Goals

After reading this article, you will be able to do the following:

• Explain a literature review’s purpose and how it differs from other research types.
• Describe what is typically included in a literature review.
• Examine how a literature review helps build topic knowledge.

Introduction

A literature review is a detailed overview of the published materials surrounding your topic (Denney & Tewksbury, 2013). One way to think about a literature review is that you are summarizing the discourse or conversation that is taking place in the scholarly community surrounding your topic. You are not just listing important sources, but you are outlining the major themes, trends, gaps, and patterns that you see in your study topic. A good literature review outlines for the reader both what we know about a topic and what we have yet to discover (Denney & Tewksbury, 2013).

What is the Purpose of a Literature Review?

A literature review helps you to take a deep dive into your topic by getting you to read and critically think about the work that has already been done. It is a chance for you to showcase the hard work you did completing your background research and to highlight what you have learned about your topic. Taking a step back and considering the materials as a whole also helps you to identify any knowledge gaps that might exist and to provide ideas for needed future research (Denney & Tewksbury, 2013). For example, you might find that studies into your topic have, so far, only looked at the experiences of people in one community, geographic region, or setting. You could then discuss that with more expanded research, we might increase our knowledge and gain societal benefits.

Because a literature review reveals what has already been explored about a topic, it is often part of a larger project, providing important background research and helping to frame the study. Importantly, the literature review is different than an annotated bibliography, which lists and provides important in-depth source summaries. With a literature review, you are not summarizing the sources individually but exploring how the sources fit together to shape the conversation surrounding your topic. This means that you will be synthesizing ideas together and talking about the sources more generally. For example, you might discuss how your topic research has changed over time, highlight major research breakthroughs, and outline important debates. You are explaining the big patterns you noticed when reviewing your existing topic materials.

Most often the literature explored in a literature review are primary sources, such as peer-reviewed research articles published in scholarly journals. These are credible sources written by researchers who provide important details about how a study was completed and reviewed by other experts before publication. You might think of scholarly journals as important locations where the scholarly conversation about your topic is happening. You can explore more about these academic sources and how to find them by reviewing the SLCC Library Guide on Scholarly Articles or by using the search engine Google Scholar.

Secondary sources such as popular news articles and encyclopedia entries may provide original work summaries, but they may also be missing important details or even misrepresent a study’s original findings (Galvin & Galvin, 2017). In other words, the primary sources are like speaking directly to the individuals who conducted a study, whereas the secondary sources are already filtered through someone else’s viewpoint. This is the reason why your instructor might limit your literature review to peer-reviewed scholarly sources. However, there may be times when secondary sources are appropriate for a literature review, such as when you are interested in exploring how the media portrays your topic.

How Do I Write a Literature Review?

There are different ways to approach a literature review, and what yours looks like will depend on your overall goals and project assignment requirements. However, in general, when writing your literature review, you may want to consider the following.

• • Introduction: Include an introduction where you define your review’s general topic and scope (Denney & Tewksbury, 2013). It is not humanly possible to review all the literature surrounding your topic, so you will want to explain how you have narrowed your background research’s focus. For example, when researching social justice training for teachers, Mills and Ballantyne (2016) narrowed their focus to only peer-reviewed studies published between 2004 and 2014; this allowed them to focus on current (at the time) research and to highlight successful methods that researchers in the field were ignoring.
  • Sources: Think about your sources’ strength and their topic relevance before you include them. Are your sources directly participating in the conversation surrounding your topic? Are they credible? Have you included recent research which may be important for your topic? Have you explored sources that view your topic from different perspectives?
  • Materials: Group together studies within your review’s body paragraphs in meaningful ways. For instance, you might group materials by publication date to discuss how ideas have changed over time. You might organize materials by the research methods employed, locations examined, or important sub-topics (Galvin & Galvin, 2017). Deciding how to organize your literature review will be easier once you have read through many pieces and started to get a feel for the similarities and differences in the work. For example, Mills and Ballantyne (2016) organized part of their literature review around the research methods used in the sources they examined.
  • Themes: Remember to explore themes and integrate ideas, rather than summarize individual sources. You might explore some of the main topic-discussion contributors, acknowledge gaps or debates in the literature, and/or suggest future research avenues. For example, Hytten and Bettez (2011) explored the controversy surrounding educators’ different interpretations and meanings of the phrase social justice and how this lack of consensus threatened to make the phrase useless in a practical sense. By including sources from multiple perspectives and exploring this literature debate more deeply they were able to offer suggestions for how scholars can work productively together across multiple disciplines to better achieve the social-justice movement’s goals.
  • Ideas: Avoid using direct quotes if possible. Remember, this is not an annotated bibliography, so synthesize your ideas to be the star of the show!
  • Conclusion: Include a conclusion that highlights the main themes you explored in your literature review. If you are completing a literature review as background research for a larger study, you might consider the conclusion as a bridge to your current work—where you highlight the important direction your work will take in addressing some of the gaps or challenges identified in the literature review (Denney & Tewksbury, 2013).

Why is the Literature Review Important for My Research?

While at first, it may seem daunting, the literature review helps you build your topic expertise and knowledge in several real ways. Working through your topic materials helps you learn the language that researchers use to discuss your topic. It helps you to interact with the published materials and to start to see patterns and notice trends. In short, completing the literature review takes you into the conversation surrounding your topic and provides you with the foundation needed to do your best work.

Conclusion

A literature review serves as a topic overview of existing scholarly discussions, emphasizing the synthesis of ideas rather than individual source summaries. It allows you to delve into the discourse within the scholarly community, highlighting major themes, trends, gaps, and the thought evolution. Through the literature review, you can identify research areas that require further exploration and consider how previous studies connect to each other, offering a broader understanding of the subject. This process not only informs your research but also enhances your topic grasp, preparing you to contribute meaningfully to ongoing conversations in your field. As you prepare your own literature review, remember to define your scope, assess your sources’ strength and relevance, and organize your findings cohesively to effectively build your review’s narrative.

Practice

1. How is a literature review different than an annotated bibliography?
2. In what ways does a literature review help guide future research on your interest topic?

References

Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 24(2), 218-234. https://doi.org/10.1080/10511253.2012.730617

Galvan, J. L., & Galvan, M. C. (2017). Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences. Taylor & Francis.

Hytten, K., & Bettez, S. C. (2011). Understanding education for social justice. Educational Foundations, 25, 7-24.

Mills, C., & Ballantyne, J. (2016). Social justice and teacher education: A systematic review of empirical work in the field. Journal of Teacher Education, 67(4), 263-276. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224871166601

Additional Resources

Google Scholar. https://scholar.google.com/

Salt Lake Community College. (2023, December 7). Undergraduate Research & Projects Conference: Writing Literature Reviews. https://libguides.slcc.edu/c.php?g=1306101&p=9603183

Salt Lake Community College. (2023, July 26). Scholarly Articles. https://libguides.slcc.edu/scholarlyarticles

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (n.d.). Literature Review Handout. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/literature-reviews/

Utah State University. (2023, December 1). Conducting a Literature Review: Lit Review Basics. https://libguides.usu.edu/literaturereview