Literature Review

In this video, I’ll be talking with you about the literature review chapter, which master’s and doctoral candidates often find to be the most challenging chapters in their studies. It’s certainly the most lengthy and detailed, and requires some very advanced skills in terms of literature searching, review and interpretation of existing research, and composition. Although the sheer volume of research and writing required for the literature review can be quite daunting, with some careful preparation and an organized approach, there are definitely tricks to completing this chapter successfully.

So, what is the literature review?

The literature review is typically the second chapter in the master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation–and also one of the top two stages of the research process that cause candidates to feel the need for help. So if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, you’re in good company! We get so many requests for dissertation consulting around the literature review. So I wanted to take some time to talk in detail about this chapter, its purpose, and how you can make it great.

When approaching the literature review chapter in your study, it’s very important to keep in mind the overall purpose of this chapter in your larger study. So, what’s the point of the literature review? To put it simply, this chapter should provide a comprehensive discussion and critical analysis of the current research and applicable theory for your proposed topic. We’ll get into how to do this in a moment, but let’s start first by talking about the scope of this chapter.

The literature review chapter can be fairly intimidating to many early researchers simply because of its extensiveness. It is often the largest piece of writing master’s or doctoral candidates have completed at this stage of their academic careers, and it can seem overwhelming at first glance. It’s no surprise, then, that we get so many requests for dissertation help to meet these huge page number goals. There’s actually a fairly large range in terms of length for this chapter. It can be anywhere from 20-100 pages (we see you UK unis)–but most commonly this chapter is 30-40 pages for doctoral dissertations.

In addition to page length requirements, the literature review chapter also commonly has requirements in terms of the number and types of sources included. Again, as with the length, the number of sources needed to provide a thorough discussion also varies. Most often this chapter includes 50-80 peer-reviewed sources, published primarily (~85%) within the last 4-5 years. Research articles published in peer-reviewed journals are definitely the highest priority for inclusion in this chapter. But, scholarly books and a small number of published dissertations are commonly acceptable. Do make sure you are mindful of your own university’s requirements in terms of sources. This will definitely save you the time and heartache of having to rewrite large segments of the chapter later.

In many ways, the literature review is the cornerstone chapter of your dissertation. This lengthy chapter functions to ground your own upcoming analysis in a comprehensive discussion of recent and relevant research. Because of this, it’s often one of the most challenging sections in graduate research. This is why so many new researchers seek help from a dissertation consultant when they hit this chapter of their studies.

We’ve covered the typical basic requirements of the chapter in terms of length and number of sources, so let’s move on now to talk in more detail about the underlying aims of this chapter. The literature review has two main goals:

First, you want to justify the focus of your study and make a clear (and well-supported) argument in favor of it.

Second, you need to develop this chapter so that it provides a rationale for your chosen methodological approach.

So in order to do this–and do it well–the first thing you need to do is find peer-reviewed, scholarly research to develop and support your argument! Clearly, the chore of locating 50-80 sources that are directly relevant to your study is a time-consuming one. And yet, with a focused and systematic approach, you can be sure to locate all of the most relevant studies to contextualize your own research.

This is clearly a lot of work, and we know that conducting such extensive research is particularly challenging for our clients who attend online universities all the while managing full-time jobs. One way that we can help with your dissertation is to take some of this burden off your shoulders by identifying your sources and even completing a full critical analysis. And, we’ll stay with you through any additional feedback from your advisors.

Now, returning to our discussion of how to locate the sources for your literature review chapters, a great place to start is by searching some databases in your subject. Again, remember that you need to obtain peer-reviewed research. Be aware that many — but not all — databases provide access to research that has been subject to peer review prior to publication. So, be sure that you are conducting your search using appropriate databases.

In order to conduct your search effectively, you need to determine pertinent keywords that might be associated with research that is pertinent to your own topic. A great way to start your search is to use your variables of interest as keywords. Then, after you’ve identified a handful of articles that relate to your own topical focus, check out the keywords listed on each of these studies. Chances are you’ll stumble upon many new keywords that you hadn’t considered. These will then be useful in locating additional sources for your chapter.

To emphasize this point, I will say again that you need to focus on research articles that are published in peer-reviewed journals when selecting your sources. As a note, general reference texts on a theory or subject, or on a particular methodology, are NOT what you’re looking for. You want the original studies these texts refer to, and this applies to your entire dissertation, not just the literature review.

In addition to keywords, you can make your search much more focused and systematic by taking a moment to learn about the search filters available through the search interface. These filters can typically be used to seek out articles within a specific publication timeframe. This will definitely be helpful in reducing the amount of time that you spend sifting through possible articles to include in your chapter.

Although the majority of your sources will need to be recently published, an exception is typically allowed for seminal sources. To obtain seminal pieces, as for example to support discussion of your theoretical framework, you can relax or expand the timeframe for publication. And, include names of notable authors in the field/topic/theory.

For example, say you’re investigating workload obligations and their relationship to faculty retention and job satisfaction in higher education. You might look at databases including ERIC and Academic Search Premier.

Your initial keywords might include faculty retention, faculty turnover, higher education retention, higher education job satisfaction, and so forth. This then leads to more specific keyword searches like faculty resistance, faculty involvement, faculty departure, faculty development, and so on.

