Literature Review or Review of Related Literature is one of the most vital stages in any research. This presentation attempts to throw some light on the process and important aspects of literature review.

1. Prof. Dilip Barad
Head, Dept. of English
M.K. Bhavnagar University
Bhavnagar – Gujarat
www.dilipbarad.com

2. Guba, E.G. in 'The Paradigm
Dialogue' (1990)
• . . . has argued that there are three
fundamental research questions that structure
any research project:
• What is there that can be known – what is
knowable?
• What is the relation of the knower to the
known?
• How do we find things out?

4. Ann Gray in 'Research Practice for
Cultural Studies' (2003 - Sage Publication)
• elaborates these questions:
• What is there that can be known - what is
knowable? This is an ontological question . . .
(video on Ontology in next slide)
• What is the relation of the knower to the
known? This is an epistemological question…
(video on Ontology in next slide)
• How do we find things out?
This is methodological questions.

5. WHAT IS A LITERATURE REVIEW?
• Many students are instructed, as part of their
research program, to perform a literature
review, without understanding what a
literature review is.
Read more: http://www.experiment-resources.com/what-is-a-literature-review.html#ixzz1QGfAxinx

6. What is Literature Review?
• A literature review is an account of what has
been published on a topic by accredited
scholars and researchers.
• Occasionally, we are asked to write one as a
separate assignment (sometimes in the form
of an annotated bibliography), but more
often it is part of the introduction to an essay,
research report, dissertation or thesis.

7. Standing on the shoulders of giants

8. WHY? What is the purpose of
Literature Review?
• In writing the literature review, our purpose is to
convey to our reader what knowledge and ideas
have been established on a topic, and what their
strengths and weaknesses are.
• As a piece of writing, the literature review must
be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., our
research objective, the problem or issue you are
discussing, or your argumentative thesis).
• It is not just a descriptive list of the material
available, or a set of summaries

9. Why do a literature review?
• to identify gaps in the literature
• to avoid reinventing the wheel (at the very least this will
save time and it can stop you from making the same
mistakes as others)
• to carry on from where others have already reached
(reviewing the field allows you to build on the platform of
existing knowledge and ideas)
• to identify other people working in the same fields (a
researcher network is a valuable resource)
• to increase your breadth of knowledge of your subject area
• to identify seminal works in your area
• to provide the intellectual context for your own work,
enabling you to position your project relative to other work

10. Why do LR?
• to identify opposing views
• to put your work into perspective
• to demonstrate that you can access previous work in an
area
• to identify information and ideas that may be relevant to
your project
• to identify methods that could be relevant to your project
• As far as the literature review process goes, ultimately the
goal for students is to complete their review in the
allocated time and to ensure they can maintain currency in
their field of study for the duration of their research(Bruce
1990).

11. Two important objectives of LR:
• Besides enlarging your knowledge about the topic,
writing a literature review lets you gain and
demonstrate skills in two areas:
1. information seeking: the ability to scan the
literature efficiently, using manual or
computerized methods, to identify a set of
useful articles and books
2. critical appraisal: the ability to apply principles
of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies

12. A literature review must do
these things:
• be organized around and related directly to
the thesis or research question we are
developing
• synthesize results into a summary of what is
and is not known
• identify areas of controversy in the literature
• formulate questions that need further
research

13. How? Ask yourself questions like these:
• What is the specific thesis, problem, or
research question that my literature review
helps to define?
• What type of literature review am I
conducting? Am I looking at issues of theory?
methodology? policy? quantitative research
(e.g. on the effectiveness of a new
procedure)? qualitative research (e.g., studies
)?

14. How? Ask yourself questions like these:
• What is the scope of my literature review? What
types of publications am I using (e.g., journals,
books, government documents, popular media)?
What discipline am I working in (e.g.,
Engineering, Psychology, Humanities, Pharmacy,
Management)?
• How good was my information seeking? Has my
search been wide enough to ensure I've found all
the relevant material? Has it been narrow enough
to exclude irrelevant material? Is the number of
sources I've used appropriate for the length of my
paper?

15. How? Ask yourself questions like these:
• Have I critically analysed the literature I use? Do I
follow through a set of concepts and questions,
comparing items to each other in the ways they
deal with them?
• Instead of just listing and summarizing items, do I
assess them, discussing strengths and
weaknesses?
• Have I cited and discussed studies contrary to my
perspective?
• Will the reader find my literature review relevant,
appropriate, and useful?

16. How? Ask yourself questions like these about each
book or article you include:
• Has the author formulated a problem/issue?
• Is it clearly defined? Is its significance (scope,
severity, relevance) clearly established?
• Could the problem have been approached more
effectively from another perspective?
• What is the author's research orientation (e.g.,
interpretive, critical science, combination)?
• What is the author's theoretical framework (e.g.,
psychological, developmental, feminist)?

17. How? Ask yourself questions like these about
each book or article you include:
• Has the author evaluated the literature relevant
to the problem/issue? Does the author include
literature taking positions she or he does not
agree with?
• In a research study, how good are the basic
components of the study design (e.g., population,
intervention, outcome)?
• How accurate and valid are the measurements? Is
the analysis of the data accurate and relevant to
the research question? Are the conclusions
validly based upon the data and analysis?

