InfoGuides: Data Analytics Resources PROF 776: Literature Review

Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024 6:58 AM

Literature Review

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, topic. You may want to try Research Rabbit, a literature review tool. Then you can look up our journals and find the article.

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

Search for relevant literature
Evaluate sources
Identify themes, debates, and gaps
Outline the structure
Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

When you write a research paper, you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Research Rabbit Presentation

Literature Review Steps

Before searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic.

If you are writing the literature review section of a research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions.

Literature review research question example
What is the impact of social media on body image among Generation Z?

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in your literature search.

Keywords example

Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. See the database list under the Topic tab.

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Read the abstract to determine whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

Evaluate and select sources

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

What question or problem is the author addressing?
What are the key concepts, and how are they defined?
What are the key theories, models, and methods?
Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
What are the results and conclusions of the study?
How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible, and read any landmark studies and major theories in your research. .