literature review example south africa

Scholarly Research and Related Resources: Writing a Literature Review

• Intro & Definitions
• Postgraduate Research at Wits
• Wits OA Strategy
• Library Services
• Wits Research Newsletters
• Useful Resources for Wits Staff & Students
• Research Institutions (Africa)
• Research Institutions (SA)
• Research Think Tanks
• SA Dept. of Science & Innovation (formerly Technology)
• Universities
• Searching for Resources/Search Engines/Tools
• Primary, Secondary & Tertiary Resources
• Research Identifiers, e.g. ORCID,
• ETDs and Scholarly Repositories
• Int'l Digital Libraries/Repositories
• Digital Libraries/Repositories (South Africa)
• The Research Process Tutorial (YouTube)
• Selecting a Topic
• How to Reference and avoid Plagiarism
• Writing an Abstract
• Systematic Reviews

Writing a Literature Review

• Research Methods/Methodology
• Research Proposal
• Research Supervision
• Research Questionnaires (design)
• Critiquing research
• Conducting Archival Research
• Dealing with stress as a PG student
• Wits Writing Centres
• Abstracts - common errors
• How To Paraphrase
• Arguments in research
• Using tables and figures in research reports
• Presenting your Research
• Evaluating Websites
• Data Management Resources
• Typography/Layout
• Scholarly Communication/Publishing
• Accredited Journals
• Predatory Publishers
• Copyright /IP Issues

The Literature Review

Writing the Literature Review

• Literature review (E. Grossman)
• How to Write a Literature Review (Sportscience - sportsci.org)
• The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It
• Literature Review Survival Guide - Media Studies - LibGuides at University of Cape Town
• Literature Reviews — The Writing Center at UNC-Chapel Hill
• Tips for Writing a Literature Review
• What is a literature review? - Literature Review Survival Guide - LibGuides at University of Cape Town
• Writing a Literature Review - CIRT
• Writing a Literature Review (Purdue)
• << Previous: Systematic Reviews
• Next: Research Methods/Methodology >>
• Last Updated: Jan 31, 2022 9:26 AM
• URL: https://libguides.wits.ac.za/Scholarly_Research_Resources

• Library AND Information Service

Using the Library

Research process: literature review.

• Research design
• Research methods

Literature review

• Systematic Review
• Data Management This link opens in a new window
• Data collection
• Data storage This link opens in a new window
• Ethical clearance
• Data analysis
• Data visualisation
• Managing references
• Writing/Editing
• Submit thesis/dissertation to Institutional Repository (SUNScholar) This link opens in a new window
• Submit data to institutional research data repository (SUNScholarData) This link opens in a new window
• Submit research output to SUNScholar (Self-archiving) This link opens in a new window
• Where to publish This link opens in a new window
• Increase your online research visibility
• Unique author identifiers This link opens in a new window
• Measure your impact This link opens in a new window
• Improve your impact
• Useful tools for research
• What is a literature review
• Literature review How-to-guide
• Generic literature review
• Critical literature review
• Systematic literature review
• Meta-analysis review
• Criteria of a good literature review
• Useful blog posts
• Useful reading

A literature review surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works. It should be designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits into the larger field of study. A literature review may consist of simple a summary of key sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem.

The following criteria are important when one evaluate your literature review:

• Exhaustive in its coverage of the main aspects of the study
• Fair in its treatment of author
• Topical and not dated
• Based on scientific journals and books (not Internet sources only!)

Examples of average number of references 

• Slaying the (literature review) beast: Part 1 - 3

• << Previous: Research methods
• Next: Systematic Review >>
• Last Updated: Aug 15, 2024 1:53 PM
• URL: https://libguides.sun.ac.za/researchprocess

Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service, Helpline Numbers : +27 21 808 4883, Postal Address : Private Bag X5036 Stellenbosch, 7599

Exploring Types of Reviews: from Systematic Review, Scoping Review and Met-Analysis: Literature Review

• DistillerSR
• EPPI-Reviewer
• Nested Knowledge
• SR-Accelerator
• Step 1 Research Question
• Step 4: Screening and Selection
• Step 5: Data Extraction
• Step 6: Quality Assessment
• Step 7: Data Synthesis
• Step 8: Assessment of Publication Bias
• Step 9: Interpretation of Results
• Step 10: Report Writing
• Step 11: Peer Review and Publication

Literature Review

• Systematic Review
• Umbrella Review
• Scoping Review
• Meta-analysis
• Where to search
• Search strategy
• Types of Scholarly Databases
• Search Strings
• A guide to using Databases Thesaurus
• Managing References
• Terminology used in Systematic Reviews
• Referencing Styles OR Techniques

Literature Review :

• Explanation : A literature review is a critical evaluation and synthesis of existing literature on a particular topic or research question. It aims to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge, identify gaps or inconsistencies in the literature, and suggest directions for future research. Literature reviews may be narrative in nature, meaning they provide a qualitative summary of the literature, or systematic, meaning they follow a structured and replicable methodology to identify, evaluate, and synthesize the literature.
• methodologies,
• objectives, and
• applications.

