Literature review in research example

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally among scholars that become part of the body of epistemological traditions within the field.

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Overview of thesis (introduction)
Literature review
Chapter 1: Literature review of relevant research

In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Types of Literature Reviews

Argumentative Review
This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply embedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below].

Integrative Review
Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social sciences.

Historical Review
Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review
A review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis]. Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels [i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own study.

Systematic Review
This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem. Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?" This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social sciences.

Theoretical Review
The purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

NOTE: Most often the literature review will incorporate some combination of types. For example, a review that examines literature supporting or refuting an argument, assumption, or philosophical problem related to the research problem will also need to include writing supported by sources that establish the history of these arguments in the literature.

Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary. "Writing Narrative Literature Reviews." Review of General Psychology 1 (September 1997): 311-320; Mark R. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature." Educational Researcher 36 (April 2007): 139-147; Petticrew, Mark and Helen Roberts. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2006; Torracro, Richard. "Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples." Human Resource Development Review 4 (September 2005): 356-367; Rocco, Tonette S. and Maria S. Plakhotnik. "Literature Reviews, Conceptual Frameworks, and Theoretical Frameworks: Terms, Functions, and Distinctions." Human Ressource Development Review 8 (March 2008): 120-130; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

Student Examples

There isn't one ideal type of literature review and you may need to employ a range of methods and provide reasons for your choices depending on the research area, problem and methodology. Aveyard (2014) describes a number of ways to approach writing a literature review. Most importantly though, take a close look at your assessment task, the associated marking criteria and access the support material on the first page of this guide. These will guide you towards an application of the fundamental characteristics required in the review.

Below are some examples of literature reviews written by ACAP students. Use these to gain an understanding of the generic structure and language used when writing your own literature reviews.

Evidence-Based Practice & Systematic Reviews

As a result of a vast increase in the availability of information, practitioners have an increasing responsibility to provide services based on best practice that has been informed by evidence-based research. Practitioners then, use evidence-based practice (EBP) to make decisions about the care of clients (techniques, strategies, interventions, treatments and so on) based on the most up-to-date and judicious use of systematically researched evidence.

Given the vast amount of information available and the varying quality of research conducted in and around EBP, the need for systematic reviews has emerged in order to provide a way to collect, analyse and draw conclusions, particularly about a field where the research may indicate inconsistencies or contradictory findings.

While you cannot use systematic reviews as a part of the research for your literature reviews, they are extremely valuable sources of information and an essential guide to best practice for professionals. While researching for your literature reviews, use EBPs and systematic reviews to gain an understanding of the issues in and around your topic and employ the citation chaining process to extract research that is usable in your assessment tasks. The tabs below will connect you to some examples of both.

This example shows how a literature review from a PhD thesis can be analysed for its structure, purpose and content.

Three sections of the thesis are analysed to show the:

relationship between the introduction and the literature review
structure and purpose of dedicated literature review chapters
inclusion of literature review in other chapters of the thesis.

Overview of thesis (introduction)

This introductory section is less than two pages long.

The first paragraph:

states the overall objective of the thesis
defines the introduced term
provides broad motivation for interest in the area
introduces the sections of the thesis that will address the overall objective.

The other paragraphs describe the content and purpose of each section of the thesis.

Literature review

The literature review is made of up of two chapters.

Chapter 1: Literature review of relevant research

The overall goals of this chapter are to firstly establish the significance of the general field of study, and then identify a place where a new contribution could be made.

The bulk of the chapter critically evaluates the methodologies used in this field to identify the appropriate approach for investigating the research questions.

