Steve Eider Literature Review Presentation.ppt

A literature review when conducting your research.

1. “Committed to Developing Research Leaders in Africa”

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Learning Objectives:
What is literature review in research?
Objectives, purpose and functions of a literature review in research.
Where, when and why should you write a literature review?
What are the parts of a literature review?
How should you organize your literature review?
What are some of the strategies you can use while writing a literature
review?
Literature review sources.
Reviewing and abstracting literature.
Presentation of reviewed literature.
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3. What is Literature Review?
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A literature review is a comprehensive summary of previous
research on a topic. The literature review surveys scholarly
articles, books, and other sources relevant to a particular
area of research. 
The review should enumerate, describe, summarize, objectively
evaluate and clarify this previous research.  It should give a theoretical
base for the research and help you (the author) determine the nature
of your research.  The literature review acknowledges the work of
previous researchers, and in so doing, assures the reader that your
work has been well conceived.  It is assumed that by mentioning a
previous work in the field of study, that the author has read, evaluated,
and assimilated that work into the work at hand.
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4. Objectives, Purpose and Functions
of Literature Review
Objectives;
To motivate your work by explaining it’s social value.
To provide background context for your readers.
To compare your findings with other research.
To justify your experimental method.
To communicate your project’s scientific novelty by framing a research gap.

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5. Objectives, Purpose and Functions
of Literature Review… Continued
Purpose;
In general, the literature review should:
•Provide a context for the research.
•Identify seminal works and scholars in the field.
•Acknowledge existing theories, points of view, hypotheses, etc. in the
field of research.
•Justify the research.
•Clear up misconceptions about previous research.
•Ensure the research has not been done before (or if it is repeated,
that it is marked as a "replication study").
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6. Objectives, Purpose and Functions
of Literature Review… Continued
Purpose;
•Show where the research fits into the existing body of knowledge.
•Enable the researcher to learn from previous theory on the subject.
•Illustrate how the subject has been previously studied.
•Highlight flaws in previous research.
•Outline gaps in previous research.
•Show that the work is adding to the understanding and knowledge of
the field.
•Help refine the topic, refocus the topic, or even contribute to the
topic's evolution.
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7. Objectives, Purpose and Functions
of Literature Review… Continued
Functions;
A literature review creates a "landscape" for the reader, giving her or
him a full understanding of the developments in the field.  This
landscape informs the reader that the author has indeed assimilated
all (or the vast majority of) previous, significant works in the field into
her or his research. 
It answers the question, can I proceed with this study? If so in which
direction. It serves the following functions;
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8. Objectives, Purpose and Functions
of Literature Review… Continued
Functions;
•It helps researcher to define the problem more clearly in terms of selecting
variables, that are within one’s interest and resources i.e. it helps researcher
to formulate a re-searchable problem.
•It helps in developing background of the study i.e. it provides frame of
reference orienting the reader to the area in which the problem is found.
•It helps in identifying the gap to be filled by your study either in terms of
conceptual set up or methodological set up.
•It helps you to establish theoretical framework , this in turn provides an
empirical basis for the development of hypothesis and for explaining the
relationships between variables.
•It helps you identify the significance of your study in terms of practical or
theoretical values.
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Where, When and Why
Should you Write a Literature Review?
There are several steps in developing a literature review.  These
include;
selecting the topic
setting the topic in context
looking at information sources
using information sources
getting the information
organizing information (information management)
positioning the literature review
writing the literature review
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10. 10
Where, When and Why Should you
Write a Literature Review?..Cont..
There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature
review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-
specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the
humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of
source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are
more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews;
These differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship.
You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors
or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions,
for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.
A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually
falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these
cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue
you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your
research methodology.
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Where, When and Why Should you
Write a Literature Review?..Cont..
Literature reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or
as publications. In a class, a literature review may be assigned to help students
familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of
the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in
existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical
framework and methodology for later research.
As a publication, a literature review usually is meant to help make other scholars’
lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing
research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting
into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward
questions that have not yet been answered.
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Parts of a Literature Review
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Most literature reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure;
If your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion
pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention
on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and
conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals,
research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the
literature itself.
Introduction: An introductory paragraph that explains what your working
topic and thesis is. A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the
review. Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you
analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in
published, standalone literature reviews than in literature review sections in an
article or research paper).

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Parts of a Literature Review.. Cont..
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Body: Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of
each source and combine them into a coherent whole. Analyze and
interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own
interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in
relation to the literature as a whole. Critically Evaluate: Mention the
strengths and weaknesses of your sources. Write in well-structured
paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections,
comparisons, and contrasts.
Conclusion: Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature
and emphasize their significance. Connect it back to your primary research
question.

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How to Organize your Literature Review
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In Summary;
"In writing the literature review, the purpose is to convey to
the reader what knowledge and ideas have been established
on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
The literature review must be defined by a guiding concept
(e.g. your research objective, the problem or issue you are
discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a
descriptive list of the material available, or a set of
summaries.(http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-
types-of-writing/literature-review)
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16. #THE END
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Thank you!
(Q & A Session)
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