Literature Review Essentials: Align Problems
Writing an effective review of literature is a necessary
step if you are writing a doctoral study or dissertation. It can feel
overwhelming, though; it’s almost like doing a research project within a
research project, where you devise a strategy, gather evidence (in this case, relevant
literature), and then analyze and organize it to present to your reader.
Therefore, like all elements of a major research undertaking, planning ahead is
key! I’d like to share a strategy today that can help you use the key words in
your problem statement to build a preliminary outline for your literature review
and can make the drafting process go much, much faster.
Start Planning Your Draft Long Before You’re Ready to Start Writing
One problem researchers can face when writing the literature
review is not knowing how to get started. There’s a lot of literature out
there, and you will have a lot of articles and notes you will want to cover. Using
key words from your problem statement to get you started can keep your
literature review on track and help you focus in on what’s most relevant to
your individual study without getting too impossibly broad.
To help you with this, the Walden Library has lots of good
resources for doctoral students writing their literature review, even specific
information on doing research for a literature review. The library also has
specific instructions for generating key search terms based on your topic, and
using your problem statement to generate a preliminary outline for your
literature review follows the same principle, except in reverse.
Make it Easy on Your Reader, and On Yourself
You don’t have to invent new headings for your literature
review out of thin air—they should already be embedded in the introduction to
your study. When you sat down to generate key words to search in library
databases, you took the key words in your study and brainstormed as many
options as you could to conduct and exhaustive search. Now, when you are
sitting down to write, look at your problem statement again. These are the main
ideas your reader is going to latch onto and look for throughout your document.
Circle or highlight the major words and concepts in your
problem statement—there may be some repetition, but that’s OK. Once you have a
list, instead of generating more examples, see if you can boil it down to a
handful of key concepts. Then, organize those concepts and subconcepts into an
outline, and voila! Now you’ve broken down your literature review into smaller
sections that each cover a key part of research on your topic. Plus, these are
the main ideas and concepts your reader will already be looking for, so they’ll
be already familiar.
The Table of Contents Test
If you look through a sampling of strong dissertations, you
will start to notice how closely the well-organized and synthesized literature
reviews correlate to the problem statement.
Here’s just one example. In the following image, the main
words in the problem statement are highlighted:
 |
| A Sample Problem Statement with Key Terms Highlighted |
Now, if you look at the headings in this author’s Table of
Contents, you can see how much the information in the chapter headings matches
the information in the problem statement:
 |
| Dissertation Table of Contents Containing the Highlighted Terms from the Problem Statement |
Instead of organizing the literature review chronologically,
or by author, she stuck with the main ideas in her problem statement, then
filled in the sections and subheadings based on the research she found. If you
do this in your own writing, it will give you a head start on a
well-synthesized, clearly organized literature review that stays focused and
provides strong support for the kind of original research you want to do.
In Conclusion
Instead of looking at the mound of extant literature you
found and building a literature review from scratch, use your problem statement
to get you started with your major categories and subheadings. You might
eventually want to reorganize and add or subtract headings as you write and
make revisions, but this strategy will start you off in the right direction. You
want your literature review to support the new work you want to contribute as a
scholar, and what better way to do that than by using your own words!
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Lydia Lunning is a Dissertation Editor and the Writing Center's Coordinator for Capstone Services. She earned degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Minnesota, and served on the editorial staff of Cricket Magazine Group.
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Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! This blog post has turn my whole lit review around for the better. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, Susan. We're glad this source proved to be helpful for you!
DeleteThis is so clearly explained and quite meaningful to me. Thank you. I am off to a good start on my literature review.
ReplyDeleteMercy
Thanks for the kind comment, Mercy! We are so glad to know you found this post helpful!
DeleteOMGeepers, this is one of the best literature explanations I have ever read. It is so helpful to view this in a non-overwhelming design. Thank you for this help!!! Christine
ReplyDeleteThank you, Christine! We try to offer information in a variety of ways and I'm so glad to know you found this helpful!
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