For more information visit the How to write a literature review LibGuide

• << Previous: Types of Review commonly used in Research.
• Next: Systematic Review >>
• Last Updated: Jun 14, 2024 11:23 AM
• URL: https://libguides.unisa.ac.za/c.php?g=1378233

• A-Z Databases
• Training Calendar
• Research Portal

Law: Introduction to Research

• Finding a Research Topic
• Getting Started
• Generate Research Ideas
• Brainstorming
• Scanning Material
• Suitability Analysis
• The difference between a topic and a research question

Literature Review

• Referencing

When thinking about any risks associated with your research you may realise that it is difficult to predict your research needs and the accompanying risks as you were not sure what information would be required; this is why a literature review is necessary. A thorough literature review will help identify gaps in existing knowledge where research is needed; filling those gaps is one of the prime functions of research. The literature review will indicate what is known about your chosen area of research and show where further contributions from further research can be made.

Undertaking a literature review is probably one of the most difficult stages of the research process but it can be both exciting and fulfilling. This section aims to put the literature review into context and to explain what it does and how to do it.

The literature on a particular legal topic is of fundamental importance to the international community of researchers and scholars working within particular academic disciplines. Academic publishing supports research by enabling researchers to tell the world what they have discovered and allows others researching in the same area to peer review their work; in this way, a combined body of knowledge is established.

During your research, you will use the literature to:

• develop your knowledge of your chosen topic and the research process in general terms
• ensure that you have an understanding of the current state of academic knowledge within your chosen topic
• identify the gaps in knowledge that your research will address
• ensure that your research question will not become too broad or narrow.

The Purpose of Literature Review

Understanding existing research is at the core of your study. A good literature review is important because it enables you to understand the existing work in your chosen topic as well as explaining concepts, approaches and ideas relevant to that topic.

The literature review is also essential as it will enable you to identify an appropriate research method. Your research method, and needs, can only be established in the light of a review of existing knowledge.

Your literature review is regarded as secondary research. The research process is an ongoing one, so your literature review is never really finished or entirely up to date as reading and understanding the existing literature is a constant part of being a researcher; professionally it is an obligation.

Different Types of Research

• Different types of research
• Different sources
• Understand research in your chosen area
• Explaining relevant concepts and ideas
• Contextualizing your results
• What to read?
• Peer review
• Searching the literature
• Critically evaluating documents

Your research will draw upon both primary and secondary research. The difference between primary and secondary research is that primary research is new research on a topic that adds to the existing body of knowledge. Secondary research is research into what others have written or said on the topic.

You will also draw upon primary and secondary sources to undertake your research. Primary sources are evidence recorded at the time, such as a photograph, an artifact, a diary, or the text of a statute or court ruling. Primary legal sources are the products of those bodies with the authority to make, interpret and apply the law. Secondary sources are what others have written or said about the primary source, their interpretation, support, or critique of the primary source. Similarly, secondary legal sources are what academics, lawyers, politicians, journalists, and others have said or written about a primary legal source.

Part of the aim of your studies is to make a contribution to the existing body of academic knowledge. Without a literature review there would be a risk that what you are producing is not actually newly researched knowledge; instead it may only be a replication of what is already known. The only way to ensure that your research is new is to find out what others have already done. However, this is not to say that you should never attempt to research some things that have been done before if you feel that you can provide valuable new insights.

You also need to use the literature review to build a body of useful ideas to help you conceptualise your research question and understand the current thinking on the topic. By studying the literature you will become familiar with research methods appropriate to your chosen topic and this will show you how to apply them. Careful consideration should be given to the research methods deployed by existing researchers in the topic, but this should not stifle innovative approaches. Your literature study should also demonstrate the context of your own work, and how it relates, and builds, on the work of others; ‘to make proper acknowledgment of the work of previous authors and to delineate [your] own contributions to the field’ (Sharp et al., 2002, p. 28).

