5.2: Defining Literature Reviews, Reprise

Why do a literature review?

Doing a literature review allows you to find what has been done on your topic and where future research is needed. This ensures your study will add to the field. It also helps you develop your theoretical orientation and methodology. Dr. Elizabeth Yardley goes into more depth in the 9-minute video below.

Degree Doctor. (2024 Jun 12). What is a literature review in a dissertation? [Video] YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMZOVFmXJxs

So what is a literature review?

Literature reviews synthesize:

• What researchers have studied & published on your topic
• The context or background of research on your topic

In contrast to papers you might have done previously, literature reviews are about synthesis, not just reporting:

• NOT explaining a concept by simply providing information, but rather focuses on studies
• NOT a pro/con or position paper, so you need to cite studies even if you disagree
• NOT summarizing each study in separate paragraphs like a book report

You’ve probably heard faculty say the literature review will show a gap. This is true, but perhaps overstated. There is likely very little or nothing written on your specific topic. If you find dozens of articles on your topic, then it is either not narrow enough or has already been covered. But once you fully narrow your topic, you’ll find that published works discuss adjacent topics, but never the exact topic you’re interested in researching.¹

However, the concept of gap makes it seem as though you need to reinvent the wheel or something equally monumental. Instead, a better metaphor is that you’re continuing the path that others have started, or that you are adding one more rung to a ladder. In other words, you’re adding to the field by building on what others have done before you.

Metaphors of literature reviews

Sometimes the easiest way to understand a complex concept is to compare it to a concrete item. Below are a few metaphors. Take what's useful to you and ignore what just muddies the water. After the metaphors, we'll get into practice and review some published literature reviews together.

A House:

Think of your particular discipline as a town. In this town are many houses, each with different structures. Your general area of interest might be a particular house which is already built and is functional. However, you notice that the house could use an extra window for the living room. Your literature review would describe what has already been built. Perhaps there’s no window in the living room – you would mention that. Or perhaps there is a window, but it leaks and lets in a draft. So your study would benefit the field by updating the window.

A conversation:

Think of all the articles and books around your topic as a conversation between the various authors, happening slowly over time and space. The literature review condenses the time and space by following the conversational thread. Then, just as in a normal conversation, you would jump in when you notice something related to that conversation has been left unsaid. What can you add to that conversation?

A forest:

Perhaps you’ve done an annotated bibliography before. It’s a list of relevant sources with the citation, and then a short blurb about how these sources relate to a particular topic. This is NOT a literature review.

Instead, think of the annotated bibliography as like a catalog of trees. Each article is another tree. So you’d have a list of all the trees each representing a citation of an article

• Here’s a maple. It’s 10 feet tall with a complex root structure. It has ample branches…
• Here’s another maple. It’s 12 feet tall with the same root structure. Its branches are shorter.
• Here’s a third maple….
• Another maple…
• Here’s a birch. The birch is 15 feet tall with a white trunk….

Each example could be a paragraph or two, but the point is that the catalog of trees (annotated bibliography) is just a list of separate items.

The literature review instead is like recounting the state of the forest:

This forest is predominantly maples. Most tend to range in height from 10 to 20 feet, although there are a few outliers. They have a similar complex root structure. Their branch structures share similar characteristics, but do have a few variations.

Included in this forest are a few birch trees. One birch in particular is notable for ….whereas another birch…

However, there is a noted absence of evergreens, which are needed in this forest because….Therefore, this study proposes to introduce evergreens to this forest.

In other words, you will synthesize the results from multiple studies, including noting outlier studies. You are setting the landscape, the context, of what already exists, and what does not. This demonstrates the need for your study.

Reading Examples

You read literature reviews every time you read articles, whether for class or for this research. However, they’re not always labeled with a heading “literature review”. They’re always towards the front of the article, prior to the Methods section. They are sometimes in the same heading with the introduction, but the literature review is distinct from the intro.

Introduction vs Literature Review

While both might cite sources:

• The introduction provides background to the topic in the form of an overview and significance of the problem, perhaps citing statistics.
• The literature review goes into more depth about what studies show.

Literature review sections of scholarly articles usually start with some variation of the following:

• Prior studies show…
• Past research demonstrates…
• Current literature discusses…

In Practice

Now that you have a theoretical and metaphorical sense of what literature reviews are, let's explore them in reality.

Activity 1: Reading literature reviews \(\PageIndex{1}\)

My example topic was graduate students, emotions, and research. Eventually, these interests led me to co-author a study on how graduate students experience the research process, using a visual methodology. Before we could start the study, we reviewed the literature to see what others had done before us.

Read just the first two paragraphs of the study (it’s freely available through the link below) and answer the following questions:

Droog, A. A., Weaver, K. D., & Brady, F. (2024). Along for the journey: Graduate student perceptions of research. College & Research Libraries, 85(6), 826. https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/25719/34379

1. The first paragraph is the Introduction. What phrases in the paragraph show you that it is an intro, rather than a literature review?
2. The second paragraph starts the literature review. What phrases are clues that the literature review started?
3. Based just on the second paragraph, what are characteristics of literature on this topic?

Once you've answered the questions for yourself, click "Answers" below for my responses.

Answers

1. It explains the background and importance of this topic. We see that through phrases like “increasingly a demographic of interest” and “burgeoning interest in the field”. It mentions the literature has limits, but doesn’t go into detail. And it explains what gap the study purports to fill.
2. You can tell the start of the literature review through the following phrases: "Studies...have focused..."; "Existing studies...have emphasized"; "Several theories...have primarily focused on..."; and "Existing studies..."
3. A few characteristics:
   1. Studies focused on finding sources, not the full research process
   2. Theoretical works have focused on high schoolers & undergrads
   3. Humanities & education students have been studied more than other areas

Activity 2: Reading literature reviews on your topic \(\PageIndex{1}\)

1. Find an article.
2. Read from the beginning until the method section.
3. Answer: According to the author(s), how can you characterize prior research? Remember: the article covers the lit review when they start sentences with “Prior research” or “Current research” or “research on this topic”.

Next Steps:

Now that you have a clearer understanding of what literature reviews are, let's talk about how to read and evaluate the sources you found, within the context of each other.

¹Note: There is a replication crisis in the social sciences. Researchers have been pushed to publish novel studies that have never been done before. This means that most studies have only been done once by one investigator or group of investigators. In the past decade, there have been stronger outcries for researchers to attempt to replicate previous studies to ensure that the same conclusion is drawn across multiple studies. Despite this push, academia still rewards those who publish original research higher than those who replicate studies. Hiring, rank & promotion, and tenure committees rank original studies higher, which entices faculty not to do replication studies. Generally your dissertation must be an original study, as the dissertation or thesis is a pedagogical tool.