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Most doctoral dissertations in the sciences or humanities require a literature review. Well-written reviews incorporate previous work in a field and emphasize established points relevant to the topic at hand. A dissertation committee will appreciate your ability to contextualize your work within the larger discourse in your field and show that you are well-read in your speciality area.
As part of your review, you will need to assess other scholars’ works, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and synthesize them with your own. A literature review should be done before you get guidance. An understanding of literature reviews is essential.
What Exactly is a Literature Review?
Simply put, literature reviews of dissertations have to acknowledge all the sources you have used to gather information for your research very comprehensively and concisely. It proves and explains the authenticity of your research and is the longest chapter of your dissertation.
Literature review chapters are often confusing for students (and even researchers). Literature reviews can be difficult to write because there is no definite way to do so. There are several factors that can affect the content of a literature review, such as the title, method, and sources used in the dissertation.
Why are Literature Reviews Important? What is the Ultimate Goal?
This is one of the most commonly asked questions since the evidence is crucial to any research. A literature review chapter is crucial to the completion of any academic research because it provides evidence and proof of the research's findings.
It proves that you have researched your dissertation topic thoroughly. It shows that you have a thorough understanding of the background of your research and sufficient evidence to support it. Your literature review is your dissertation's backbone as it serves as proof that your arguments are valid and that the dissertation is relevant to the reader(s).
'Theory' always comes before 'analysis' in the literature review, which forms the 'theoretical background' of the entire paper. In the analysis, you will refer to it again because it contains relevant information. It is, therefore, necessary to analyze and summarize (relevant to the chosen PM article) theories, research, and books in a way that gives a critical overview of the topic. It is like a mini essay on the topic. Due to the limited word count, you must choose carefully what to include. Briefly describe the concepts you are using, but only enough to demonstrate your understanding. Consider including evaluations/critiques of key theories (e.g., key motivation theories have been criticized).
Your research should involve reading journal articles, and you should pay careful attention to how these are written - most studies begin with literature reviews / theoretical backgrounds (ignore the stuff about research questions/hypotheses). Examine how the study is introduced by synthesizing and evaluating research and theory.
The literature review must support all the arguments in your dissertation, in the simplest of terms. The literature review is crucial to the strength and relevance of your dissertation argument and research.
How to Write a Dissertation Literature Review: The Process
It is a 4-step process. Keep reading to know the journey.
Step 1: Source Identification
Incorporating citations you find on the internet at random is not allowed. All sources must be identified. There is a chance you received guidelines from your professor(s), department head, or tutor. We will tell you how to choose the best sources in case you do not have any guidelines.
The sources that you use should be balanced and may include (but not be limited to) books, scholarly articles, and previously published dissertations. Using Google Scholar, for instance, you can search for sources online. It is possible to see the number of times an article has been cited. You can determine its importance by doing this.
A citation indicates that an article is an important source and should be included in your literature review if it has been cited multiple times. Make a list of the sources before you begin your literature review.
Step 2: Choosing your sources
Your dissertation research should be based on a list of appropriate sources. Shortlist the most suitable ones after studying all of them.
You are right; it is going to be exhausting and time-consuming. But will it be worth it? Hell, yeah!
It will take you a long time to read all of the research, books, and journals, so you should not start with that. The first step is to study the research questions or main aspects of your selected source concerning their relevance and importance.
You should have the most relevant sources after you have completed the first stage. Once you have enough sources to cover your literature review, you can move on to reading the abstracts of the shortlisted sources. You can repeat the first stage if there are not enough sources.
Your literature review chapter should only include sources that are the most important and most relevant. Study their abstracts once you have collected enough sources. After the second stage, if there are still not enough sources, repeat the first and second stages.
Step 3: Gap Analysis
When choosing your dissertation topic, keep this in mind: your goal is to contribute something new to the field. Thus, you cannot just copy and paste any older research.
Once you have listed all your sources, you need to consider the gaps among them. Identifying the gaps, studying them, and filling them is the goal of your research. It is very simple to identify a gap if you follow this simple guide. The research gap is when a question hasn't been answered yet and hasn't been answered yet.
By identifying these gaps in your research, you will be able to build a good literature review chapter for your dissertation. There is no doubt that coming up with amazing dissertation topics can be difficult, but it is not impossible.
