How to Write Literature Review for Thesis

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After reading this article you can do the following:

1. Define the purpose and limitation of a review of related literature

2. Describe the role of literature review in qualitative research

3. Identify keywords, and identity, evaluate and annotate sources

4. Describe the steps involved in analysing, organizing, reporting a review

5. Define meta-analysis and describe the process for conducting a meta-analysis.

1.Define the purpose and limitation of review of related literature

- The review of related literature comprises methodically identifying, locating, and analysing documents relating to the research topic.

- The foremost purpose of reviewing the literature is to pinpoint information that already exists about your topic

- the literature review can point out research strategies, procedures and instruments that have and have not been found to be productive in investigating your topic

- a smaller, well organized review is preferred to a review containing many studies that are less related to the problem

If you are about to begin a researcher has difficulties, there are some guidelines that can assist you:

·  It is better to avoid the temptation to include everything you find in your literature review

·  When you investigate a heavy research area, you just review only those works that are directly related to your specific problem

·  When you want to investigate new research area, you should review any study related in some meaningful way to your problem.

2. Describe the role of literature review in qualitative research

- qualitative researchers is used to construct their review after starting their study, whereas quantitative researchers are more likely to construct the review prior to starting their study.

- The qualitative research review of related literature may demonstrate the underlying assumptions behind the research questions, convince proposal reviewers that they are knowledgeable about intellectual traditions, provide the researcher with an opportunity to identify any gaps in the body of literature and how the proposed study may contribute to the existing body of knowledge, and help the qualitative researcher to refine research questions.

1.    Identifying keywords, and identifying, evaluating, and annotating sources

-          To identify keywords, it is easy because most sources have alphabetical subject indexes to help you locate information on your topic. A list of keywords should guide your literature search.

-          To identify sources, a good way to start a review of related literature is with a narrow search of pertinent educational encyclopedias, handbook, and annual review found in libraries. These resources provide broad overview of issues in various subject areas.

-          An article or report written by person who conducted the study is a primary source, a brief description of a study written by someone other than the original researcher is a secondary source. Primary sources are preferred in the review.

-          To search for books on your topic in library, you can access it online, many libraries in universities use an online catalogue system as well as collective catalogues to access materials from other library, the library website, and the resources available within and beyond your library.

-          To search in computer database, you can identify keywords related to your topic

-          Select the appropriate databases-some database using the same interface may allow you to search more than one database simultaneously.

-          Initiate a search using your keywords selectively

-          Reformulate your search using appropriate subject headings or descriptors combining terms as is appropriate

-          Once you have found a relevant article, don’t forget to check the item record for links to additional subject heading or descriptors, author, cited references, times cited in data base, or other references for finding additional related items using the features within database.

Analysing, organising, and reporting the literature

-          To describe and to report research call for a specialized style of writing. Technical writing requires documenting facts and substantiating opinions, clarifying definitions and using them consistently, using an accepted style manual, and starting section with an introduction and ending them with a brief summary. When organizing a review, make an outline; sort your references by topic, you can analyse the same and differences between references in a given subheading; give a meaningful overview in which you discuss references least related to the problem first; and conclude with a short conclusion of the literature and its implications.

Meta- Analysis

Meta – analysis is statistical approach which is used to conclude the results of many quantitative studies addressing the same topic. It provides a numerical way of expressing the composite result of the studies.

One of characteristics of meta-analysis is that it is as inclusive as possible

An effect size is a numerical way of expressing the strength or magnitude of a reported relation. In meta-analysis, an effect size is computed for each study and then the individual effect sizes are averaged.