Crafting a Literature Review for Your Thesis: Structure and Tips

Embarking on your thesis journey often involves traversing the intricate landscape of academic
writing. One significant milestone along this path is the literature review—a critical component that
contextualizes your research within existing scholarly discourse. However, the process of crafting a
literature review can be daunting, requiring meticulous attention to detail and a comprehensive
understanding of the subject matter. Here, we outline the structure and offer valuable insights to
navigate this challenging endeavor.

Understanding the Purpose

Before delving into the structural intricacies, it's crucial to grasp the purpose of a literature review.
Essentially, it serves as a synthesis of existing research and scholarship relevant to your topic. By
critically analyzing and synthesizing the available literature, you demonstrate your familiarity with
the subject, identify gaps in the current knowledge base, and establish the theoretical framework for
your research.

Structural Framework
While the exact structure may vary depending on your field of study and the specific requirements of
your thesis, a well-organized literature review typically follows a logical progression. Here's a
recommended framework:

1. Introduction:

Provide an overview of your research topic.

Explain the significance of the literature review within the context of your thesis.
Outline the objectives and scope of your review.
2. Theoretical Framework:

Introduce the theoretical perspectives or conceptual frameworks relevant to your

research.
Discuss key concepts and definitions that underpin your study.
Identify any theoretical debates or controversies within the literature.
3. Review of Literature:

Organize the literature thematically, chronologically, or methodologically, depending

on your research objectives.
Critically analyze and synthesize the findings of previous studies.
Highlight the key themes, trends, and inconsistencies in the literature.
4. Identifying Gaps:

Discuss the limitations or gaps in the existing literature.

Identify areas where further research is warranted.
Justify the relevance of your research within the context of these gaps.
5. Conclusion:

Summarize the main findings of your literature review.

Reiterate the significance of your research within the broader scholarly context.
Provide recommendations for future research directions.

Challenges and Solutions

Writing a literature review can be an arduous task, often accompanied by challenges such as
information overload, writer's block, and maintaining coherence amidst diverse sources. However,
with careful planning and strategic approach, these challenges can be overcome. Here are some tips:

Start early and establish a clear timeline for completing each stage of the literature review.
Maintain detailed notes and citations to keep track of relevant sources.
Engage in critical analysis rather than merely summarizing individual studies.
Seek feedback from peers, mentors, or academic advisors to refine your arguments and
structure.
Consider seeking professional assistance from reputable academic writing services to ensure
the quality and coherence of your literature review.