When you have completed your primary research, you will still have the task of demonstrating how your research contributes to the topic in which you have been working. Comparing your results to similar work within the topic will demonstrate how you have moved the discipline forward.

Comparing your results with the gaps that you identified in the early stages of your literature review will allow you to evaluate how well you have addressed them.

A successful literature review will have references from a number of different types of sources; it is not simply a book review. What is much more important than the number of references is that you have a selection of literature that is appropriate for your research; what is appropriate will depend on the type of research you are undertaking. For example, if your topic is in an area of recent legal debate, you will probably find most of the relevant material in journal articles or conference papers. If you are studying policy issues in law-making, you would expect to cite more government reports. In either case, you will need some core references that are recent and relevant. A research project could also contain a number of older citations to provide a historical context or describe established methods. Perhaps a recent newspaper, journal or magazine article could illustrate the contemporary relevance or importance of your research.

You will have to use your own judgment (and the advice of your tutor) to ascertain what the suitable range of literature and references is for your review. This will differ for each topic of research, but you will be able to get a feel for what is appropriate by looking at relevant publications; most publications fall into the following broad categories:

Online legal databases

Online legal research services such as Westlaw , LexisNexis , JSTOR , EBSCOhost , or HeinOnline are a good source of journal articles and as a repository of legislation, case law, law reports, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, and treatises.

Journal articles

These provide more recent discussions than textbooks. Peer-reviewed journals are the gold standard for academic quality. Having at least some journal articles in your literature review is almost always required. Note that the lead time on journal articles is often up to two years, so they may not be sufficiently up to date for fast-moving areas. Look for special issues of journals, as these usually focus on a particular topic and you may find that they are more relevant to your area of research.

Many law schools host journals that contain articles by academics and students; these may also be of interest. Other sources could include online newspapers such as  The Conversation  which are sourced from academia and designed to highlight current academic research or respond to current events.

Conference literature

Academic conferences are meetings in which groups of academics working in a particular area meet to discuss their work. Delegates usually write one or more papers that are then collected into a volume or special edition of a journal. Conference proceedings can be quite good in providing a snapshot of a topic, as they tend to be quite focused. Looking at the authors of the papers can also give you an idea of who the key names in that area are. The quality varies widely, both in terms of the material published and how it is presented. Most conferences include some professional researchers, some of whom can be contacted, and lots of students. Conference papers are often refereed but usually not to the same level as journal articles.

Having conference papers in your literature review does lend academic credibility, especially in rapidly developing areas, and conference papers generally contain the preliminary work that eventually forms journal articles.

Textbooks are good for identifying established, well-understood concepts and techniques, but are unlikely to have enough up-to-date research to be the main source of literature. Most disciplines, however, have a collection of canonical reference works that you should use to ensure you are implementing standard terms or techniques correctly. Textbooks can also be useful as a starting point for your literature search as you can investigate journal articles or conference papers that have been cited. Footnotes are a rich source of preliminary leads.

Law magazines

These can be useful, particularly for projects related to the role of lawyers. Be aware of the possibility of law firm bias (for example in labour law towards employers, employee rights, or trade unions) or articles that are little more than advertisements. Examples of professional journals include the  SA ePublications (Sabinet), De Rebus - SA Attorneys' Journal ,  etc . Most jurisdictions have some form of a professional journal.

Government and other official reports

There is a wide range of publications, including ‘white papers', official reports, census, and other government-produced statistical data that are potentially useful to the researcher. Be aware of the possibility of political or economic bias or the reflection of a situation that has since changed.

Internal company or organisation reports/Institutional repository

These may be useful in a few situations but should be used sparingly, particularly if they are not readily available to the wider community of researchers. They will also not have been through a process of academic review. Such unpublished or semi-published reports are collectively called ‘grey literature.

Manuals and handbooks

These are of limited relevance, but may be useful to establish current techniques, approaches, and procedures.

Specialist supplements from quality newspapers can provide useful up-to-date information, as can the online versions of the same papers. Some newspapers provide a searchable archive that can provide a more general interest context for your work.

The worldwide web

This is widely used by lawyers today. According to the 2011 American Bar Association Report, 84.4% of attorneys turn to online sources as their first step in legal research (Lenhart, 2012, p. 27). It is an extremely useful source of references, particularly whilst carrying out an initial investigation. Although sites such as Wikipedia can be very helpful for providing a quick overview of particular topics and highlighting other areas of research that may be connected to your own, they should  not  usually be included in your review as they are of variable quality and are open to very rapid change. Treat the information you find on the internet with appropriate care. Be very careful about the source of information and look carefully at who operates the website.

