DOING A LITERATURE REVIEW

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DOING A LITERATURE REVIEW

The first stage of most research projects is to undertake a review of the literature to determine what research has already been conducted in this area. This review helps the researcher to hone their own research questions and to determine how they plan to conduct their research. The purpose of the literature review section of the final report of the research project is to summarise this previous literature and to provide a clear rationale for the current research in the light of what has been done before. This section is often called the ‘introduction’ in a research paper as it introduces the reader to the area, funnelling down from the broad topic under consideration and why it is important, through a critical consideration of prior research which identifies any gaps in the literature, to the specific research questions or hypotheses of the current study. This chapter covers both the process of searching for relevant literature and the process of writing the literature review chapter, or introduction. It should be read in conjunction with the previous two chapters because the process of literature review runs parallel with the choice of research question, and obviously skills in reading and understanding research are necessary for conducting and writing up a literature review. Introduction The first stage of most research projects is to undertake a review of the literature to determine what research has already been conducted in the area. This helps the researcher to hone their own research questions and to determine how they plan to conduct their research. The purpose of the literature review section of the final report of the research project is to summarise this previous literature and to provide a clear rationale for the current research in the light of what has been done before. This section is often called the ‘introduction’ in a research paper as it introduces the reader to the area, funnelling down from the broad topic under consideration and why it is important, through a critical consideration of prior research which identifies any gaps in the literature, to the specific research questions or hypotheses of the current study. This chapter covers both the process of searching for relevant literature and the process of writing the literature review. It should be read in conjunction with the previous two chapters because the process of literature review runs parallel with the choice of research question, and obviously skills in reading and understanding research are necessary. The purpose of the literature review is to:  Outline the area you are researching.  Explain why it matters (e.g. Does it have implications for policy or treatment? Is this a particularly under-researched group?)  Summarise the research that has already been done in this area, particularly any key studies.  Identify any gaps in this literature: to justify why your study is important and what it adds to the literature.  Present your research questions (if qualitative research) or hypotheses (if quantitative research). These should be set out at the end of the literature review. This list will be useful whilst you are writing the literature review, as well as afterwards, to ensure that it does all these things. It is likely that you will write one version of the literature review prior to conducting your research, but return to it afterwards to redraft it in order to ensure that it does tell a clear argument leading up to your research (rather than simply summarising past research) and that it includes all of the key studies and theories. Note that the literature review for a research proposal does not need to be as extensive as that for a final research write-up (see chapter 9). As a general rule of thumb all of the research and theories mentioned in the rest of the paper should have been introduced in the literature review or introduction. However, it may be necessary to bring new material into the discussion and conclusions if the analysis suggests taking a different direction or engaging with a different area of research that you hadn’t anticipated. Conducting a literature search Of course before you write your literature review you have to actually search through what has been done before. This stage is an integral part of the research process: it is through reviewing previous research that we can hone our own research questions (see chapter 3), avoid unethical practices such as over-researching certain groups, and take account of what past researchers have learnt about the best ways of approaching the topic. Pause for reflection 1: Think about a topic you are interested in researching (perhaps one that you considered in previous chapters or are thinking about for a dissertation, thesis or paper). How would you currently imagine going about finding out what research has been conducted before on this topic? As a very rough rule of thumb, to keep the process manageable, what you are looking for by the end of the literature search are around five to fifteen key papers, chapters or books which are the main ones you will base your literature review around, and around twenty to forty additional materials (papers, books, reports, etc.) which you are likely to reference but are less central to your argument. These may be background reading or less specifically relevant papers which you will skim read and refer to rather than summarising in depth. Of course, such numbers depend somewhat on the level of study that you are at, and the length of the final report that you are working towards. You might need less for a brief research study on a foundation degree or diploma, and a good deal more (perhaps five times as much) for a full doctoral thesis of 80,000 words or so. However, the general process of searching for literature is similar whatever stage you are at. This rule of thumb does not, of course, mean that you should conduct a literature search in a linear way, simply stopping once you have around forty papers, books, reports and chapters. Rather the literature search is a process of finding everything that you can of relevance and then whittling this down to the most essential work that you need to mention in your literature review. In fact the hardest task in the process is often deciding what to leave out. There is rather a dark art to the process of searching for literature as you will find when you start to conduct literature searches yourself by typing words into search engines and databases. It isn’t a simple matter that you type in the topics that you are interested in (for example ‘bereavement and counselling’ or ‘eye movement desensitization and reprocessing for victims of the London bombings’) and inevitably get back around ten key papers or books, and an additional thirty or so quite relevant ones. Rather you generally either get way too much (thousands and thousands of hits for your search terms) or way too little (one or two papers which might not be relevant at all to what you are doing). This is where breadth and focus come in. If you realise that there is already loads written on your topic then you need to focus in (‘bereavement of a child and person-centred therapy’ for example). If there is hardly anything you need to broaden out (for example, to ‘trauma counselling and therapy for victims of terrorist attacks’). As you search you will want to see how many hits you get, in order to narrow or broaden your search terms. It is also vital, at this point, to make sure you include all of the materials that anybody else in the area (such as your markers, examiners or reviewers) would regard as crucial. For example, some topics are covered in more than one discipline so you may have to look beyond papers and books on counselling and therapy. For example, bereavement is also addressed in health and social care, psychology and sociology. A useful suggestion that a piece of work is of central importance is when you spot it being referenced by several other writers in the area. The literature review needs to cover each element of your research and any overlaps between them. For example, the diagram below illustrates the elements and their overlap for personcentred therapy with child bereavement.

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