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Managing aggression in a psychiatric hospital using a behaviour plan: a case study. However, if you
also want to perform your search in a database such as CINAHL, you need to use the corresponding
CINAHL Headings term instead: Ambulatory Surgery. Therefore, this means that the books or
journals that were published earlier can only be used to make references. It is however advisable to
reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and
muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than
the form. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the
problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few
researchers have taken y into consideration”). Let’s move on and discuss the strategies you can use
for organizing your review. I mean how the structure of these two reviews are different. In other
words, a literature review is a synthesis (more on synthesis below) of many articles and other
published materials on a certain research topic. Process indicators tended to be more granular in their
measurements, for instance, specific violent acts and interventions had their own unique indicators,
which were further divided by risk levels. Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way
to an understanding of the subject. Importance of Literature Review So you might still be
wondering about the importance of the literature review. Analyse your search results Are all your
key articles present in the search results, or are there some key articles that your search query is
unable to retrieve. Email Address: patter on facebook Recent Posts should you do a “side project”. It
has to be easy for your readers to follow what you did when you searched and selected the articles
that you have included in your review. Give your interpretation of how and why certain
developments occurred. In this way you can create an initial list of subject-specific resources and
review whether the direction you're taking with your literature review is valid. Step 5: Begin The
Writing Process Upon gathering and organizing sources, begin the writing phase: Introduction: Begin
by stating your research question and explaining why your review is important. Are the arguments
and conclusions the author presents adequately convincing. Questions for Further Research: What
questions about the field has the review sparked. Below is the complete outline that you can take as a
guide to structure your good literature review. This way, by the time you have read the literature you
selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review. You can look up and browse MeSH terms
in the US National Library of Medicine's MeSH database. PICO and PEO are two examples of
frameworks that can help you identify and define your research question. Give your interpretation of
how and why certain developments occurred. The scope of your review will depend on your topic
and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you
might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning
over time). Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies,
inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the
typescript too many times. See planning your search form below and the Effective searching video.
The middle or main body should: organise the literature according to common themes; provide
insight into the relation between your chosen topic and the wider subject area e.g. between obesity in
children and obesity in general; move from a general, wider view of the literature being reviewed to
the specific focus of your research. Thus, you can cite numerous references in the same paragraph in
a typical Lit Review, and you can mention the same reference in more than one paragraph if the
source discusses more than one of the Lit Review’s subtopics. To inform your methodological
choices and help you source tried and tested questionnaires (for interviews ) and measurement
instruments (for surveys ).
Addresses Research Gaps: Identifies areas where more knowledge is needed, guiding your
contributions. It’s not a summary of everything you can find which seems relevant but rather a
critical review which identfies the key sources and analyses and interprets the findings. Completion
rates of risk-profile specific WPV training, including refresher training, were common indicators,
along with staff evaluation of training quality and confidence. Students can find guides on how to
improve their writing and academic performance in general, get useful tips on making their study
process more efficient, or learn how to deal with particular issues. The introduction should clearly
establish the focus and purpose of the literature review. Rather than simply summarizing sources (as
an annotated bibliography does), synthesis also does the following. For example: Look at what
results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research Discuss how the topic has been
approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship Divide the literature into sociological,
historical, and cultural sources Theoretical A literature review is often the foundation for a
theoretical framework. Conclusions and Future Work 8. 9. Thesis Structure Chapter 1. This way, by
the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.
The main objective of this kind of literature review is to establish a contrarian viewpoint. Use Quotes
Sparingly Some short quotes are okay if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated
cannot be easily paraphrased. You can use and adapt the prompt questions in our worksheet below at
different points in the process of researching and writing your review. Non-person structural
indicators primarily involved evaluating the efficiency of patient flow through departments with a
high reported number of WPV incidents, namely the ED and psychiatric units. Whenever you are
working on a significant paper, a literature review is unavoidable. Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material. This is, after all, one of the main purposes
of the literature review process (i.e. to familiarise yourself with the current state of research in your
field). A critical review or narrative review is what’s usually described, see my other posts. Include
literature that supports your research question as well as that which offers a different perspective.
Let’s understand how to structure a literature review of dissertation. There are various approaches to
organising the body of a literature review. Have a look at this revelatory video by Dr Jodie Salter and
the University of Guelph. The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature
review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic.
You should keep the following points in mind while writing this section of the review of the
literature and write the points on which you agree and vice versa. Perhaps you need to remove one of
your search blocks, add one or several synonyms within a search block, or search for parts of words
by truncating one or several of your free-text search terms, in order to broaden your search. Once you
are familiar with the dissertation literature review structure, it’s time to delve into some tips for a
literature review dissertation. The data charting tool allowed for the collection of standardized study
data and quality indicators that were identified by reviewers. Delete Replies Reply Reply Unknown
3 December 2017 at 05:18 Wow,great post. Information Technology Example Information