Other types of literature searches come after this initial search, when you’ve found some strong initial sources to include in your chapter. At this point, you have enough information to narrow your search even further, in 2 key ways:

First of all, you can review references lists of those studies you obtain that are most closely related to your topic to find additional sources that you didn’t uncover in database search

Second, by reviewing journals that have published your sources so far, you can identify specific journals whose focal topics are closely associated with your own proposed topic. Then, review their Tables of Contents/abstracts to identify additional sources not obtained through your database search

To stay with the same example (workload obligations and faculty retention and job satisfaction in higher education), you might find fairly quickly that there are a handful of key journals focusing on this topic, including: Research in Higher Education, Academe, College Teaching

Once you’ve found a solid handful (or two) of initial sources, you can begin to focus more specifically on sources that will help you discuss your theoretical framework. You’ve already developed this, obviously, in the course of identifying your topic and key foundational elements. See our Topic Development video for more on this.

The theoretical or conceptual framework provides the basis for developing your research questions, as well as interview questions in qualitative research. Regardless of your methodology, though, it provides the explanatory framework used to interpret the meanings of your results or findings in your discussion chapter.

So for our current example, you might choose something like expectancy theory. Then, as it’s not specific to higher education, you would find appropriate research to situate this theory to this specific group of employees.

As you move forward with the literature review, you might imagine it as an inverted pyramid–moving from general to specific. In other words, typically, this chapter begins with an overview of your theoretical framework–providing some initial context to situate it within your subject or topic.

Next, the chapter proceeds with discussion/critical analysis of studies that examine your topic of interest in more general or tangential ways

-Then over the course of the chapter, progress to discussion/critical analysis of those studies that most closely address variables or phenomena you intend to examine in your study, and previous methodological approaches

And since we’re talking about methodology, if you happen to be completing qualitative research, I’ll just mention that we offer the most comprehensive support for qualitative studies. We can absolutely provide full dissertation help with this aspect of your literature review

-This examination of the most closely related studies in terms of focus will then naturally lead to a discussion of what was not discovered in those studies and what remains to be uncovered in your own study. This is of course your research gap — and if you check out our video on the problem statement, you’ll see that this gap in knowledge is of central importance in justifying the need for your study.

Continuing with our current example, you might begin with a discussion of expectancy theory, then move into discussion of faculty satisfaction and turnover, before exploring more specific issues like workload

There are some key qualities that are present in every strong literature review:

-Particularly for master’s and doctoral candidates at online universities, there’s often a specific emphasis on the 85/15 standard for research included in this chapter. Meaning, 85% recent, and 15% seminal studies. Because of our extensive experience with this requirement, we can provide whatever help you might need with meeting this requirement in your dissertation.

First and foremost, be sure to organize your subject matter by themes in the literature. And, create smaller subsections within your major sections, providing brief introductory paragraphs to preview the section’s content for the reader

-Include phrasing that ties together the findings and conclusions from all of your sources into a coherent narrative.

-As part of this, be sure to use transitional phrasing in which you compare and contrast the different studies you discuss. This provides good sense of flow and indicate that you understand the “story” contained in the literature and how it leads to your study

So, for example, you might write, ”In contrast to Smith (2013), Williams (2015) found that…”

The key concepts to keep in mind when completing this work are synthesis and critical analysis. Start with strong, ideas-focused claims, expose methodological weaknesses, and point out unresolved issues or controversies.

First of all, blend discussion and analysis of different studies together within your paragraphs, avoiding the dreaded “reads like an annotated bibliography” comment from your reviewers!

This refers to the presentation of a series of paragraphs that separately discuss different studies, especially in the absence of transitional language to tie these studies together. Weaving together the findings of different studies is really pretty difficult to accomplish. Reviewers often cite a need for editing in this chapter of the dissertation when synthesis is truly the missing element. Indeed, a really common type of dissertation help we are asked for is creating a greater degree of synthesis in the literature review.

For example, look at the three paragraphs on the screen. Each paragraph summarizes a separate study in isolation from the others. This leaves the reader to draw her own conclusions, rather than developing a clear and original argument

As I mentioned earlier, one of the main functions of the literature review is to provide a clear rationale for your choice of methodological approach in your study. To provide this type of helpful context as to why this approach makes sense for your study, you’ll want to attend in more detail to those studies that most closely resemble your own in terms of methodological approach and topic. This means you’ll want to devote more space in your chapter to these studies, giving more detail about methods to demonstrate appropriateness of such approach in your own inquiry.

So, let’s consider our example again, which was workload obligations and faculty retention and job satisfaction in higher education. And, let’s imagine that you are interested in exploring faculty members’ perspectives on how workload influences retention and satisfaction using a qualitative phenomenological approach. Now, these constructs are very thoroughly operationalized as quantitative variables, and you’ll likely find that there is a wealth of research in which these variables are examined using quantitative methods. Given this, it will be important to highlight those studies you find that use qualitative methods to explore perceptions of such variables and how they relate to one another — especially phenomenological studies. Such discussion in your literature review will be important for clarifying how a qualitative phenomenological approach will be optimal in answering your own specific research questions about how faculty make sense of and interpret workload factors as influential on their job satisfaction and retention decisions.

Another key piece of a nicely completed literature review chapter is the inclusion of summary and synthesis segments at the end of each major section. These sections are important for highlighting key findings that you’ve discussed in that section and tying them back to your research focus. Also, these summary and synthesis sections are important for noting along the way any important gaps in the research literature that you have just discussed.

The very last section of the literature review is a chapter summary. You’ll want to keep the chapter summary short and to the point, and avoid going over one page in length. As the aim of this summary is to recap key findings in your chapter as they underscore the aims of your own study, you’ll definitely want to avoid introducing new research findings in the summary. Instead, go over the key findings discussed in the chapter, and end the summary by reiterating the research gap and the purpose of your study, and with a brief transition to next chapter.

If you’d like any assistance as you complete your literature review, please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our literature search specialists. We would be happy to discuss options for assistance with your dissertation to identify and critically analyze recent and relevant research so that you have a compelling argument for your study!