How to Make Literature Review Comprehensive? Crafting a Thorough Examination of Research
Dissertation writing is a rigorous task. It takes years of research to get a doctoral degree. You have to go through different stages to successfully submit an impeccable dissertation. To write a comprehensive dissertation, a literature review carries a lot of significance. A literature review is one of the most important yet quite dry parts of a dissertation. Many students struggle in writing a literature review and usually waste many precious months of their academic lives because they study irrelevant literature. To write a comprehensive literature, students need the right direction. This guest article will walk you through some key steps which will help you write a literature review with a thorough examination of the research process in detail.
An Overview of the Dissertation Process
Dissertation is a long form of academic writing which is an authentic research work carried out by a candidate to get a doctoral degree. For the success of your overall dissertation, one of the key tasks is topic selection. Students can also get help from online websites. For instance, if you are a business student you can search for business management dissertation topics uk and a diverse range of topics will open from which you can select.
A dissertation contributes to a student’s respective field of study. It usually takes 1-3 years on average to complete. However, this timeline varies from person to person. Make sure you label everything in your dissertation as per the policies and procedures of your university department. Properly give implications and insights of your research in discussion. It helps in getting smooth feedback from the mentor and assigned committee. The main chapters of a dissertation are:
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Literature Review
Chapter 3: Research Methodology and Design
Chapter 4: Data Interpretation
Chapter 5: Discussion and Conclusion
In this particular article, we will focus on the chapter on literature review.
What is a literature Review?
To write a comprehensive literature review, students must be aware of what is it. Literature Review is a critical analysis of the preliminary literature on a given topic. With the help of preliminary literature, students can understand the gaps and limitations which can be bridged with future research. The literature review provides significance and purpose to your research.
How to write a comprehensive literature review?
Many students are often confused about how long should a literature review be. Well, it depends upon several factors such as field of study, purpose of research, timeline for research, level of study etc. Following are some best practices which students must follow to write a comprehensive literature review.
Define your scope and purpose
In a literature review, the first and foremost thing is to define the scope and purpose of the study which includes understanding the research question or the problem you are going to address through your research. Another key area is objectives and aims which must be taken into account so that you do not end up selecting irrelevant sources. Moreover, also check about how much broader or narrower your topic is. Once you are clear about all these questions about your research, it will get easier for you to select the right literature sources for your dissertation.
Select scholarly credible sources
Literature review needs utmost and careful planning because the internet is loaded with loads of worthy-less publications. Therefore, always choose credible sources which are from authorised publishers. To further check the credibility of a source check the author, date, methodology and findings of the literature. Moreover, use different types of paper for your dissertation such as journals, articles, books, and reports. In short, use a systematic and meticulous approach for searching and shortlisting the literature for your dissertation to write a compelling one.
Organise the sources
After selecting credible sources, it is time to systematically organise and structure them. Make a document in which you place all the updated and relevant data systematically. There are different methods of organising the data such as date-wise, thematic, theoretical, or methodological. However, what you get to choose for yourself highly depends upon the purpose and research question. Moreover, structure your literature wisely and link it coherently with other parts such as the introduction, research methodology and discussion.
Analyse your sources critically
After selecting, organising, and structuring the sources, now you have to analyse the literature sources critically because writing a literature review is not merely about paraphrasing the existing literature, it is about critically analysing the main arguments and drawing findings out of it. Therefore, compare the sources and find themes, patterns and trends in the existing literature that are well-suited to your research question. This analysis part requires the integration and coherence of the existing literature with your topic of discussion which needs to be done with careful and logical thinking.
Proofread and edit the literature
This is one of the important steps but is often overlooked by students. When you are done with the analysis of the existing literature, start writing the literature review. You must now add anything from your point of view in the literature. Only assess the literature and link it with your topic and research question. Read your literature review and revise the work wherever needed. Check for any grammatical, punctuation, formatting, spelling mistakes, and citation errors. It is important to make an error-free document and to review the structure as well. Readers get those mistakes immediately while reading the dissertation so it is better to find them yourself rather than other professors.
Conclusion
To conclude, writing a dissertation is a challenging task. You need to pass several milestones to write a stellar dissertation. In this hard-core job, writing a literature review is one of the daunting tasks. Proper organisation and structuring of data are equally important so that you do not lose focus. There is a large sum of data available on the internet which often leads to a lack of focus. Henceforth, write a literature review with strategic planning and get someone’s assistance wherever required.
