the review at the end of your research, you will have a more sophisticated understanding of the area and will be able to critique and evaluate previous work in a more authoritative and detailed way. The literature review must do two key things: It must ‘demonstrate an understanding of both the previous research and general writings The PhD Literature Review. Most PhD projects begin with a literature review, which usually serves as the first chapter of your dissertation. This provides an opportunity for you to show that you understand the body of academic work that has already been done in relation to your topic, including books, articles, data and research papers Feb 10, · A PhD literature review is a critical assessment of the literature in your field and related to your specific research topic. When discussing each relevant piece of literature, the review must highlight where the gaps are and what the strengths and weaknesses are Reviews: 13
How to Write a Literature Review for PhD Thesis – PhD study tips
We have lots more on the site to show you. You've only seen one page. Check out this post which is one of the most popular of all time, literature review phd. By the literature review phd you get to graduate school you are usually familiar with writing several different kinds of papers, but the graduate thesis or dissertation is a type of writing you have likely not done before.
In addition to simply being a much longer more complex piece of writing it also contains some components that you did not encounter during your undergraduate. One of these components is the literature review. A literature review is part of every graduate dissertation, but it is a mysterious to many grad students. Likely you have actually already read several literature reviews during the course of your higher education, literature review phd if you were not aware of it.
Even if you can identify a good literature review, writing one yourself can seem a bit daunting. There is so much academic literature review phd related to your topic and you may not know where to begin or how to approach your literature review. This will not be a comprehensive guide, literature review phd, as literature review specifics vary from discipline to discipline, but these guiding tidbits can get you started and clear up some of the initial confusion about literature reviews and what does and does not belong in one.
This blog post was written by a recent anonymous doctoral candidate on behalf of Dave Maslach so, they feel more comfortable with a frank discussionbut it is based on the following video:. Literature reviews are pieces of writing included in all graduate dissertations and most journal literature review phd and scholarly books. They are overviews of previous scholarship related to the topic of your research. Literature reviews are a synthesis of previous scholarship meant to showcase how your own research fits literature review phd your field and compares to recent similar research on your topic.
Your literature review should focus specifically on your topic and research questions ex. Research into specific historical event, specific treatment of a disease, literature review phd. They are not meant to address the research of your wider field, but rather your specific topic. Literature reviews vary in length depending on your field, but they are always placed at the beginning of the work first chapter or in the introduction in order to orient the reader in your topic, literature review phd.
A good literature review should showcase the strengths and weaknesses of previous scholarship on your topic, as well as show how your own research will make use of previous scholarship on the topic. Furthermore, literature review phd, a literature review should identify gaps and tensions in existing research and detail how your research will fill those gaps. It is also meant to highlight problems in past literature that do not quite make sense, based on logic or empirical research.
Literature reviews should contain an overview of all, or as close to all as possible, of the main relevant works on your topic.
Part of the point of a PhD is to contribute something new to your field, literature review phd. You are carving a niche for yourself and your literature review should help you do that, literature review phd. It should show where your research fits in the wider picture and what it contributes, literature review phd. Include topics in your literature review that really highlight where and what you are contributing to your field. Since part of the purpose of the literature review is to provide contextualization for your research you want to discuss previous approaches to your topic.
What that exactly means will likely vary by field, but some examples include previous failed or successful studies on closely related experiments, and different theories and methodologies used to approach your subject.
Make sure to include all of the seminal studies in your area of expertise. A literature review, however, is not simply a list of previous scholarship. See the list below for more in depth inclusions and exclusions. The purpose of the literature review is to tell the story of your topic and synthesize the work that was done previously. Simply listing the previous work is not enough. Previous scholarship needs to be analyzed for what it contributed to your field and where it fell short. Literature reviews need to strike a balance between summary and analysis, literature review phd.
Of course, you are going to have to provide brief summaries of the most important findings of previous scholarship, but the literature review should not be several pages of one summary after another with little or no contextualization or analysis. A literature review should be a conversation literature review phd a story about the previous scholarship.
Good literature reviews discuss the strengths and weaknesses of previous scholarship and show how the topic has changed and evolved.
Every field starts somewhere, and people continually build and improve upon previous scholarship and this should be highlighted. Literature reviews should emphasize both the highs and lows and show how the previous scholarship you are drawing from is related to each other and also to your own work.
Part of this conversation is achieved through the organization or structure of past studies by putting like studies in groups together and discussing how they relate to one another or improved up each other for more on organization see the list below.
Other parts of the conversation come from your own analysis of previous scholarship. What were the strengths, what were the weaknesses, what were they missing? No research project ever covers every aspect of the topic, there is almost always more to do.
Put all of the previous studies together and see what bigger picture literature review phd from the collection. Part of showcasing your contribution to your field through your PhD research is poking holes in previous scholarship, literature review phd. One of your goals during your PhD is to find a place for yourself in your field.
You need to find a research niche and build you research profile on it, literature review phd. In order to do that you need to find an existing gap in research. This is something literature review phd you need to demonstrate in your literature review.