Personal communications

Personal communications such as (unpublished) letters and conversations are not references. If you use such comments (and of course, you should respect the confidence of anyone you have discussed your work with), you should draw attention to the fact that you are quoting someone and mark it as ‘personal communication’ in the body of the text. Responses you might obtain from, for example, interviews and questionnaires as part of your research should be reported as data obtained through primary research.

It is crucial that most of your literature should come from peer-reviewed materials, such as journal articles. The point of peer reviewing is to increase quality by ensuring that the ideas presented seem well-founded to other experts in the topic. Conference papers are generally peer-reviewed, although the review process is usually less stringent, and so the standing of conference papers is not the same as for journals. Books, magazines, newspapers, and websites (including blogs, wikis, corporate sites, etc.) are not subject to peer review, and you should treat them with appropriate caution. Also, treat each publication on its merits; it is more helpful to use a good conference paper than a poor journal paper. Similarly, it is acceptable to refer to a well-written blog by a knowledgeable and well-known author provided that you supply appropriate context. In all these cases, the important thing is that you interpret the work correctly.

You will have undertaken legal research and developed your research skills as you prepared for earlier assignments. A literature review builds on this. You may, however, be wondering where to start. One technique is to use an iteration of five stages to help you with your early research.

The five stages are: planning, searching, gathering, analysing and comparing.

Following these stages will provide you with a systematic approach to gathering and analysing literature in your chosen topic of study; this will ensure that you take a critical approach to the literature.

To undertake an effective review of the literature on your chosen topic you will need to plan your review carefully. This includes setting aside enough time in which to undertake your review. In planning there are several aspects you need to think about:

• What sources of information are most relevant to your chosen research question?
• What gaps in knowledge have you identified in your chosen topic and used as a basis for your research question?
• What search terms will you use and how will you refine these?
• How will you record your sources?
• How will you interrogate those sources?
• How will you continue to review the literature as you progress with your research in order to keep as up-to-date as possible?
• Are you able to easily access all the sources you need?
• What arrangements may you need to make to access any hard copy materials?
• Will you join one of the legal alert services to keep you abreast of changes in your chosen topic (such as new court judgments)?
• What notes of progress will you record in your research diary?

Spending time thinking about all aspects of the literature review, planning your time, and setting yourself targets will help to keep your research on track and will enable you to record your progress and any adjustments you make, along with the reasons for those adjustments.

This section is designed to provide you with some reminders in relation to searching, choosing search terms and some ideas about where to start in undertaking a literature review.

Where to start

The best places to start are likely to be a legal database (or law library) and Google Scholar. Many students and academics now use Google Scholar as one of their ‘go to’ tools for scholarly research. It can be helpful to gain an overview of a topic or to gain a sense of direction, but it is not a substitute for your own research of primary and secondary sources.

Having gained an overview from your initial search through browsing general collections of documents, you will then need to undertake a more detailed search to find specific documents. Identifying relevant scholarly articles and following links in footnotes and bibliographies can be helpful as you continue your search for relevant information.

One of the decisions you will have to make is when to stop working on your literature review and your research, and when to start writing up your dissertation. This will be determined by the material you gather and the time constraints you are working on.

Selecting resources

One starting point may be to locate a small number of key journal papers or articles; for a draft outline proposal for your research, you might have around four to six of these, accumulating more as you develop the research subsequently. Aim for quality, not quantity. Look for relevant and recent publications. Most of your references will typically not be more than four years old, although this does depend on your field of study. You will need quite a few more in due course to cover other aspects of your research such as methods and evaluation, but at this stage, you need only a few recent items.

While reading these documents, aim to identify the key issues that are essential to your research question, ideally around four to six.

Compare and contrast the literature, looking for commonalities, agreements, and disagreements and for problem identification and possible answers. Then write up your analysis of the comparison and any conclusions you might reach. The required outcome will be that you can make an informed decision about how to proceed with your primary research, based on the work carried out by other researchers.

Note that ultimately there are no infallible means of assessing the value of a given reference. Its source may be a useful indication, but you have to use your judgment about its value for your research.