Purpose	Example
Establish research territory	“Approximately 77,000 individuals are arrested in the United States each year based primarily on eyewitness testimony (ref.). … Given the pivotal role that eyewitness testimony plays in some trials, it is important to establish whether or not the jury’s faith in this testimony is warranted.”
Establish significance of research territory	“One study has shown that eyewitness errors are the most common cause of false convictions (ref.). Almost all innocent individuals exonerated by DNA evidence had been convicted primarily as a result of erroneous eyewitness evidence (ref.) Consequently, a great deal of research has focussed on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony (refs.).”
Establish research niche – discusses what has been found then identifies a gap and points out the inconsistency of results	“The current thesis examines the third way that postevent misinformation may be encountered: through other witnesses. This area has been surprisingly neglected until recently, as the majority of the literature on eyewitness testimony has focussed on the effect of questions and media reports containing misleading information.”
Motivate the next part of literature review	“Yarmey and Morris (1998) suggest that, ‘The capricious results among these investigations are probably due to methodological differences and variability in subject matter’ (p. 1638). To appreciate the effects of co-witness information on eyewitness reports, we must examine, in detail, the different methodologies that have been used to investigate this topic.”
Further justify the need to investigate the impact of social influences on memory	“Traditionally, researchers in memory have aimed to keep procedures free from contamination, such as other people’s memories (ref.). However, such a narrow focus may not fully explain how people remember (ref.). Because such ‘contamination’ is common to memory, understanding its effects enables greater knowledge of memory itself (ref.). … Therefore, instead of intentionally avoiding the social aspects of memory, they should be explored in their own right.”
Review the chronological development of research in this area (a chronological approach may not always be appropriate) Discuss one key paper at a time and for each paper: describe methods and key findings identify weaknesses in the method or limitations in the findings discuss how the next researchers tried to address these problems.	“While the above studies provide valuable information regarding the social aspects of memory, caution needs to be exercised before applying these results to the judicial area. One should not assume the results obtained from studies using stories and word lists as stimuli can be generalised to forensic contexts.” … “That is, the differences found between individuals and groups could simply be due to the participants giving their reports for a second time …” … “A limitation of this research on collaborative memory is that the memory of groups is compared with that of individuals. … group performance should not be compared with individual performance but rather with ‘nominal groups’ comprised of pooled, non-redundant data from the same number of people tested individually.”
Overall conclusion or summary that states why a particular methodological approach has been chosen	“… Most research involving the Experimentally Induced Information methodology seeks to identify the influence of misinformation presented by one witness to another, and therefore the assumption is made that discussion between witnesses is a detrimental process. It may therefore be advantageous to also investigate the effects of co-witness information using Natural Discussion Groups as this methodology has high ecological validity. However, few studies have used this methodology, and those that have, have yielded mixed findings. Therefore, future investigation using the Natural Discussion Group methodology would be helpful to better understand the effects of discussion on memory.”

Purpose	Example
Establish a reason for this chapter and state the purpose	“While the misinformation effect is a well-established phenomenon, ‘what remains in dispute is the nature of a satisfactory theoretical explanation’ (ref.). … Therefore, in order to understand why memory conformity occurs, we must draw from both cognitive research on memory and social research on conformity. In this section, relevant cognitive and social theories are discussed in order to (1) explain the occurrence of memory conformity and (2) describe factors that influence memory conformity.”
Introduction/overview of the structure of the review	“Four distinct explanations have been offered for the memory conformity effect: (1) … The empirical evidence relevant to each of these explanations is reviewed in this section.”
Discuss each of the four explanations using the following structure: definition when it might happen supporting evidence limitations of the explanation (this is the 'critical' part of a critical review).	“Whilst normative social influence may explain the conformity that occurs in …, it is an unlikely explanation for memory conformity that may occur when people give individual statements following discussion in the absence of their co-witness. (Then reason why)”
Compare explanations and draw synthesised conclusions	“The suggestion that memory conformity is a result of biased guessing is similar to the informational influence explanation because in both instances … However, the distinguishing feature between the two explanations is that …” … “Whilst biased guessing may account for the misinformation effect that occurs in some instances (refs.), research suggests that it is not the only reason for the occurrence of the misinformation effect. (Supporting evidence) … This suggests that the misinformation effect may be due at least partially to memory impairment, rather than just biased guessing.”
Summarise what has been learned from the review of the four current theoretical explanations Identify which explanations are likely to be valid in explaining the results of experiments conducted for this thesis Aim to resolve theoretical uncertainties	“Informational influence, biased guessing, and modification of memory may help to explain why memory conformity occurs when participants are tested individually, as they are in the studies presented in this thesis. … The research presented in this thesis compares these alternative explanations to determine which best explains memory conformity in individual recall following co-witness discussion. (Why this is important to do)”
Discuss methodological issues in achieving aim	“One way to determine whether memory conformity occurs because of biased guessing is to …” “Experiments described in this thesis (Studies 5-7) include a warning for some participants about possible misinformation in an attempt to determine whether participants report misinformation because of informational influence or memory change.”
Introduce another question of interest and review what has been found so far	“Whist it has been shown that in some circumstances many people tend to conform to the opinions of others, we also know that some people are able to resist conforming in some situations. For example, … This section of the literature review examines factors influencing whether or not a person is likely to conform that are (1) in the situation, and (2) within the individual.”
Clarify the relevance to the thesis	“Although the experiments described in this thesis do not attempt to manipulate and test the factors that influence conformity, they are used to help understand the results obtained and consider implications of the findings.”

This chapter has the following structure:

Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion.

The introduction introduces the particular study to be reported on, and includes a three-and-a-half page literature review.

The literature review in this chapter:

links back to the relevant general findings of the earlier literature review chapters
briefly reviews the broad motivation for this study
identifies that two previously used methodologies in this field will be compared to resolve questions about the findings of previous studies which had only used a single methodology
uses previous literature to generate specific hypotheses to test
reviews additional literature to provide a justification for a second objective to be investigated in the study reported on in this chapter.