Technology Assistive Tech 53. Referencing and reference management Information Services provide
access to Cite them right online which is a guide to the main referencing systems and tells you how
to reference just about any source (EASE log-in may be required). Since I have been watching and
reading instructions, I have started my research proposal to write.
An overview of the contradictions, gaps, strengths, and weaknesses in different sources. Organise
the literature based on themes, theories, or chronology. Referencing and reference management
Information Services provide access to Cite them right online which is a guide to the main
referencing systems and tells you how to reference just about any source (EASE log-in may be
required). Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the
researcher. In essence, a literature review is more than just a summary of previously done research
since, in addition to establishing the strengths and weaknesses of a subject, it also conveys to the
reader the established ideas and knowledge on a particular topic. There are several different ways of
organizing a literature review. Unleashing the Power of AI Tools for Enhancing Research,
International FDP on. Does it agree with what we already know, add new info, or challenge what we
thought. This critical evaluation helps you to identify which are the key sources that you will discuss
in more detail and which are the subsiduary sources that may support only one point. For each
publication, ask yourself: What question or problem is the author addressing. Introduction: Briefly
define the research statement based on the previous studies on selected topic. In other words, the
hypothesis, rationale, methods of data collection are first prepared before the review is conducted so
as to minimize any incident of bias. An annotated bibliography is a list of source references that has
a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. Methodological literature review
aids in creating a better understanding of various research approaches, methods of data collection,
and techniques for performing analysis. There are so many issues in contemporary science that you
could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to
review. In total, the rapid review process identified 84 structural quality indicators, 121 process
quality indicators, 24 outcome quality indicators, 57 survey-type questions and 17 survey
instruments. Receive a plagiarism-free paper tailored to your instructions. Across all studies, quality
indicators served to identify areas for improvement, track the quality of interventions, or
contextualize resource allocation for specific challenges. Afterwards, the authors organized quality
indicators into one of three categories: structure quality indicators, process quality indicators, or
outcome quality indicators. Narrow the topic. the narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit
the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources.,
consider whether your sources are current and applicable. Take notes and cite your sources As you
read, you should also begin the writing process. Once you have defined your research question, focus
on learning what other scholars have written on the topic. Let’s understand how to structure a
literature review of dissertation. Watch the video below to see the difference between a literature
review and an essay. The quality indicators presented in this review have face validity with the
potential to inform improvements to data collection relevant to WPV across various clinical care
settings. The main body needs to include the discussion of the sources you selected following the
organizational strategy you chose. More commonly, the pyramid is inverted, and the review begins
with the wider context, honing in ever closer to your topic. Information Technology Example
Information Technology 40. Very comprehensive and eye opener for me as beginner in postgraduate
study. Usually a literature review forms a section or part of a dissertation, research project or long
essay.
It is often assigned as part of the research process for a paper. If your review follows the
chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published
or the time period they cover. Consider the following issues before writing the literature review:
Clarify If your assignment is not very specific about what form your literature review should take,
seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1. Step 2: Analyze and Select
Sources In the second phase of your research, it is essential to carefully evaluate and select sources
that directly contribute to your research question. What was published first, would be written or
mentioned first in the literature review leading to the recently published. Just in 1 hour! We will
write you a plagiarism-free paper in hardly more than 1 hour Let’s Start If it helps your
understanding of this task, you can think of the process as building an upside-down triangle.
Quantifying these complex and multi-dimensional metrics is a challenge that policymakers and
investigators face when developing quality assurance and improvement strategies. Criticality
Structure your Work Uncertain about how to structure your literature review. Results of individual
sources of evidence Table S1 includes the quality indicators extracted from the studies organized
into one of three categories; Structural Quality indicators, Process Quality Indicators, and Outcome
Quality Indicators (Table S1 ). Though not included in all types of research papers, it serves as a
critical component in academic research. When you begin to write your literature review section,
you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was designed and constructed because it
establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research
problem. Existing metrics to measure WPV in healthcare settings often fail to provide decision-
makers with an adequate reflection of WPV due to the complexity of the issue. Similarly the two
main objectives of a literature review are firstly the content covering existing research, theories and
evidence, and secondly your own critical evaluation and discussion of this content. All you have to
do is skim through literature review chapters of existing dissertations related to your topic and you’ll
find a gold mine of potential literature. Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and
conclusions of pertinent literature. Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure you
read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research. The most interesting literature
reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is
discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Create your search blocks based on the key
concepts of your research question. Let’s Recap In this post, we’ve covered how to research and
write up a high-quality literature review chapter. The model serves as a framework to organize
quality indicators based on the systems they impact. Research Guides: Literature Reviews: Concept
Mapping A concept map or mind map is a visual representation of knowledge that illustrates
relationships between concepts or ideas. Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure
you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research. Here is an example of
literature review excerpt to illustrate. Example: A search query that contains AND, OR, and
parentheses ( inflammatory bowel diseases OR ulcerative colitis OR crohn disease) AND (adolescent
OR child OR young adult OR teenager) AND (self-management OR self care OR self efficacy ) By