Reviewing your sources

Skim read each document to decide whether a book or paper is worth reading in more depth. To do this you need to make use of the various signposts that are available from the:

• notes on a book’s cover can help situate the content
• abstract (for a paper), or the preface (for a book)
• contents page
• introduction
• conclusions
• references section (sometimes called the ‘bibliography’)

In your record, make a brief note (one or two sentences) of the main points.

Next, skim through the opening page of each chapter, or the first paragraph of each section. This should give you enough information to assess whether you need to read the book or paper in more depth, again make a suitable note against that record.

Reading in more detail: SQ3R

If you have decided to look in more detail at a source document that you have to skim read, you can use the well-known ‘SQ3R’ approach (Skimming, Questioning, Reading, Recalling, and Reviewing).

1. Skimming – skim reading the chapter or part of the paper that relates to your topic, or otherwise interests you.

2. Questioning – develop a few questions that you consider the text might answer for you. You can often use journal, chapter, or section titles to help you formulate relevant questions. For example, when studying a journal article with the title, ‘Me and my body: the relevance of the distinction for the difference between withdrawing life support and euthanasia’, you might ask, ‘How is the distinction between withdrawing life support and euthanasia drawn?’

3. Reading – read through the chapter, section, or paper with your questions in mind. Do not make notes at this stage.

4. Recalling – make notes on what you have read. You should normally develop your own summary or answers to your questions. There will also be short passages that you may want to note fully, perhaps to use as a quotation for when you write up your literature review. Be sure to note carefully the page(s) on which the quotation appears.

5. Reviewing – check through the process, perhaps flicking through the section or article again. It is also worth emphasising that if you maintain your reference list as you go along, not only will you save yourself a lot of work in later stages of the research, but you will also have all the necessary details to hand for writing up with fewer mistakes.

(adapted from Blaxter et al., 1996, p. 114)

There is no doubt that this approach takes considerably more effort than sitting back and studying a text passively. The benefit from the extra work involved in the development of a critical approach, which you must adopt for your research.

Following citations in a paper

When you have found (and read) your first couple of papers, you can then use them to seed your search for other useful literature. In this case, we will use this example:

When we looked at the references list in Suppon, J. F. (2010) ‘Life after death: the need to address the legal status of posthumously conceived children',  Family Court Review , vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 228–45, a couple of items, going only by the titles, looked promising:

• Doucettperry, Major M. (2008) ‘To Be Continued: A Look at Posthumous Reproduction As It Relates to Today’s Military’,  The Army Lawyer , no. 420, pp. 1–22.
• Karlin, J. H. (2006) ‘“Daddy, Can you Spare a Dime?”: Intestate Heir Rights of Posthumously Conceived Children’,  Temple Law Review , vol. 79, no. 4, pp. 1317–54.

These are simply the papers that we felt looked most appropriate from the references. There is no formula for determining the best paper; you simply need to read a few and try to develop a feel for which seem the most appropriate for your own research project. You should only be citing papers that contribute to your research in a significant way, or that you have included material from; not everything that you read (and discarded) along the way.

Recording your references

We strongly suggest that you establish a recording system at the outset when you begin your research and keep maintaining records in an organised and complete manner as you progress. You need to choose a consistent method of recording your references; this is a personal choice and can be paper-based or electronic. Do not be tempted to have more than one method or repository as this can lead to confusion and unnecessary extra work. There are software tools available that can help you to both organise your references and incorporate them into your written work. Always keep a backup copy of your records.

The following is a suggestion as to how you might record any document that you think you may use.

Open a new record, and record the basic details:

• author(s), including initials
• date of publication
• title of work or article.

Additionally, for books:

• place of publication
• page numbers of relevant material.

Additionally, for journal papers:

• journal name
• volume and issue number
• page range of the whole article.

‘How many references are needed to make a good literature review?’ There is no straightforward answer to this. In general, an appropriate number of references would be in the range of 15 to 25, with around 20 being typical. However, this is not hard and fast and will depend on the topic and research question chosen.

The crucial thing is to aim for  quality  and  relevance ; there is no credit to be gained from amassing a lengthy list of material, even if it all appears to be relevant. Part of your task is to select a range of references that is appropriate for the length and scope of your research project. It is easier, and more conducive to good research, to handle a smaller number of references specifically chosen to support your argument. Remember also that in general, a student whose research project contained a smaller number of references would generally be expected to demonstrate a deeper and  more critical  understanding of those references.

