Conducting a comprehensive literature review and drafting it in a compelling fashion is essential to any research article or thesis. Surveying existing literature forms the bedrock of one's research.
A good literature review will help you in achieving the following objectives:
Building and Demonstrating Knowledge: It (helps you build and) shows that you have a thorough understanding of the field, key debates, concepts & theories. This depth of knowledge is essential for establishing the context and relevance of your research and often becomes your starting point.
Identifies Gaps in Existing Research: A comprehensive literature review helps in identifying gaps in the existing body of research. These gaps could be in terms of areas that haven't been explored, questions that haven't been asked, or methodologies that haven't been used. Your research can then be positioned to address these gaps.
Helps Refine Your Research Question: You can refine your research question or hypothesis to be more specific, relevant, and meaningful. It ensures that your research adds value and does not merely replicate what is already known.
Guides Theoretical Framework and Methodology: Knowledge of the existing research helps in building a theoretical framework that can guide your data collection and analysis. Understanding how other researchers have approached similar problems can inform your choice of methodology. It helps you understand the strengths and limitations of different methods and choose the one most appropriate for your research.
Prevents Redundancy and Enhances Credibility: By thoroughly reviewing what has already been done in your field, you avoid duplicating efforts. This not only saves time and resources but also strengthens the justification for your research. A well-conducted literature review adds credibility to your research. It shows that your work is grounded in established knowledge and that you are addressing a particular gap.
However, there are several challenges that you may face or traps you might fall into as you work through your literature review. These challenges and shortcomings can be largely put into three categories: identification and organisation, analysis, and writing.
Identification and Organisation: A common mistake is not defining a clear scope or focus for the literature review. This can lead to a review that is too broad, superficial, or irrelevant to the research question. Scholars also fall into the trap of asymmetrically focussing on either the latest works or just the older studies. Only selecting studies that support your hypothesis and ignoring contradictory evidence can lead to a skewed review. This is also called confirmation bias. A balanced review considers all relevant perspectives. Finally, a comprehensive literature review requires multiple primary and secondary sources, the failure to organise them systematically may impede your analysis.
Analysis: Merely summarizing each source without critically analyzing them or synthesizing the findings is a frequent error. A good literature review should go beyond description to interpret and evaluate the literature in relation to your research. This often requires setting out a clear theoretical framework to analyse the collected literature. Some reviews fail to identify contradictions in the literature or gaps where further research is needed. Recognizing these aspects is essential for justifying your research.
Writing: After all the hardwork that one puts into collecting and analysing the literature, the quality of the review is judged based on its drafting. Therefore, writing is a key part of the literature review step as well. The review should be logically written, often thematically, rather than just being a random collection of summaries. It should highlight the contestations and intersections within the literature. Finally, one should be attentive when it comes to citations and references. Language should be simple, concise, and clearly reflect your analysis of the literature.
While this is a brief post to guide one's literature review, I shall be writing more detailed blog posts discussing the steps to avoid the three pitfalls mentioned above. So stay tuned!