CU Scarborough - Academic Skills: Literature Review

Literature Reviews

The aim of a literature review is to identify any gaps that your research will attempt to address, to assist with the development of your inquiry and, to give the reader a better understanding of the subject. 

A literature review is an essential part of university assignments, at an undergraduate level, a literature review is expected to:

• Provides knowledge of all the recent research within a narrow topic/ field of study

• Acts as a starting point for other researchers

• Should show the reader what you are doing your project on, why and how it will fit in with other research in the field

• Offer an accurate account of the key points, methodologies, and conclusions of current research on your topic

• Demonstrate your awareness and understanding of the main theoretical approaches and how they relate to your topic

• Justify why you are taking a particular approach to your chosen topic and possibly to show how your approach adds something that is not already known or understood within the area

• A literature review is not simply a list describing or summarising one piece of literature after another

Basic Structure

The below is the basic structure of a literature review.

Approaches

There are two main approaches to writing a literature review. These are the Study by Study approach and the Topic by Topic approach. 

The Study by Study approach

This is approaching the literature review from a chronological approach. The literature review will:

• Attack this one study at a time
• Can do this in chronological order
• Or perhaps by relevance
• Narrow the research down towards your own topic area
• From the broader papers to the ones that are most relevant to the topic of interest
• This should lead nicely to the conclusion of your literature review

The Topic by Topic approach

This is approaching the literature review by assessing themes/ topics. The literature review will:

• This method allows you to explore different themes/topics
• One topic at a time before bringing them together
• Discussing more than one author at once
• Not like study by study when you deal with one author at a time

For example:

• E.g. Literature review about the cause of disease X
• There are multiple causal theories
• Start with theory 1 – discuss all the research from lots of different authors on this theory
• Then move onto theory 2 – discuss all the research from all the authors on this theory

Resources

Things to Avoid

• Your review should not simply be a description of what others have published in the form of summaries

• A literature review is not an annotated bibliography

• It should take the form of a critical discussion

• It needs to evaluate relevant literature