Plan for today

● Literature review: some basics

● Literature review: step by step
● Some exercises
● World café (?)
 Literature review
• It is an organised and critical discussion of the literature
from the field, not just a summary of some papers
• It can be stand-alone or part of a larger body of work
• The idea is to link the arguments (ideas) of the authors
together
• It gives us an overview of the field and makes it easy to
identify the gaps
• Theory is important. A theory is what explains your
results (how variables influence each other or why this
particular described phenomenon is happening)
• Method is also important
• Generate new insights about how a particular topic is
currently and has been previously understood
 Literature review: how not to and how to
A literature review is not an
annotated bibliography
Annotated bibliographies are
normally presenting a single
paragraph per source
Writing separate sentences in
regard to various sources and
following the same sentence
structure
Summative annotated bibliography
is normally the first step
A literature review is written in a
more continuous style, with proper
transitions between ideas and
paragraphs
References supporting the same
point should be grouped together
instead of being discussed
individually
 Literature review: how not to and how to

Long and unexplained quotes

The ideas should be explained,
quotes (when possible) synthesised
in your own words
If the quote is longer than 3 lines,
consider skipping the parts with
<...> or at least place it with a
bigger margin
 Literature review: how not to and how to

Discussing only classical pieces Skipping on the major names in the

literature
Start with the most relevant
articles, search specifically for
them
Too general theoretical discussion,
without any applied studies
You can find them based on
citation metrics, and in other lit
reviews
Lit review should be pretty narrow
in scope, go from more general to
more specific
 Literature review: what to include?
• Empirical Research Articles
• Theoretical Articles
• Literature Review Articles (Meta-analysis)
• Reports
• (Text) Books
• Book chapters
 Literature review: step by step.
Preparation phase
• Define your general topic
• Begin the search with general keywords
• Skim through the abstracts
• Chose the ones that you consider relevant
• Identify narrower topic areas
• Search for more recent articles
• When reading, start with the most current research, and work backwards
• Identify the landmark or classic studies and theories
• Assemble the semi-final collection of sources you plan to include
• Redefine your topic one more time
 Literature review: step by step.
First read
• Read the abstracts carefully, if needed, look through the intro and conclusions
• Group the articles by category
• At this point, you may notice you need more literature
• Start skimming through the articles, paying attention to the:
○ Research question;
○ Methodology (is it quanti or quali?);
○ Theory;
○ Results (or anything else you need for the particular review)
• Make notes, preferably structured
• Consider building a table
 Literature review: step by step.
Second read
• Now look at specifics, read carefully
• Mark and copy the necessary quotes on the way
• Identify the major trends and the arguments
• Identify gaps in the literature
• What are the strengths?
• What are the weaknesses?
• Look for more literature if needed
 Literature review: step by step.
Writing the review
• Consider the purpose of what you are going to write (Specify your point early)
• Describe the problem
• Create an outline. Consider the “red thread” of your argument
• Consider the topical structure
• For each topic heading, note the similarities and differences among the studies
• Describe the gaps, describe the weaknesses
• Discuss how individual studies relate to and advance the theory
• Summarize periodically and again near the end of the review
• Write the conclusion, describe implications
 Literature review
• Writing in Sociology (Edwards 2015) and Writing in Sociology: A Brief Guide
(Smith-Lovin and Moskovitz 2017), refer to scholarly literatures as
“conversations” occurring within a “party” or “room full of people”
• Scholarly writing as “Recounting the Conversation” (Graff and Birkenstein
2017; Grauerholz 1999; Massengill 2011)
• Sociology is described as a “party” and different bodies of scholarship as
“conversational clusters”
 Literature review: exercise 1
• Imagine, you come to my party, and during the night you will be talking with
many different people
• One of your colleagues wasn’t able to go and will write you in chat the next
day to find out what people talked about
• Your task is to effectively “recount the conversation” and write a report
• You need to focus their review on your colleague's particular interest:
○ either 1) how people celebrate holidays
○ or 2) people’s feelings
• How are you organising the information?
• What gaps have you seen in the conversation?
• Do not forget to cite your sources
 Literature review: exercise 1
• Holidays and the attitudes about them can be a polarizing
subject. After listening to the conversations from the party,
I’ve determined that about half of those…
• The party had everyone feeling three ways about holidays:
positive, mixed, and negative. There are many people excited
about the holidays...
• People celebrate holidays in many different ways, but there
were three themes that appeared. An important way to
celebrate many holidays is…