REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Your Assignment:
Prepare a REVIEW OF LITERATURE for your thesis. Your first draft is due Nov. 20th The paper should follow the University of Missouri guidelines for Theses and dissertations.
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left margin 1.5 inches: top, right and bottom margins, 1 inch chapter headings and subheads: use consistent style and spacing (Based on Chicago Style) typeface used throughout research paper is consistent double space all text (exceptions: quotations of four lines or longer and references) page numbers at least one inch from the edge of the paper. no form of correction fluid is to be used.

One of the most important early steps in a research project is the conducting of the literature review. This is also one of the most humbling experiences you're likely to have. Why? Because you're likely to find out that just about any worthwhile idea you will have has been thought of before, at least to some degree. I frequently have students who come to me complaining that they couldn't find anything in the literature that was related to their topic. And virtually every time they have said that, I was able to show them that was only true because they only looked for articles that were exactly the same as their research topic. A literature review is designed to identify related research, to set the current research project within a conceptual and theoretical context. When looked at that way, almost no topic is so new or unique that you can't locate relevant and informative related research. Here are some tips about conducting the literature review. First, concentrate your efforts on the scientific literature. Try to determine what the most credible research journals are in your topical area and start with those. Put the greatest emphasis on research journals that use a blind or juried review system. In a blind or juried review, authors submit

potential articles to a journal editor who solicits several reviewers who agree to give a critical review of the paper. The paper is sent to these reviewers with no identification of the author so that there will be no personal bias (either for or against the author). Based on the reviewers' recommendations, the editor can accept the article, reject it, or recommend that the author revise and resubmit it. Articles in journals with blind review processes are likely to have a fairly high level of credibility. Second, do the review early in the research process. You are likely to learn a lot in the literature review that will help you determine what the necessary tradeoffs are. After all, previous researchers also had to face tradeoff decisions. What should you look for in the literature review? First, you might be able to find a study that is quite similar to the one you are thinking of doing. Since all credible research studies have to review the literature themselves, you can check their literature review to get a quick start on your own. Second, prior research will help ensure that you include all of the major relevant constructs in your study. You may find that other similar studies routinely look at an outcome that you might not have included. Your study would not be judged credible if it ignored a major construct. Third, the literature review will help you to find and select appropriate measurement instruments. You will readily see what measurement instruments researchers used themselves in contexts similar to yours. Finally, the literature review will help you to anticipate common problems in your research context. You can use the prior experiences of others to avoid common traps and pitfalls. HOW CAN I WRITE A GOOD LITERATURE REVIEW? You should use the literature to explain your research - after all, you are not writing a literature review just to show what other researchers have done. You aim should be to: 1. Show why your research needs to be carried out, 2. How you came to choose certain methodologies or theories to work with, 3. How your work adds to the research already carried out, etc. Read with a purpose: you need to summarize the work you read but you must also decide which ideas or information are important to your research (so you can emphasize them), and which are less important and can be covered briefly or left out of your review. You should also look for the major concepts, conclusions, theories, arguments etc. that underlie the work, and look for similarities and differences with

closely related work. This is difficult when you first start reading, but should become easier the more you read in your area. Write with a purpose: your aim should be to evaluate and show relationships between the work already done (Is Researcher Y's theory more convincing than Researcher X's? Did Researcher X build on the work of Researcher Y?) and between this work and your own. In order to do this effectively you should carefully plan how you are going to organize your work. A lot of people like to organize their work chronologically (using time as their organizing system). Unless developments over time are crucial to explain the context of your research problem, using a chronological system will not be an effective way to organize your work. Some people choose to organize their work alphabetically by author name: this system will not allow you to show the relationships between the work of different researchers, and your work, and should be avoided!
Do not you know how to make a review of related literature? No panic! Make use of our guide and you are sure to create a qualitative review of related literature. What is a Review of Related Literature? A review of related literature is an integral part of theses or dissertations. It may also be a required part of proposals. The main purpose of a review of related literature is to analyze scientific works by other researchers that you used for investigation critically. How to Write the Introduction of a Review of Related Literature In order to make the Introduction elaborately, take the following steps: 1. Identify the general topic of the sources under discussion. Thus, you will provide the context of your review of related literature; 2. Discuss what was already presented about the topic of your paper: conflicts in a theory, conclusions, gaps in research and scholarship, etc. 3. Explain why the literature used is worth reviewing.

How to Write the Body of a Review of Related Literature When writing the Body, do the following:

Group the sources according to their common dominators (approaches, objectives or any specific chronologies);

Give the examples of how to sort out these groups. Use quotations, evidences, data, etc. They will make your review of related literature more valid.

How to Write the Conclusion of a Review of Related Literature To make the Conclusion, do the following: y Summarize the contributions of the literature sources made to the area of study you investigate. Maintain the central focus in the Introduction; Give a kind of insight into the relationship between the topic of your review and a larger study area (e.g. a discipline, a scientific endeavor, etc.)