Literature Review
A literature review is a comprehensive but concise summary of the research on a particular topic. The goal of the review is to integrate and interpretate these primary research articles. Literature reviews may be the most common assignment given in psychological science classes. The purpose of a literature review is to assess a field's collective knowledge and research on a specific topic while also highlighting where further research may need to be conducted. Literature reviews should not be a summary of the articles (just like your annotated bibliographies should not be summaries); readers are looking for a critical analysis of recent research on your topic. However, it is understood that it can be difficult to truly interrogate and synthesize information across articles and research studies when you have a limited number of pages and limited view of the field.
Tips
- Start by reading a variety of primary research articles that represent the current state of knowledge on a narrowly defined topic. An easy mistake is to choose a topic that is too broad. When you are first asked to write what seems like a long paper of between 10 and 20 pages, you may try to choose a broad topic. You'll find even with fairly narrowly defined topics or questions that you can find a lot of research. However, you should there is sufficient research evidence on the subject in terms of both quantity of research and diversity of sources. You'll find in some specialized area that there may be only one or two researchers. I tend to stay away from these areas because with out multiple researchers we are likely missing out on different ideas and perspectives.
- Your analysis should be organized by key themes, trends, issues, or comparisons that are directly related to your thesis or research question. Again, DO NOT simply provide individual summaries of each article. What are you finding across studies, what is the 10,000 foot view of your topic? Are people asking questions in different ways, can you connect areas that haven't previously been connected, for example, do people talk about the same idea or concept but use different vocabulary?
- Emphasize where the present research fits with previous theories and studies. While you are looking towards the most recent literature, you also want to recognize the historical aspect (if its an older topic). Since you are combining articles and topics in new ways, the end of your literature review should identify gaps in the field that will be addressed by the current research (if you are proposing a study) or should be addressed (if you are not carrying out research.
- In literature reviews for class, include your own thoughts, evaluations, and questions of the literature.
Search Process
- Searching is an active process. You will pursue multiple strategies in order to find the best, most appropriate references for your topic. Articles connect to each other. You should look at both the reference list of a relevant article and for the articles that have cited your relevant article. Use synonyms/subject headings. You'll find that people often talk about the same thing in slightly different ways. You'll try to track down all of the ways someone talks about your topic.
- Weeding out is a process. You can't just take the first ten results in your first search and make that your bibliography. You need to scan each article in your source (usually the abstract) and determine if it is appropriate for your topic. You also need to make sure that the resource meets the requirements of the course (often peer-reviewed journals). You'll also need to narrow your topic. As stated earlier, its often easy to start too broad. Narrow your idea from reviews. Find how your topic intersects with other relatively narrow or specific topics. Focus on a particular demographic.
- Organize your work. I find using zotero with google drive and hypothesis the best way to organize information. The reference manager helps organize papers by topic and can also be tagged or have notes written with them. Hypothesis is a great way to comment on the paper and also use hashtags to look for commonalities across papers.
- Reading and Note-taking. Don't just read the abstract. Take notes in your own words. Continue to check the intro and discussion for other references.
Citations
Don't forget to cite your resources. Its best to use a reference manager, like zotero, to help keep track of your references/pdfs and then to insert in-text citations and your bibliography (make sure to double check that Zotero reads the metadata correctly. Check out any number of these websites to help with your citations in APA format
Guides
Below are a number of guides to help you through the research process. They are organized loosely in chronological order.
Writing Narrative Literature Reviews
An academic resource that describes some of the common mistakes of literature reviews
Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature review
A detailed guide written for emerging academics on literature reviews.
Writing a Psychology Literature Review
A guide from the University of Connecticut Writing Center
Writing a Psychology Literature Review
A guide from the University of Washington Psychology Writing Center
How to Write a Literature Review in Psychology
This is the BEST guide, but it is quite long.
A guide on writing literature reviews.
References
Anglim, J. (2009). How to write a literature review in psychology. Retrieved from http://jeromyanglim.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-to-write-literature-review-in.html
Baumeister, R.F., & Leary, M.R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews. Review of General Psychology, 1(3), 311-320
Webster, J., & Watson, R.T. (2002). Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature review. MIS Quarterly, 26(2), xiii-xxiii.
University of Connecticut Writing Center. Writing a psychology literature review. Retrieved from http://www.psych.uw.edu/writingcenter/writingguides/pdf/litrev.pdf
University of Washington Psychology Writing Center. Writing a Psychology Literature Review. Retrieved from http://www.psych.uw.edu/writingcenter/writingguides/pdf/litrev.pdf
Pacheco-Vega, R. (2016). Literature Reviews. Retrieved from http://www.raulpacheco.org/resources/literature-reviews/
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