After gathering the sources and identifying the gaps, you know what to do next. Finally, it's time to start writing. In the literature review, three major sections are discussed.
Step 4: Writing the Literature Review
Having established what your literature review should contain, let's move forward. The most astounding dissertation literature review is about to be taught to you.
Now let's get started without further ado.
The ride is long and you need to stay focused. So get your pen and notepad ready. Literature review chapters are usually the longest, so their templates are huge. You can find the formula for creating a perfect dissertation literature review template below.
There are three major sections in the literature review chapter:
- Introduction
- Main Body
- Conclusion
Despite the fact that most everything is comprised of these sections, it is not an easy task to accomplish. This article is going to provide you with some special tips for avoiding all issues with your dissertation literature review chapter in the future. Here is some additional help for writing the literature review before we tell you how.
If you skip, you will miss out on important stuff.
Introduction
You must first write such an intriguing and captivating introduction that a reader is compelled to read your entire dissertation.
Introduce your literature review with its objectives for an eye-catching introduction. Starting with the problem or question of your research will help you accomplish this flawlessly. After you have reviewed all the sources for your literature review, write a concise summary of what you have learned.
Make sure you highlight all the gaps in your introduction and state what approach you will use to fill them in your dissertation in order to finish it off like a boss.
Main Body
You should devote the most time and effort to this section since it is the most important part of your dissertation. We are going into the deep end, so fasten your seatbelts. As we will explain shortly, each of your sources will benefit from the explanations we will provide.
An overview of the sources
Identify all the major findings related to each source after analyzing it. The first question you need to ask yourself is; how has the source improved or changed your research? Does this source have a research gap or was it helpful?
You can easily summarize the sources by asking these questions.
Analyzing the sources
An important part of your literature review is evaluating the sources you use, but how do you do that? It is easy!
It is necessary to discuss the source in depth. A source's relevance to your research topic has to be determined by you. Rephrasing and paraphrasing previously published material is not acceptable.
You will gain more credibility if you give your opinion about the sources and prove that you have studied the subject and have sufficient background knowledge about it.
Analyzing sources
Analyzing the sources analytically is also important. This will help you determine the literature's strong and weak points. For each of the sources, you will need to state their weak points and strong points.
Establishing a relationship between your research problem and your sources
In your literature review, you will need to establish a link between the research problem (dissertation topic) you are addressing and the sources you are reviewing. As a result, you will be able to demonstrate that the sources you are citing are relevant to your research and have an impact on it.
It is also possible to develop a relationship with the sources you've cited. Different literature sources you have cited should be analyzed for differences and similarities. Clarifying certain aspects as well as explaining conflicting sources.
Conclusion
Your literature review comes to an end here. No, you will not just be saying "bye-bye, the end" here or anywhere else (except when you are talking with someone who has been bugging you). This will not work.
It is important to have a conclusion that points your reader toward the following chapter (Methodology). The reader will be engaged with clarity and interest if you throw some bombs (not literal bombs).
It is important to summarize the implications of the cited sources and literature in the conclusion section of your literature review. Your dissertation research question or argument should be linked to the implications of the summary.
There you go, you've slayed your literature review chapter. The literature review and data collection and analysis are the longest chapters, as mentioned previously, but not the hardest. There will be a lot of time and effort involved, but it will be worth it.
FAQs About Literature Reviews
Get a Dissertation Proposal – Get Going!
Dissertation Proposal Lays Down the Outline of Your Final Dissertation
Get a Dissertation Proposal that matches your requirements, which includes the topic title, research aim and objective, research questions, research gap, literature review, methodology and list of reference papers.
The Dissertation Proposal will be foundation of your final dissertation. It is very important to get this done perfectly to avoid any problems!
The purpose of the thesis, dissertation, or research paper is to situate your work within the existing body of knowledge.
It proves that you have researched your dissertation topic thoroughly. It shows that you have a thorough understanding of the background of your research and sufficient evidence to support it. Your literature review is your dissertation's backbone as it serves as proof that your arguments are valid and that the dissertation is relevant to the reader(s).
The purpose of a literature review is to connect it to an existing body of knowledge, research, and theories. Each of the citations will have to be examined to determine if they support your research, literature review, and predictions.
It is not acceptable to include anything in your dissertation that cannot be backed up or supported by theory unless it is highly relevant.