choosing the advanced search form you will also be able to exert more control over your search
process. Nonetheless, healthcare organizations continue to develop interventions that attempt to
mitigate the effects of WPV on staff and patient safety, with varying efficacy that can be attributed
to their attentiveness to these gaps. These are excellent for finding out about new research or study
that hasn’t been published yet. Unfortunately, when it comes to completing academic papers such as
essays, dissertations, and research papers, most students tend to think that writing the literature
review is the easiest part. Issuu turns PDFs and other files into interactive flipbooks and engaging
content for every channel. Does the research use the usual methods, or is it trying something new.
Available from: Liu R, Li Y, An Y, Zhang L, An F-R, Luo J et al.
In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in
competitive self-denial. It has to be easy for your readers to follow what you did when you searched
and selected the articles that you have included in your review. Now’s the time to try to improve the
linkage from each section to the next, tighten up the writing to be more concise, trim down word
count and sand it down into a more digestible read. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes
you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review.
Introduce the reader to the importance of the topic being studied. Recapitulate important features of
a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to their
own work. Ensure that your writing is well-structured and flows logically, with each paragraph
focusing on a specific theme or aspect of the literature. See the guide on Academic Voice and
Language for more guidance on logic, signposting, reporting words etc. However, bias could also
occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so
that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it. Your
contribution is to organize the concepts from the sources into a coherent argument or narrative that
incorporates your views. Look for links between the various articles and try to develop a bigger
picture view of the state of the research. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a
paper. An easier way is just to drop us a message on our Live ChatBox on the bottom right of the
page. However, it can also be set and assessed as a standalone piece of work. Essay Guide Alex
Essay Writing Tool Dissertation Guide Ask The Elephant The structure of a literature review A
literature review should be structured like any other essay: it should have an introduction, a middle
or main body, and a conclusion. Find all the relevant theories and foundational research that
characterize your work. What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites).
Tip: Manage Your Citations These citation management tools also create citations, footnotes, and
bibliographies with just a few clicks: Zotero Tutorial Endnote Tutorial Your literature review should
be focused on the topic defined in your research question. There are so many issues in contemporary
science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just
pondering what to review. Gordon Designing Teaching: ADDIE Designing Teaching: ADDIE
Damian T. Provide strong sentences at beginnings of paragraphs: every paragraph shall deal with a
topic or make a point. The literature review consists largely of three parts: the introduction, the body
and the conclusion. Time constraints of this review meant that each study was reviewed
expeditiously, and quality appraisal of included studies were limited, increasing the risk of bias and
reduced confidence in findings. Once that’s decided, you need to draw up an outline of your entire
chapter in bullet point format. BMC Health Serv Res. 2007;7. Wirth T, Peters C, Nienhaus A,
Schablon A. Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the
direction of the field. The 43 studies identified for data extraction produced 229 raw quality
indicators. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the
review. Think about why this is important for your research. Evaluation of resources -- determining
which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic.
Knowledge Management Example Knowledge Management Web 2.0 Wiig Probst Davenport
Nonaka Eppler Ruggles Prusak Bhatt Gurteen O’Reilly McAfee Miller Eggers Knorr Grossman 31.
Your intention in the wheel-like review is to show that the originality of your research stems from the
ways in which you’ve brought together areas that are usually kept apart. However, regardless of
which method you choose, there are a few other significant aspects to keep in mind such as using
powerful and logical transitions between ideas. However, if it’s a dissertation, the literature review
might need to take up as much as twenty-five percent of your whole piece. Reblogged this on Cecile
Badenhorst and commented: Here’s a blog on writing literature reviews. Let’s move on and discuss
the strategies you can use for organizing your review. If you want to get excellent results, you may
consider narrowing down your topic or using certain specified phrases. If the literature review is part
of a dissertation, underline the gaps identified in the literature. One of the very significant benefits
of structuring the literary review chronologically is that we can discuss development in a particular
field. Like, finding out the gaps in already available research and current knowledge. Identifying
quality indicators to measure workplace violence in Systematic literature review findings regarding
WPV against healthcare professionals overwhelmingly rely on subjective measures, such as
questionnaires and narrative evidence. This means that the introduction section should provide your
readers with a prologue of the dissertation. The best way to assess this is to ask them to explain the
chapter back to you. What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research
problem. Adverse events were categorized by the type of harm, physical or psychological, and the
stakeholder group impacted, such as patients, staff, or other individuals present. It is crucial to be
cognizant of psychosocial factors and to engage a modern healthcare lens when utilizing the quality
indicators listed in this review. The organization adopted the rules of The Society for American
Archaeology (SAA) citation style. Also the thesis structure is intended to aid students in the
preparation of manuscripts from their scholarly work. There's just so much out there, and it's easy to
feel lost. Rather than simply summarizing sources (as an annotated bibliography does), synthesis also
does the following. Delete Replies Reply Reply Unknown 3 December 2017 at 05:18 Wow,great
post. When selecting articles, read through the titles and abstracts of each article to decide its
relevancy. However, if you are at a stuck point with structure it can help to simply brainstorm how
you would organise your material in some or all of these ways. Memoir assignment collegeMemoir
assignment college. Fullscreen Sharing Deliver a distraction-free reading experience with a simple
link. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political
party. An easier way is just to drop us a message on our Live ChatBox on the bottom right of the
page. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. When
you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources. Get
an originally-written paper according to your instructions.