Conducting an extensive review of the literature is important, but as a student, you may be stressed by the enormity of the task. These ten tips will help you focus your writing efforts. These techniques can also help you write a literature review that goes beyond summarising the research and critiquing it effectively.
Going beyond a summary and creating a discussion of research work can be accomplished by thoroughly tracking sources, as well as highlighting and linking to them. While referencing hundreds of source materials ranging from journal articles and books to research papers and videos can seem tricky and time-consuming, reference manager and writing tools can help streamline this process (and more, as we’ll cover in the upcoming tips). Plus, students can use the Law coursework writing service uk to perfectly write literature reviews for law dissertations.
Techniques for Conducting Literature Reviews
1- Understand what a literature review is
A literature review is a well-thought-out, evidence-based scholarly argument that demonstrates the need for your research. While your literature review will include a wealth of information, it is not (primarily) an informative text. Keeping this in mind from the start can help you write a review that places your study within the scholarly discourse relevant to your research topic.
2- Create a draft of your research problem statement
A well-written literature review thoroughly examines and critiques the key concepts or quantitative variables relevant to your research topic. These key concepts or variables are typically expressed in a problem statement, so having a problem statement prepared can help you align your literature review with your research topic. For example, instead of writing about “Burnout in Education,” your problem statement may prompt you to focus your review on “Burnout in K-12 School Leaders.” This narrowed focus makes your literature review relevant and, more importantly, manageable.
3- Create an outline for your literature review
Even if your outline is subject to change, create a document with headings that describe the areas of literature you will review. In the previous instance of burnout in school leaders, you might include a heading titled “Factors Influencing Burnout.” You may already be aware that factors to consider include a lack of work/life balance, a lack of resources, and dissatisfaction with pay and benefits. Create the subheadings.
If you use a reference manager, you can skip this step! reference manager allows you to save your sources directly in the program, create a literature review outline in the knowledge organiser, and export it to Word. You can use this tool for corporate law dissertation topics and manage your time properly.
4- Let your outline guide your search
The headings in your lit review outline can be used as keywords when searching for relevant literature. When perform a comprehensive literature review remember to record your search strategy and use synonyms. You may also find a systematic review of your research topic that is well-referenced. If you have a tool, databases integrate with the software, allowing you to easily search for sources. You can also use the tools which help you import sources from sites like Google Scholar by identifying ISBNs and DOIs on web pages and sending reference information to your project.
5- Organise your research articles
We recommend using reference management software to organise your research articles. This saves you a lot of time and helps you methodically manage quotes, sources, notes, and articles.
If that is not an option, create folders and save your research articles as in-text citations (for example, an article by Parker et al. 2021). Having a single folder for all of your articles is the same as piling stacks of articles on your desk that you can’t remember whether you read or not. If you organise your research articles, you will be able to conduct a literature review that includes all of the articles that are relevant to a specific topic.
6- Use an annotation table to record pertinent study data
This step is critical for a successful literature review. You’ll look for trends in the literature. To analyse articles, you must extract relevant information and group it together. Students usually begin by reporting the findings of one study, then the next, and so on, without providing a synthesis of the literature. Synthesis is the result of analysis, and analysis must include articles that are related in some way.
7- Review your annotation table
Once you’ve annotated several articles, look for patterns, discrepancies, and gaps. A pattern could be a common finding across multiple studies. It could also be a participant pattern (for example, the phenomenon has primarily been studied in female-identifying participants) or methodology (10 of the 12 studies are quantitative). Often, we can use a pattern to identify a gap in the literature.
8- Write clear and concise synthesis statements
So, you’ve identified a pattern, discrepancy, or gap in the literature; what next? Make sure to present your findings clearly and concisely in the form of a synthesis statement. For example, “Much of the research regarding school leader burnout focusses on the reasons why school leaders burnout” is a synthesis statement. It is not accurate to report that a single author “X” discovered something interesting.
9- Include your synthesis statements “front and centre” in your writing
As you report your findings, use synthesis statements as topic sentences (main ideas) in the paragraphs you write. Then, use the evidence from your studies to support that main idea. A hallmark of well-synthesized writing is that paragraphs weave information from multiple studies together around a central claim
10- Schedule time for revisions
When you write your literature review, you are dealing with a large amount of information and are most likely writing in complex ways that are unfamiliar to you. As with all writing, expect to revise your work. Schedule time and, if necessary, seek assistance with areas that require revision. Then, step by step, work on your writing.
Final Words
The previous techniques are important because they provide much-needed structure as you write your literature review. Often, students start with vague ideas about what a literature review is, and the process becomes hazy. These tips can assist you in breaking down the process of writing a literature review, organising your notes and sources, automatically creating citations, and focussing on the writing process. If you find yourself lost in “literature review land,” refer back to this list repeatedly. They’ll help you regain your footing and return to your writing with renewed clarity.
