with the proper name of the theme.
Pace Five: Create Your Conceptual Schema:
Type, in large font, the name of each of your coded themes. Print this out, and cutting the titles into individual slips of paper. Take the slips of paper to a table or large workspace and figure out the best mode to organize them. Are at that place ideas that go together or that are in dialogue with each other? Are there ideas that contradict each other? Movement around the slips of paper until you come up upwards with a way of organizing the codes that makes sense. Write the conceptual schema downwardly before you lot forget or someone cleans up your slips of newspaper.
Step Vi: Begin to Write Your Literature Review:
Cull any section of your conceptual schema to begin with. You can begin anywhere, because y'all already know the social club. Notice the envelope with the excerpts in them and lay them on the table in forepart of you lot. Effigy out a mini-conceptual schema based on that theme by grouping together those excerpts that say the aforementioned thing. Use that mini-conceptual schema to write upward your literature review based on the excerpts that yous have in forepart of you. Don't forget to include the citations as yous write, so equally not to lose track of who said what. Repeat this for each section of your literature review.
One time y'all complete these half-dozen steps, you will have a consummate typhoon of your literature review. The great thing about this process is that it breaks down into manageable steps something that seems enormous: writing a literature review.
I think that Foss and Walter's system for writing the literature review is platonic for a dissertation, because a Ph.D. candidate has already read widely in his or her field through graduate seminars and comprehensive exams.
Information technology may be more challenging for M.A. students, unless you are already familiar with the literature. Information technology is ever difficult to figure out how much you need to read for deep significant, and how much you just need to know what others accept said. That residual will depend on how much you lot already know.
For people writing literature reviews for manufactures or books, this arrangement also could piece of work, especially when you lot are writing in a field with which you are already familiar. The mere fact of having a system can make the literature review seem much less daunting, so I recommend this organisation for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the prospect of writing a literature review.
*Destination Dissertation: A Traveler'south 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