LITERATURE review is systematic and critical assessment of existing literature related to your research question or topic. It demonstrate the researcher’s familirity with the subject and establish the context for research. In this short piece I will highlights few steps while writing literature review for your thesis or academic research.
Step one is to explore the topic that you want to explore, here in online evironment like internet or database search, note the keywords most pertinent and close to your research question like poverty alliviation in Pakistan, here you will write poverty as a keyword then alleviation as the second keywords and then poverty alleviations and the last poverty alleviation in developing countries and how to alleviate poverty from Pakistan. The second step includes comprehensive research via academic databases like JSTOR, Taylor and Francis, Springerlink or Projectmuse and online libraries related to your research question, here you can explore research articles, ebooks, reports and videos that meets your research question. Here you will make use of keywords or synonyms to encompass wide range of literature.
Step 3 is relevant to extract the desired material from the chunk, here you will screen and select resources that is closely relevant to your research question. This step will compell you to read the title, abstracts or digout the most relevant things from overwhelming literature. Step 4 includes the through readings of extracted literature with critical analysis from the selected resources. Here one can highlights the findings by markers and pointing significant insights from the selected literature. Step 5 includes organize the most pertinent literature in a folder in order to identify pattern and gaps in the existing research, here one can group the sources based on common themes, findings and methodologies most relevant to your research question. Step 6 includes the gap in the existing literature and your research question, in this step one should pay attention to any missing areas that need further exporation, this step will take you to the position of broader academic context.
Step 7 highlights the synthesizes informtion from the finding of the existing literature, here one should summarize the notes and its coherence to organize the paragraph in a systematic order. Step 8 can be used to evaluate the literature critically by assessing its strength and weaknesses, here the most credible items should be selected to include it in your research findings. In this step the validity and reliability of relevant findings are taking place. In step 9 one should organize the findings into a well-structure and coherent manner, here you should start from the introduction that outline the resarch question then present the main theme or findings and conclude them in summarize form.
Step 10 includes the revision and editing of literature review. Here one should review the whole writing in order to find inconsistncy and gaps in your arguments, here mistake should be avoid if any. The last but not the least, a literature is not a summary of sources being extracted from the wide range of data, but it is critical analsysis of the old and already published literature. The literature review in quantitative or qualitiative method of research research is not an easy feat, it required proper attention, time, energy and understanding for the research topic that make your academic prestige more prominent.
There are some mistake a researcher repeats while reviewing a literature review, one should avoid these mistake like summarzing without analysis, here the researcher will not only summarizing the findings but should also critically analysed that how each sourc contribute to my existing question. Avoid chunk material because extensive literature are published in various sources, select those which are most pertinent to your research questions, otherwise it will make you confuse to find the right and exact research meets to your research. Avoid those sources which are not authentic in nature like open sources without publisher links and authors.
Most of our research scholars digging out old and outdated literature which will lead you to inaccurate conclusion or obsolete information. Avoid those literature that lack ciritical evaluation. The last but not the least, prefer those literature that has been published in impact factor journals, reviewed by editorial boards and cited by more than 100 people. In nutshell, a well-structured literature review not only cover the gap between theory and practice but also catch intellectual brains for future research.
—The writer is Deputy Director Library at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, he can be reached at abidhussain@issi.org.pk
