Literature Review Essentials: Identify Themes
Academic and scholarly writers often find themselves in situations where they must write literature reviews. This genre of writing is useful for academic writers because it provides an opportunity to demonstrate what research has already shown or what gaps exist in the literature. Literature reviews are also often the starting point of demonstrating how your research fits into a larger body of work. At the capstone stage, writers at Walden compose literature reviews, but more and more, students in coursework are writing these kinds of documents too.Over the last year, I’ve had several students write in to our chat or paper review services asking for help figuring out how to organize literature review body paragraphs. So today, let’s discuss how to organize and outline a literature review thematically.
Literature Reviews vs. Annotations or Summaries
Literature reviews should be organized thematically because
the purpose is to show, overall, what the literature has demonstrated. The goal
is not to give the reader a summary of each article. That’s what an annotated bibliography is: a series of summaries and analyses of sources, one listed
after the other. With an annotated bibliography, readers are looking to have
these questions answered: What is each source about, what’s the criticism of
each source, and how is each source applicable? An annotated bibliography takes
each source one by one and engages with one source per paragraph.
In contrast, the literature review is different since it’s
not actually the sources that matter; instead, it’s the synthesis that matters.
Readers, when going through a literature review, are looking to have these
questions answered: In this body of literature, what were the main themes that
arose, and what do these sources say about these themes? How do these sources
overlap, and where are there gaps in the literature? A literature review
synthesizes the ideas in sources and engages with several sources per paragraph.
So, the first step to writing a thematic literature review
is to be sure you’re actually writing a literature review and not an annotated
bibliography.
Planning and Outlining to Organize Thematically
In order to write a literature review, writers must do a lot
of planning. Without proper planning, it will be hard to determine what the
major themes are that have arisen in the literature, and the review might
become disorganized and require significant revision. So, to help you stay on
track, here’s a method for how you can approach your literature review at the
planning stage:
1. As you begin to read your sources, do some critical reading to
decipher: What are the major themes and ideas that you are seeing in the
literature related to your topic? Take notes as you read, perhaps by
highlighting sources with various colors based on emerging themes, or by making
notes in the margins, or by writing down themes you’re seeing in a notebook.
Try a few methods and then use what works for you.
2. Once you’re noticing a few themes, start to create an outline, organized by theme, where you have the theme at the top and then list out each source that had something to do with that theme. Ideally, you’ll eventually have several themes in your outline with several sources below each theme. This will help you structure and organize by themes and plan body paragraphs. Here’s how this might look:
Theme 1: Name or description of theme, which will eventually be made into a topic sentence
- Author Name (Year), Paraphrase of relevant material related to the theme
- Author Name (Year), Paraphrase of relevant material related to the theme
Theme 2: Name or description of theme, which will eventually be made into a topic sentence
- Repeat as needed for all the sources you’ve found that deal with this theme
- Author Name (Year), Paraphrase of relevant material related to the theme
- Author Name (Year), Paraphrase of relevant material related to the theme
Continue as needed, depending on how many themes you have identified in the literature and how many sources have information to contribute to the themes.
- Repeat as needed for all the sources you’ve found that deal with this theme
3. Continue to read through your sources to (1) identify themes
in the literature and (2) identify which sources have information and ideas
that contribute to those themes. You may need to re-read sources to catch
things missed in the first read, and as you read and re-read, your outline will
continue to grow. Note too that it’s okay if a source is listed in the outline
many times. Sources will naturally address many themes, so it is expected that
a source will appear a few times throughout a literature review, particularly
if the source is complex and covers many relevant topics.
Once you have gone through these steps to sift through your
research, determine the themes, figure out which sources relate to which
themes, and create your outline for your literature review body paragraphs, you
have a solid foundation for the drafting of your thematic literature review. From
here, you can start to draft body paragraphs and sections that address various
themes in the literature.
Give this strategy for outlining thematic literature reviews a try, and let us know how it works for you in the comments section of this post. We look forward to hearing your stories!
