An Ultimate Guide to Writing a Review of Literature for a Dissertation

A literature review in research is a discussion and analysis of the existing studies of a particular topic or subject. It is necessary to incorporate the research as it provides and discusses the background and details of the problem, showing what has already been researched. Furthermore, it helps in identifying the research gap of the study. A gap in research is a part of research that needs to be further explored and investigated. Hence, a literature review helps in identifying and filling those research gaps in a thesis or a research paper.

Furthermore, it helps in knowing about the various research designs and methodologies and how they were employed in the previous research and their usefulness in the study. It helps in justifying the research question, the used methodology and the overall research. Moreover, the literature review of the study helps in identifying the common grounds of the study by exploring multiple sources.

A good example to justify the importance of literature review can be: “How your daily habits can impact your overall health?” Now, for this kind of research question, you might find many research studies, but here is the problem that not every research study can adequately discuss every aspect of it. Different research papers may cover different areas of this research question and may contain research gaps. In this blog, we will discuss some of the ways and steps that you can follow to craft an effective literature review.

Steps to Write a Literature Review

• Begin by Identifying the Research Problem

Before heading to crafting a literature review, you should first start with identifying and looking at the research problem. Identifying and analysing the research problem should be the very first step, even before coming up with the research title and questions. Correctly identifying the research problem helps in looking for the relevant previous studies related to your studies, so you need to make sure that you execute this initial step correctly.

• Assemble your Research Sources

After getting done with understanding and identifying your research problem, the next step that you can move on to is gathering the relevant study sources. You can look for various authentic websites and research platforms for research journals and articles, like Google Scholar, PubMED, JSTOR, SCOPUS, Academia, and Research Gate. To look for the primary sources, like books and any visual material, you can refer to your university’s library and platforms like the Internet Archive and Google Books. You can even go for creating a literature review table that is also called Synthesis table or Research Table, which includes columns like the name of the author, title of the study, methods and theories used in the study and the final verdicts of the research. This kind of table helps you in having all the study’s related information beforehand, so you don’t have to go back to each research paper and look for these details. Such table creation is also sometimes recommended to the students and is especially employed in medical studies, and is usually required to be attached in the appendices.

• Step into the Actual Process

Now, it’s time to step into the actual process of creating a literature review. You can initiate by discussing each study briefly within a paragraph that should include elements like: major key findings, employed concepts, theories and methodologies, its strengths and weaknesses, relevance to your dissertation, controversial aspects of it and the study’s gaps in the literature. You can even go on to show the relationship of each research with the other and compare their contradictory points to demonstrate your in-depth understanding of the topic. To structure your research in a more organised way, you can describe them in terms of the thematic perspective. For example, you can go for picking one of the themes of the study, choose and discuss the ones that discuss those themes. You can even look for services providing affordable literature review help to compose an impressive literature review.

• Give Proper Heed to the Citation and References

One of the most crucial aspects of the research is the references and citations employed while writing something like a literature review. Using citations and properly referencing your research is important to help you avoid any plagiarism, increase the credibility of your work and crediting the researcher or the scholar for their contributions in the field of research. It strengthens your research by confirming the authenticity of the study that you have employed in the review of the literature. Make sure that you use both types of citation, including indirect and direct citations.

Direct citation involves the use of the exact words of the author, written under the quotation marks and in the block quotes, which are centrally aligned. The direct citation follows the parenthetical citation rule, which includes, for example, in APA format, writing the author’s name and the research’s year of publication in parentheses or round brackets. The indirect citation, on the other hand, includes the use of a more narrative citation format that includes starting with phrases like “According to” followed by mentioning the name of the author and the publication date of the research in brackets.

• Go with Editing and Revising your Research Paper

The last step that you need to look for is revising your dissertation and making suitable edits to it, including looking for any grammatical errors and mistakes in spelling, and checking whether the review covers all the aspects that should be discussed in it. Another thing to look for when editing a literature review is how well it follows the structure and how well it conforms to the format rules of the recommended formatting style.

It is also recommended to break down your literature review as per the thematic order, also, make sure that each paragraph discusses a separate idea, and that it does not transition into the next one. You can also separate each idea or paragraph by making a proper subheading. You can even consult various dissertation writing services that can provide you with effective dissertations along with proper format and structure.

Final Thoughts

Crafting a dissertation is itself quite a rigorous process, and the toughest part of the process is crafting the literature review. Literature review works as the major source after getting done with the introduction of the research to reinforce your research problem and questions further. Mastering the art of writing a perfect literature review requires a lot of attention and focus on details and a proper organisation of each detail. In the article, we have listed down some of the major things to look for from the beginning to the end of writing it in a very detailed way.