Subject Guides
*Public Administration & Policy
Databases, websites, organizations and resources of use to Public Administration researchers.
Guide Contents
Literature Reviews: Introduction
A literature review is a "systematic, explicit, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating and synthesizing the existing body of completed and record work produced by researchers, scholars and practitioners (Fink, 2005).
As a researcher, there are multiple reasons why you may conduct a literature review:
- thoroughly understand your topic
- understand the depth of research that has been done and what needs to explored
- bring to light where disagreements on evidence are in the field
- explore methodologies available for your research
- to be able to place your own original work within the existing literature (Booth, 2012)
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Types and Organization of a Lit Review
Types
- Narrative/Traditional
A highly common approach, it allows the scholar to summarize existing research, draw themes, and highlight disagreements and gaps in the field. This approach also can be easily tainted by researcher bias, and if the existing body of research is large, it can be difficult to organize the lit review easily.
- Systematic
This approach defines what will be included and excluded in the review based on explicit criteria (such as time frame, study methodology, etc), documentation of the search process, quality assessment of the results, and seeks to be as fully comprehensive as possible.
- Meta-analysis
A systemic review analyzes quantitative studies that study the same subject, using the same procedure.
- Meta-synthesis
Reviews and analysis qualitative research studies by identifying common themes or elements with the goal of creating new theories or concepts
Organization
- Thematic
Explore trends in specific topics, which allow disagreements among researchers and gaps in the field to emerge easily.
- Chronological
This approach will allow changes in research patterns to easily emerge, but will only work if it clear that research has built on itself throughout time. It may not work well if it is a field in which there has been many new influences from external disciplines.
- Method
Discussing a particular methodological theme in studies may bolster the approach that you opt to use for your own research.
No one organization method has to stand alone. For example, within in each theme, you may opt to further organize your literature review by chronological order.
(Sources: Booth, 2012; University of Toledo)
Pre-search
1. Have your thesis statement developed.
2. Brainstorm the concepts and ideas that you are going to use to search for your literature related to your topic.
- Free-writing or concept mapping may be used to help. The idea isn't to have a developed paragraph here, but just to get ideas down for searching.
3. Determine the subjects that you need to search within to do a complete literature review.
During the search
- Keep a log of what you have searched and where you have searched.
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- what did I type in? did I try these as keyword searches? subject searches?
- what worked? what didn't work?
- what do I need to go back to?
- what terms/authors do I see coming up that I need to explore?
As you get deeper into your research, this will save you time by allowing you see patterns and prevents you from backtracking.
- Track your bibliographic citations with a citation management tool so you can find your sources quickly and easily.
- You will want to be able to add to it, edit it, and if necessary, share it with fellow researchers. Our Citation Managers page can help you choose one that might work for you.
- Explore tools in research databases that allow you to track your search histories and results easily.
- Once you access the databases through our website, many of them have an account creation option. While every vendor is different, these options are always worth exploring. For example, in Ebsco, if you log in with your account, you can save search histories from session to session.
To find out more, ask your librarian or use the HELP screens in each database.
- Once you access the databases through our website, many of them have an account creation option. While every vendor is different, these options are always worth exploring. For example, in Ebsco, if you log in with your account, you can save search histories from session to session.
- You will want to be able to add to it, edit it, and if necessary, share it with fellow researchers. Our Citation Managers page can help you choose one that might work for you.
Organizing the Research
Sometimes, during a strong literature review may involve multiple read throughs of the literature:
- Consider how you are going to organize your literature review - you may need to review the abstracts of everything to give you an idea what may work best before you read your literature in depth.
- Read over the literature that you have found, noting where the disagreements and agreements are themes, methods and conclusions. Be consistent with what you record for each piece of literature.
- A good literature review does not just simply summarize what has been already been done, but will analyze and synthesize. Review your notes and ask critical questions of the literature. It may be necessary to go back and re-read all or some of the literature at this point.
- Before you start writing, arrange you notes in the general organizational order that you plan on using them in the literature review - for example, if you are doing a chronological theme, then place your notes in that order. This help make sure you don't miss anything by accident.
