How to Conduct a Literature Review and Develop a Research Proposal

You need to conduct some research related to your own interests or to serve the interests of some organization (employer/client/sponsor). Before you start writing a formal proposal, you (or your employer/client/sponsor) would like to gather some information about the problem as well as understand its importance.

Choose your research topic thoughtfully, as this assignment will be part of your term paper. 

Literature Review

The purpose of this assignment is to develop skills in finding and analyzing valid literary resources for your research. The review should be written in an integral / synthetic style, and NOT as an annotated bibliography.

This part of your research proposal should be roughly 7-9 pages (excluding cover page and references) and written in paragraphs, report format. All citations and references for this course are to be done in the APA style.

Please note: Use in-text citations to reference all ideas, concepts, text, and data that are not your own. If you make a statement, back it up with a reference!

• Research a minimum of 15 relevant business-related literature sources (focus on material available in digital format only for this course). Carefully choose your 15 "keepers" that are clearly related to your study. (Note: you might need to find 50 to “keep” only 15).

• Identify major common themes encountered in the selected literature sources. For each theme, create its own subsection within the literature review.

• For each theme / subsection of the literature review, explain the opinions of the authors and show their similarities, differences, methods of acquisition of data, methods of data analysis and other pertinent information. State how the reviewed research results relate to your proposed study.

• Identify the gaps in the literature and explain what needs to be done to move forward in your research.

• Critique and analyze the similarities and differences among the articles (e.g. different or the same point of views? different or the same research methods? why? etc.). Identify the gaps in the literature and provide recommendations for what needs to be done to move forward in your research. You will be using the information in this section in the final research proposal as well.

• Design a literature map of the sources you have found for your Research Proposal. This map should help you organize your source materials in a way that will facilitate the organization and writing of your Literature Review.

Statement of the Problem

Detail the problem that you are considering. Explain:

1.How are you defining and delimiting the specific area of the research?

2.What is the gap that will be addressed by this research?

3.What it is that you hope to learn by conducting this research?

4.Discuss the anticipated outcomes and benefits to the researcher, the organization, or society.

Research Questions

Provide focused research questions for your planned research. Also provide a back-up question in case the first one does not pan out. Make sure you address the following questions:

1. What is the scope of your research?

2. Is the scope of your research question reasonable?