WRITING A LITERATURE REVIEW
Bearing in mind that a viable research question produces more than one reasonable answer, the literature review: Describes the kind of search that was conducted Summarizes, analyzes, and organizes the various responses found in the scholarly conversation regarding the question
Explains why different scholars provide different answers for the same or related questions (i.e. accounts for the debate/tension in the literature)
As a result, the literature review does more than report the conclusions of researchers; it accounts for HOW those conclusions are reached.
The literature review plays an important role in research projects because: It locates our research question within the scholarly debate relevant to our concerns We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, so we need to discover what has been done and represent it We let the reader see the history of the question and demonstrate that we have done our homework We identify what has not been done, or what has not been done well
Use the following steps in writing your literature review:
1. Organize your sources by detecting a pattern that helps you explain why one group of sources comes up with one answer and another group comes up with another answer. Creating a matrix is a very effective way of doing this.
2. Summarize these different groups of sources in terms of how they address the question: what methodology, evidence, critical concepts, etc. do they employ?
3. Analyze the content of these sources in terms of the answer they provide to your central question or in terms of the question they raise (which may be slightly different from your question)
