Friday, October 7, 2011

Writing a Literature Review: Six Steps to Get You from Start to Finish

Writing a literature review is often the most daunting part of writing an article, book, thesis, or dissertation. "The literature" seems (and often is) massive. I have found it helpful to be as systematic as possible in doing this gargantuan task. This post describes one system for writing a literature review.

In their book, Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation, Sonja Foss and William Walters describe a highly efficient way of writing a literature review. I think it provides an excellent guide for getting through the massive amounts of literature for any purpose: in a doctorate program, for writing an M.A. thesis, or an article in any field of study.

Academic Book Stack


Step One: Decide on your areas of research

Before you begin to search for articles or books, decide beforehand what areas you are going to research. Make sure that you only get articles and books in those areas, even if you come across fascinating books in other areas.

Step Two: 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 articles that pertain to your area of research. Find books in the library that are relevant and check them out. Set a specific time frame for how long you will search. It should not take more than two or three dedicated time sessions.

Step Three: Find relevant excerpts in your books and articles:

Skim the contents of each book and article and look specifically for these five things:

  1. Claims, conclusions, and findings about the constructs you are investigating
  2. Definitions of terms
  3. Calls for follow-up studies relevant to your project
  4. Gaps you notice in the literature
  5. Disagreement about the constructs you are investigating


When you find any of these five things, type the relevant excerpt directly into a Word document. Don’t summarize, as summarizing takes longer than simply typing the excerpt. Make sure to note the name of the author and the page number following each excerpt. Do this for each article and book that you have in your stack of literature. When you are done, print out your excerpts.

Step Four: Code 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. Place each excerpt into a themed pile. Make sure each note goes into a pile. If there are excerpts that you can’t figure out where they belong, separate those and go over them again at the end to see if you need new categories. When you finish, 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 paper. Take the slips of paper to a table or large workspace and figure out the best 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? Move around the slips of paper until you come up with a way of organizing the codes that makes sense. Write the conceptual schema down before you forget or someone cleans up your slips of paper!

Step Six: Begin to Write Your Literature Review

Choose any section of your conceptual schema to begin with. You can begin anywhere, because you already know the order. Find the envelope with the excerpts in them and lay them on the table in front of you. Figure out a mini-conceptual schema based on that theme by grouping together those excerpts that say the same thing. 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 write, so as not to lose track of who said what. Repeat this for each section of your literature review.

Once you complete these six steps, you will have a complete draft 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 really can work 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 M.A. students, unless you are already familiar with the literature. It is always hard to figure out how much you need to read for deep meaning, and how much you just need to know what others have said. That balance will depend on how much you already know.

For faculty writing literature reviews for articles or books, this system also could work, especially when you 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 system for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the prospect of writing a literature review.

33 comments:

  1. Hey it's Continual Knowledge. I was looking for you over on the other site and ran across this page. Good edition. Always looking to add new information to the writing arsenal. Glad to see you are doing well!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi, ContinualKnowledge!!! Great to hear from you. I do miss seeing you on the other page, but am not on there any more... I hope all is going well for you!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Again, I can't tell you how useful this is! Thanks so much for posting. It's now time for me to do this literature review!

    ReplyDelete
  4. its great information... Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank so much for posting useful things.

    How to change these into APA referrence system?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Really a good explantion of a good literature review

    Olusola

    ReplyDelete
  7. I have followed your blog with great interest, used many of your suggestions and shared them with colleagues and family members.

    ReplyDelete
  8. You really summed it up :) Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  9. wonderful job folks, I can now do my literature revie. I was really confused with this gargantuan tsak. be blessed!

    ReplyDelete
  10. A great piece of information

    ReplyDelete
  11. This helped me with organizing my thoughts.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thank you for sharing. From someone who is new to research this is great :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. I used this method when i wanted to rework my conceptual argument in a masters essay last year. It really works - I got a distinction! Thanks so much for the blog - it's providing some great new advice and reinforcing messages I've heard but not really taken on board. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thank you, I like to follow such litrature step.

    ReplyDelete
  15. yeah this is very informative articles thanks for shearing with us Thesis Writing

    ReplyDelete
  16. This is quite difficult to do that but your blog will help me to make things easy I recently doing assignment writing services .

    ReplyDelete
  17. Brilliant!Who knew writing a literature review could be so fun? Probably need to get out more.....!

    ReplyDelete
  18. This post describes one system for writing a literature review.

    ReplyDelete
  19. It is very hard to do that but your blog will help me to make things easy recently i am trying to doing thesis proposal writing .

    ReplyDelete
  20. This can definitely make (typically inefficient) students efficient! A lot of what you've mentioned is news to even graduate students so I'm glad you're putting it out there.

    In fact, I'll probably be writing up a similar technique (albeit for online note-taking for research) to get students churning out their first drafts in no time.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I'm putting this method to the test! Just about to write my Lit Review for my Phd confirmation so not an overly huge task but I'm aiming for a high quality review. I'll be using this process and will report back when I've completed my review.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I'm writing my second lit review, and am looking forward to putting this process to work. Thanks so much for a clean well-organized write-up!

    ReplyDelete
  23. This is really good. I'm doing a masters this year 19 years after leaving university, and this will help a lot!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Googled you in desperation after having to do the third re-write of my PhD lit review! Thank you. So helpful!

    ReplyDelete
  25. Thanks so much, I will use your method in my Ph.D Lit Review.

    ReplyDelete
  26. That's quite a list of helpful things to do. I think these steps will assures output in the end.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Great article! I am a student and now I am writing my thesis literature review and I am very grateful for your post as it is a great help for me. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  28. such a great informations

    ReplyDelete
  29. im just a final year in degree holder .. as found this great steps make me feel more confidence to continue back doing my LR .. thanks so much

    ReplyDelete
  30. I have been helping out a PHD candidate as a research assistant and often feel lost as I only hold an undergraduate. I did one literature review as an undergrad and it was PAINFUL. This is round 2 and I wish I had this guideline when I was an undergrad many moons ago. It makes sense, it looks simple and I can keep the timeline on track which is the critical part of my support.

    ReplyDelete