A colleague once commented on a student’s work in the following vein: ‘I don’t really need you to tell me what the author thinks since I can read her thoughts myself, but I do want to know what  you  think about what the author thinks’. Literature reviews are not a description of what has been written by other people in a particular field, they should be a discussion of what you think of what they have written, and how it helps clarify your own thinking.

This is why critical judgement is so important for your literature review. You must exercise critical judgement when determining which sources to read in-depth, and when evaluating the argument they put forward. Finally, critical judgement is important in communicating how those arguments might frame your research. It should not be a narrative of what you have read and the stories those sources tell. It should be sparing in its description of others’ arguments, and expansive in how those arguments have shaped your own thinking.

You need to exercise critical judgement as to which resources are the most useful and worthy of discussion. Having done this, you also need to ensure that your review is analytical rather than descriptive. A critical review extracts elements from the resource that directly relate to the chosen research interest; it debates them, or compares and contrasts them with how other resources have analysed them. A critical examination of the literature should allow you to develop your understanding of your research question. It should guide you to what knowledge you will need to answer your research question, and begin to develop some subsidiary questions. This will break the content down into more manageable and achievable segments of knowledge that you require.

Some elements of a good critical literature review are:

• relating different writings to each other, indicating their differences and contradictions, and highlighting what they lack
• understanding the values and theories that inform, and colour, reading and writing
• viewing research writing as an environment of contested views and positions
• placing the material in the context of your own research.

An excellent way to critically analyse a document is to use the PROMPT system. The PROMPT system indicates what factors you should consider when evaluating a document. PROMPT stands for:

• Presentation – is the publication easy to read?
• Relevance – how will the publication help address your research aim?
• Objectivity – what is the balance between evidence and opinion? Does the evidence seem balanced? How was the research funded?
• Method – was the research in the publication carried out appropriately?
• Provenance – who is the author and how was the document published?
• Timeliness – is the publication still relevant, or has it been superseded?

By thinking about each of these factors when you read a publication in-depth, you will be able to provide a deeper, more critical analysis of each publication. A final tip for critical reading is to note down your overall impressions and any questions you still have at the end. Keeping a list of such open questions can help you identify the gaps in the literature by noticing which questions were raised, but not answered, by the publication; this, in turn, will guide your research.

In the planning stage, you thought about the gaps in existing knowledge you had identified, and which you then used as a basis to develop your research question. Through the work, you undertook in the earlier stages of your literature review you have a clear understanding of the existing work within the topic. At this point, a comparison of the results of your literature review, with the gaps you had previously identified, will enable you to reflect, and consider, whether you now have enough knowledge to address those gaps. You can then evaluate whether you need to further refine your literature review.

• << Previous: The difference between a topic and a research question
• Next: Referencing >>
• Last Updated: Sep 10, 2023 9:54 PM
• URL: https://libguides.uwc.ac.za/c.php?g=1159497

UWC LIBRARY & INFORMATION SERVICES

Psychology Library Guide: How To Do A Literature Review

• Getting Started
• Looking for Books
• PsycINFO & PsycARTICLES and other psych databases
• How To Follow References
• How To Do A Literature Review
• The Literature Review Demo - a step-by-step guide to the tools and techniques
• Types of Literature Reviews, including "Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide"
• Systematic Reviews Homepage by Tamzyn Suleiman
• Danielle Abrahamse's Search String Design and Search Template
• Research Methodologies
• Aditi's Humanities Referencing Style Guide
• Referencing and the APA Style
• New-version RefWorks Demo
• Research Data Management
• Tracking Your Academic Footprint This link opens in a new window
• Mistress Serendipity's Library
• PsycInfo Training videos from the APA site.

The Literature Review

A literature review is:

1) A list of books and journal articles,

2) on a specific topic,

3) grouped by theme,

4) and evaluated with regard to your research. This evaluation would identify connections, contradictions and gaps in the literature you have found.

The purpose of a literature review, therefore, is:

1) To get a feel for the agreed academic opinion on the subject (the connections).

2) To discover the disagreements on the subject (the contradictions).

3) To find opportunities, (the gaps), for developing and expressing your own opinions.

The classic pattern of academic arguments is

THESIS, ANTITHESIS, SYNTHESIS

An Idea (Thesis) is proposed, an opposing Idea (Antithesis) is proposed, and a revised Idea incorporating (Synthesis) the opposing Idea is arrived at. This revised idea sometimes sparks another opposing idea, another synthesis, and so on…

If you can show this pattern at work in your literature review, and, above all, if you can suggest a new synthesis of two opposing views, or demolish one of the opposing views, then you are almost certainly on the right track.