Jes Philbrook is a Writing Instructor and the Coordinator of Doctoral Writing Assessment in the Walden University Writing Center. Jes has been helping graduate students write literature reviews for the last seven years, since she started working with nursing students who frequently were assigned literature review assignments. In her free time, Jes likes to take walks around lakes, plan trips and adventures, and cook delicious and wholesome food.
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This was very helpful Jes! Thanks a lot.
ReplyDeleteWe're glad you found this post helpful, Eniale!
DeleteThank you Jes. I found your method to thematic literature review very useful and easy to understand. I am a Phd student in Education with the
DeleteUniversity of Durban.I am based in Zimbabwe.
We are glad you found this method useful!
DeleteI am having difficulties locating an example of a completed literature review outline. Where would I find additional examples? Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou’re welcome!
DeleteHi is literature review writing same as writing a thematic summary after reading articles based on the given topic?
ReplyDeleteGreat question! It depends on the assignment (what faculty want with the thematic summary assignment). For literature reviews, paragraphs revolve around themes within the literature as opposed to authors. So, when Jes uses the phrasing, "thematic literature reviews," she is referring to how literature reviews are about synthesizing themes across the literature as opposed to creating paragraphs that are summaries for each singular author/ source. You can read more about synthesis on our website http://bit.ly/2JEUK09
ReplyDeletethank you, this one is useful.
ReplyDeleteI've been in a slump for weeks regarding a literature review assignment. This is very very helpful! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteWe're happy this helped! Good luck with your literature review!
DeleteI'm doing a lit review for a post grad certificate and I have to discuss the findings using a framework analysis, can you lead me to the right section.
ReplyDeleteYours struggling
Hello,
DeleteYou might check with your professor regarding what is meant by “framework analysis” in relation to the finding of your literature review. While the Writing Center has some sources on components of writing literature reviews, it is best to speak with faculty regarding assignment specifics.
You might also check out our page on literature reviews:
https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/assignments/literaturereview
We hope this helps!
i have found it useful, it has polished me some how,
ReplyDeletemy problem in the literature review is how to formulate themes and subthemes for the topic. forexample dealing with solid waste skips monitoring and management for municpalities. what themes can i build on in the study. thank you dear.
Hello!
DeleteI think creating an outline my help you identify some main themes and sub themes and then you can choose what themes and sub themes you want to focus on from there. You might check out our outlining page for tips on creating an outline: http://bit.ly/2WP3UCe.
We hope this helps!
Thank you! My professor referenced this link/article for the literature review assignment in a research class. This was helpful.
ReplyDeletethanks
DeleteSo glad you found it helpful! Thank you for commenting!
DeleteThis really was helpful. I feel so much better about tackling my lit review now. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHelping writers gain confidence in their skills is one of our primary goals for this blog. Thank you for reaching out with this kind note to let us know we are on the right track! :)
DeleteReally informative study. It helped me in finding themes in literature. Plz if u can give me your email. It will be very helpful to me in writing my dissertation
ReplyDeleteThis was very helpful; clear and concise. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteOh Jes! you just sent me back to the drawing board, guilty of annotated bibliography. Thank you for this helpful writeup.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're not alone! And there is a reason this is a blog post topic. :) Kudos for identifying potential issues in your own writing and thank you so much for reading and commenting!
Deleteim failing to understand the concept themes
ReplyDeleteThis can be a tricky concept to grasp, which is why we've created blog posts like this one. Basically, "themes" are ideas that connect so that writers are organizing based on themes rather than on sources. So instead of having one paragraph about one article, another paragraph about a different article, and a third paragraph about a third article, the paragraphs would be organized based on common ideas shared between two or three of the articles.
DeleteYou might check out our MEAL plan resources (https://academicanswers.waldenu.edu/faq/72800), or our resources for synthesis (https://academicanswers.waldenu.edu/faq/72694) for further clarification. Hope this helps! Thanks for reading!