Literature Review: Methods, Purpose and Importance

Defining a Literature Review

Conduct a literature review on the subject matter to write the Report. The number of articles to examine is A literature review is about digging into the body of knowledge that previous researchers have generated. Hence, it is a written account of what has been published on a topic in periodicals, research monographs, serials and magazines. In writing the review, your purpose is to convey what knowledge and ideas have already been established on the topic, and what are their strengths and weaknesses.

Your literature review will be defined by your research objective, the problem or issue you are investigating. It should not be a few citations of the materials available, or a set of summaries. An important skill for any researcher is the ability to review the work of others and evaluate their methods, results, and conclusions.

How to go about it? You should organise your search of the literature around the key concepts you are going to examine. The first step is to assemble a list of probable key words related to what you are researching in. You can start your search using more general terms before limiting it to more specific terms. You can also look out for articles that list the relevant keywords for your topic, which you then use to conduct more searches. Another way is to conduct a simple web search using a search engine,e.g. Google Scholar or Researchgate. However, online searches tend to generate huge number of entries. You will need to “separate the wheat from the chaff.”