18. How? Ask yourself questions like these about
each book or article you include:
• How does the author structure the argument?
Can you "deconstruct" the flow of the argument
to see whether or where it breaks down logically
(e.g., in establishing cause-effect relationships)?
• In what ways does this book or article contribute
to our understanding of the problem under study,
and in what ways is it useful for practice? What
are the strengths and limitations?
• How does this book or article relate to the
specific thesis or question I am developing?

19. Four Examples of
Literature Review
• Step by Step – drafting LR: Psychology.
Systematic arrangement…
• Ph.D. Thesis on ELT – Engineering Colleges in
Tamil Nadu. Summarizing…
• Example with teacher’s remark on LR. What to
do and what not to…
• CALL – The best of all

20. Web Tools for LR:

21. Web Tools helpful in LR:
• www.delicious.com/dilipbarad
• Google Docs
– www.docs.google.com
- Prepare a ‘form’ – easy to manage records in auto-
generated spread sheet.
-
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDBCQi1PeVduZTFTVHY3WnFyWktCY3c6MQ

22. Reference:
•
• Afolabi, M. (1992) 'The review of related literature in research' International journal of information and library
research, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 59-66.
• Barad, D P. Research Methodology. http://dilipbarad.blogspot.in/2013/12/presentations-on-research-
methodology.html
• Bourner, T. (1996) 'The research process: four steps to success', in Greenfield, T. (ed), Research methods: guidance
for postgraduates, Arnold, London.
• Bruce, C. (1993) 'When enough is enough: or how should research students delimit the scope of their literature
review?', in Challenging the Conventional Wisdom in Higher Education: Selected Contributions Presented at the
Ninteeth Annual National Conference and Twenty-First Birthday Celebration of the Higher Education Research and
Development Society of Australasia Inc., HERDSA, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. pp. 435-439.
• Bruce, C. (1994) 'Supervising literature reviews', in Zuber-Skerritt, O. and Ryan, Y. (eds), Quality in postgraduate
education, Kogan Page, London.
• Bruce, C. S. (1990) 'Information skills coursework for postgraduate students: investigation and response at the
Queensland University of Technology' Australian Academic & Research Libraries, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 224-232.
• Bruce, C. S. (1994) 'Research student's early experiences of the dissertation literature review' Studies in Higher
Education, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 217-229.
• Bruce, C. S. (1997) 'From Neophyte to expert: counting on reflection to facilitate complex conceptions of the
literature review', in Zuber-Skerritt, O. (ed), Frameworks for postgraduate education, Southern Cross University,
Lismore, NSW.
• Caspers, J. S (1998) 'Hands-on instruction across the miles: using a web tutorial to teach the literature review
research process' Research Strategies, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 187-197.
• Cooper, H. (2010). Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis: A Step-By-Step Approach.
Los Angeles: Sage. (call number McHenry Stacks H62 C5859)

23. Reference:
• Cooper, H. M. (1988) 'The structure of knowledge synthesis' Knowledge in Society, vol. 1, pp. 104-126
• Cooper, H. M. (1989) Integrating research : a guide for literature reviews, 2nd ed, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, Calif.
• Deakin University. (2009). The Literature Review. Geelong, Victoria, Australia: Author.
Retrieved 4th September 2009 from the World Wide Web: http://www.deakin.edu.au/library/findout/research/litrev.php
• Hart, Christopher r., Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination. Published in association
with The Open University.
• Jesson, Jill, Lydia Matheson, Fiona M. Lacey. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional And Systematic Techniques. Sage
Pub
• Leedy, P. D. (1997) Practical research: planning and design, 6th ed, Merrill, Upper Saddle River, N.J.
• Library Guides. Santa Cruz. University of California. http://library.ucsc.edu/print/help/howto/write-a-literature-review.
Retrieved 4th September 2009.
• Libutti, P.& Kopala, M. (1995) 'The doctoral student, the dissertation, and the library: a review of the literature' Reference
Librarian, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 5-25.
• Machi, L.A. (2009). The Literature Review: Six Steps to Success. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press. (call number
McHenry Stacks LB1047.3 M33)
• Madison, Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center. (2009). Writer's Handbook: Common Writing
Assignments: Review of Literature. Retrieved 4th September 2009 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html
• Martyn Shuttleworth (Sep 16, 2009). What is a Literature Review?. Retrieved Dec 04, 2016 from
Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/what-is-a-literature-review
• Mauch, J. E.& Birch, J. W. (2003) Guide to the successful thesis and dissertation: a handbook for students and faculty, 5th ed,
Marcel Dekker, New York.
• The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/literature-reviews/.
Retrieved 4th December 2016
• Writing. University of Toronto. http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review

24. Thank You . . .
• Website: www.dilipbarad.com
• Mail: dilipbarad@gmail.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/dilipbarad
• FB Page: www.facebook.com/dr.dilipbarad
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/dilipbarad
• Gtalk: dilipbarad
• Y!Msngr: d_barad
• Skype: dilip.barad