You need to show what work there still is to be done, and how you are going to do it. PhD students are often hesitant about this bit of a literature review. This is of course due to a lot of reasons, impostor syndrome, simply not feeling like you have the authority to do that, or just not yet having that type of confidence see this post for more info on impostor syndrome.
This is part of being an literature review phd. That is just a fact of research, literature review phd, there is always more to discover. On the flip side of pointing out gaps in existing research, there is a way to do it in a professional manner, literature review phd.
This used to be much more common. There are professional ways to point out where a study has fallen short or did not consider some variable or another without attacking the work as a whole. Often if a study falls short in some area, literature review phd, it is because of the confines of time, space, and scope in publications. For example, in my own field it makes sense that an economic evaluation of the Wars of the Roses in England does not take into consideration the social impact of war on the countryside.
That was not the point and the social impact was outside the scope of the study. However, it may be that the source material used in that study on the economic impact could also yield rich material about the social impact.
It is also important to remember that theories and conclusions can change. Often the work and theories of scholars evolve over their career and a conclusion they reached 10 years ago in a study may have been refuted by their own work or modified in another study from 5 years ago. A literature review is a discussion of previous work, but your own work should not be absent from it.
This should of course be visible in areas where you have found gaps and plan to fill them with your own studies, but it should also be evident in conversations about how you plan to use previous research. For instance, if you are using a particular methodology or theory, literature review phd, it was developed by someone at some point.
Explore all of that information, but also make sure you include why it is that this theory or methodology is important to your own work. Also include if you plan to literature review phd upon it, implement it in a new way, or apply it in a way not previously explored by other scholars.
Always remember that the literature review is partially there to compliment your research and showcase your own findings. You are proving through it that you are aware of previous scholarship, how it was used, what its strengths are, but you are also aware of the weaknesses of previous scholarship. You want to show how your work contributes to the already existing body of work, literature review phd, how it utilizes previous work, but also how it is crucially different or an improvement on existing scholarship, literature review phd.
Just like literature reviews vary wildly in length, the ways they are organized also vary widely. Your field may have a specific convention you need to follow, and if so, follow that. Below is a short list of a some of the most common ways to organize literature reviews. They can be used literature review phd, but they can also literature review phd combined.
My own literature review combined both the chronological and theory-based organizations. Chronological organization is probably the most straightforward organization of a literature review although it is more common in some fields than others.
Chronological organization simply means that you are literature review phd your literature in conversation from the oldest to the most recent. Again, literature review phd, literature review phd far back in time you go depends on your field. The conventions of your field may only require the last years to gain a strong picture of the current state of research in your field.
Literature review phd organization does usually show the evolution of a topic fairly easily, as many topics change gradually over time. Chronological organization makes it easy to highlight trends and triumphant moments in the history of your topic. Chronological organization can get messy if you have a topic that had a surge in popularity during a particular time frame.
It can sometimes be difficult to discuss so many different studies at one. If that is the case with your topic you may benefit by using another organizational method or combining chronological organization with another method.
If you are working on a topic that has a lot of scholarship already done on it, you may benefit from literature review phd discussion framed more around the strengths vs. the weaknesses of the various approaches.
This type of organization will make it easy for you to showcase how your own research will approach the topic from the foundation of other strong studies, literature review phd, and also justify why you used one approach verses another, literature review phd.
Using the strengths and weaknesses, organization would be particularly helpful if you have a relatively new topic that has experienced a sudden explosion of studies in recent literature review phd. Theory-based organization is particularly helpful for dissertations done in the Social Sciences, or trying to make a contribution to the sciences. This type of organization is easily combined with both chronological and strength literature review phd weaknesses.
Essentially, this organizational structure groups studies using the same theories or methodological framework together and puts them and their findings in conversation. Normally, you would focus on one or two theories at the most, literature review phd.
It allows you to discuss the different types of theories you are using in your research and show their uses and previous successful results. In this sense, the literature review helps to justify or explain some of your methodology and strengthens your overall approach.
There is no single right way to do a literature review. The aspects of it may be dictated by your field and the writing a literature review for every work you do will be different.
How To Write A Literature Review In 3 Simple Steps (FREE Template With Examples)
, time: 40:13How to write a PhD literature review | James Hayton's PhD advice website
the review at the end of your research, you will have a more sophisticated understanding of the area and will be able to critique and evaluate previous work in a more authoritative and detailed way. The literature review must do two key things: It must ‘demonstrate an understanding of both the previous research and general writings The PhD Literature Review. Most PhD projects begin with a literature review, which usually serves as the first chapter of your dissertation. This provides an opportunity for you to show that you understand the body of academic work that has already been done in relation to your topic, including books, articles, data and research papers Feb 10, · A PhD literature review is a critical assessment of the literature in your field and related to your specific research topic. When discussing each relevant piece of literature, the review must highlight where the gaps are and what the strengths and weaknesses are Reviews: 13
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