Steps in compiling a literature review are:

1) Select a specific topic (the more focussed, the better, or you’ll go on for ever).

2) Collect the most relevant (usually "peer reviewed") books and articles.

3) Read/skim them, using the abstract (a short summary attached to the article).

4) Group the articles into the sub-themes of your topic.

5) Identify within each sub-theme those points on which the articles agree, those points on which they disagree, and those points which they don’t cover at all.

1) Choosing your topic

Seek advice from a lecturer or tutor on this, if a topic is not already assigned. It is very common for students to bite off more than they can chew, simply because they have not realised the full breadth and complexity of an apparently simple topic. It is better to cover a tiny topic perfectly, than a huge topic superficially.

Look for a topic on which there is polarised opinion. It often helps to pick one in which a question is being asked, for example: Is a particular taxation policy beneficial or disadvantageous to a developing country?

When authors disagree, this provides an opportunity for you to enter the debate and argue for one side or another in your essay. Taking a hatchet to someone’s opinions (a) gives you something to write about, (b) is fun, (c) is the foundation of much modern scholarly writing.

2) Collect the most relevant (usually "peer reviewed") articles and books

The three tools for finding these books and articles are, in this order:

(a) the relevant section of a good subject encyclopedia, which usually describes the development of the discourse on that subject, gives you an overview of the territory, and ends with a bibliography of the key works on that field. 

(b) the library catalogue and

(c) the library databases of electronic journal articles.

Before you search them, spend a minute thinking about the best terms to use. Make a list of alternative words that describe your subject, and also think about general terms and more specific terms. This is important because the journal databases are good for finding very specific terms in articles, but the library catalogue tends to use more general terms.

To access the library catalogue go to www.lib.uct.ac.za and click on "Catalogue".

If you find a good book reference, scroll down to the bottom of the reference and you will find the subject terms the library cataloguers have assigned to it. Click on that term to call up more books just like the one you have found.

A quick way to check the relevance of any books you find is to glance at the table of contents, the introduction and any descriptive blurbs on the back cover. The index at the back of the book not only helps you dive to very narrow topics in the book, but also gives you an indication of how much attention (i.e. how many pages) the book spends on that specific topic.

If you are satisfied with the book, look at the bibliography in the back – this can help identify other relevant sources. Following a chain of references in a bibliography like this, whether in a book or a journal article, is one of the most basic techniques of scholarship – find something that is relevant and look at the sources it used.

The library’s journal databases are particularly helpful for literature reviews. Journal articles are short and cover very specific topics, so they are more digestible than books and more likely to deal exactly with your topic. They are also quicker to publish than books and so are more likely to be up to date.

To find journal articles by subject go to the library home page at www.lib.uct.ac.za and select "Databases."

Many of these databases allow you to restrict your search to "Peer Reviewed" journals only – these are the most scholarly journals, for which each article has to be vetted by other academics before it is accepted.

Many of our databases are Full Text – so you can usually get the whole article on your desktop for downloading, e-mailing or printing – you don’t have to find it in print on the shelves.

While you can search the Research Portal, or individual journal databases, as simply as you search Google, you can also type in very precise searches by using And, Or, Not operators, Wildcards and Logical Brackets.

An example of such a search would be:

Information Technology AND Brain Drain AND (Employ* OR Jobs OR Labo?r) NOT United States

The AND operator narrows a search – all listed elements must be mentioned in each article: in this example we want articles that cover both Information Technology AND the Brain Drain.

The OR operator expands a search – any of the listed elements must be mentioned in each article: in this example we wanted Information Technology Brain Drain articles that discussed either Employment or Jobs or Labour. The OR operator is useful for dealing with alternative terms which different authors might use when writing on a similar topic.

The Brackets tie the options to the required material. In this example they make sure that any articles we get on labour or employment are concerned with Information Technology and the Brain Drain. If we didn’t have brackets here the search would just bring up every reference to labour in the database, whether relevant to Information Technology or not.

The Wildcards, * and ?, expand a search: The * deals with related words. In this example Employ* means that we get all words starting with "Employ…" – such as Employment, Employee, Employees, Employers…

The ? fills in a missing letter, and is used for covering alternative spellings in British and American English, both Labour and Labor in this example.

NOT weeds out anything you’ve got too much of. Many of our databases are American products, for example, and you can often be flooded with reports on the American situation unless you weed it out.

