Writing a Critical Literature Review
After numerous healthy discussions with my friends and fellow researchers, I still wasn’t clear about the idea of critical literature review. So, I decided to take help from the online resources and from my mentor. The knowledge I got, was surely helpful and I really want to share it with the PhD candidates who are still looking for the answers related to the critical literature review.
I would like to start this post by answering ‘what a critical literature review is?’
Okay, let me tell you that a critical literature review is an overview of published and unpublished resources which answer two basic questions:
- What are the current theoretical issues, policies and debates related to your topic?
- What is the current state of knowledge about these problems and issues?
You guys must be wondering what’s the requirement of a literature review?
I tell you, Literature Review is required:
- As a way to frame and focus a research project
- When research questions are formed without sustained reference to the literature.
- Knowledge of the literature helps in tighten research question and enhance conceptual sensibility of the topic.
- As a way to justify a research project to the readers.
Now, how should you start with a critical literature review?
You would start writing your literature review once your topic for research has been decided and objectives have been ascertained. Now according to the same, you must go about writing your literature review. You could follow this stepwise guide for achieving your goal of writing a high-caliber literature review:
- Accumulating the literature you would like to review:
This step is basically for taking notes of two points:
Why you chose certain studies to review and reject the others and secondly, the years in which these studies were conducted. It is advisable to refer to the researchers that are closely related to your research topic and are conducted recently.
- Analyzing the literature critically:
Be a Critique! Now, you should be able to briefly state the purpose and findings of each research study you are including in the review. Also, you should be able to point out the weakness and limitations of researches conducted. It will be helpful in analyzing the literature at an all-inclusive level. At a micro level, jot down the key contribution of researchers which is unique and value adding in nature. You should be able to address the relevance and exceptional researches conducted by the fellow researchers as it is the mark of a good scholar.
- Summarizing the review:
There should be a draft of various research contributions you are going to extract from each research papers. Divide the research papers based on the similar findings and similar thought processes together. In this step, you should be able to identify and formulate the studies that disagree with each other’s, it would be helpful in building and highlighting the contrasting view point about research topic in review.
- Give structure to your review:
It is easier to give a literature review a proper structure if you have a format in front of you. This will help in governing the flow of topic and from one paragraph or section to the other.
- Start drafting the review:
After following g the above mentioned steps, you should be all set to begin with draft of your literature review. The literature review will link your research objectives with the findings of already conducted researchers and also address these studies that draw opposite conclusions as compared to yours.
I think, you are good to go now with the critical literature review. In case, you still have any query, feel free to get in touch with us by dropping us email at: info@phdthesiswriters.com