3) Read/Skim the articles, using their abstracts

Most of the articles will have an abstract. This is a short paragraph at the head of the article that lists the main facts and arguments in each article. By reading these you will quickly get the gist of what each article is about and where it fits into the pattern you are building up in your literature survey.

How many books and articles should you have? It’s wise to check this with your lecturer or tutor. In general, though, your aim is not to cover every single book or article, but every major opinion or theme on the topic. Many of the books or articles will add very little that is new.

Therefore a short list of really scholarly, relevant, comprehensive articles is often more effective than a list of hundreds of superficial or tangential articles.

What you are ideally looking for are the "seminal" articles (seed articles) on which most of the other authors are basing their work.

4) Group the Articles into the themes and sub-themes of your topic

Obviously, it helps to have a structure in mind already, but the articles you find will often help to suggest a structure or cause you to redesign your existing one.

Herewith a hard-learned tip:

There are tides and seasons in academic publishing – a topic is often hot for a few months, then dies, then is revived to be attacked from a different angle, then dies, then is revived again to be discussed from a third angle… remember, Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis?

This has two implications for studying the results on a database search:

Just because there is nothing much in the recent articles does not mean that it was not hot a few months or years ago, so scroll back in time down the list, or jump right to the earliest reference and scroll up through time to look for a hot spot.

The tides of article titles often tell a story that can help you shape your literature review.

For example, in a list of journal articles on Information Technology and Employment you might find that:

The earliest articles are all about how hard it is to find skilled IT workers.

Later you get articles about UK and US firms desperately recruiting school-leavers and training them in IT skills on the job.

A year later you get articles about how countries like India and South Africa are doing the same thing.

And not long after that you get articles about India and South Africa having a huge, skilled IT workforce, working far more cheaply than the US and UK workforce, and lots of UK and US projects being outsourced to them.

Then you get complaints about unemployment in the IT sector in the UK and USA.

Then you get stories about how employers in the UK and USA have become very choosy about whom they employ, insisting on really good academic training, loads of experience and very-specialised skills.

Then you get the latest stories which are all about how new IT entrants, without that experience, start packing their bags to gain experience elsewhere…

See? Story!

Many database lists of academic articles tell this sort of story when they are looked at in date order. Either they reflect swings in world events or they are reflecting swings in academic debate and opinion. Seeing such a story in the literature is a great help in structuring any literature review.

In particular, look out for the major triggers of such changes: When did the first swing to a new track happen, and what event or article provoked it?

When you find an article that has provoked a major swing, or started a whole new debate, then you are looking at the "Seminal" (Seed) article that I mentioned earlier. This sort of article is often the best sort of article to identify in a literature review – many of the other articles will just build on, comment on, or attack its basic arguments.

Using a Citation Database

If you find a seed article, or any other really good article, we have a magic database, called the ISI Citation Database, which can find all the other articles which have cited that article, either because they support it or because they disagree with it.

The ISI Citation Database is on our database list under ISI WEB OF SCIENCE. There are three versions of it, covering the Sciences, Social Sciences, and Arts and Humanities. You can search all three at once.

Go to "Cited Ref Search" and type in the author’s last name, the journal in which his article appeared and the year it appeared in the appropriate boxes. This will bring up the authors and articles that have followed or disagreed with that author.

Unfortunately this database is not full text, but you can often get the full text of the articles off one or other of our alternative databases.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the PsycInfo database, the main database for Psychology, has a Citation Searching component, which does this job for books and articles on the PsycInfo database.

Another way of doing a citation search is to download Harzing's Publish or Perish software from http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm . This does a lovely job of tracing citations on Google Scholar.

6) Identify within each sub-theme those points on which the articles agree, those points on which they disagree, and those points which they don’t cover at all.

The abstracts can help with this, of course. The main trick is coming up with, or spotting, the sub themes and that is simply a matter of brain work. But if it is done well, and you have taken the trouble to find good sources, then you will find, quite magically, that you have constructed the skeleton and a good bit of the flesh and blood of your essay or research project.

In fact, a good literature review can result in an essay that virtually writes itself.

U.Washington's guide to the Psychology Literature Review

• U. Washington - Writing a Psychology Literature Review
• << Previous: How To Follow References
• Next: The Literature Review Demo - a step-by-step guide to the tools and techniques >>
• Last Updated: Apr 2, 2024 12:22 PM
• URL: https://libguides.lib.uct.ac.za/psychology