The literature review for your thesis

One research method you can use for your thesis is a literature review. This is also called a "scholarly review.” It involves answering your research question based on existing literature. To do this, you collect and refer to many different sources in order to produce an informed answer to your research question. Incidentally, a literature review sometimes also plays a role in developing and presenting your theoretical framework. Here, it forms a stepping stone for your own research.

In a literature review, you will not collect data yourself through, for example, a survey, interviews, or an experiment. Instead, you collect a large number of sources in the form of things like scientific articles, books, essays or material from archives. You read through these critically and then discuss them in your thesis. 

A literature review is never a summary of all findings from previous research. It is important to weigh carefully what you do and do not discuss and also to look critically at the results. For example, was the research conducted correctly? What comments or critiques can you add? How do results from one source compare to another? 

Your thesis may consist solely of a literature review, but it is also possible to combine a literature review with other research methods. Consider combining a literature review with a survey or experiment. In the latter case, you often discuss previous literature in the theoretical framework and discuss the results of your own research in the results chapter. In the discussion, you then compare your own results with those from previous research. If your literature review is part of a larger project, keep it more concise. The previous research then serves mainly as a stepping stone to forming your hypotheses and a foundation to build your research upon.

Since you have limited time to write a thesis, you often cannot gather and discuss all possible literature. Making choices is therefore important. Literature research can be tackled properly with these 6 steps.

1. Orient yourself within the subject

First, read up on your research topic. What can you find out about it? What has already been researched? What is missing? Read through a few recent publications and the sources they cite in detail so you can get an idea of the subject. 

2. Determine the search criteria for the literature

While reading the publications, you can already begin to make notes of potentially interesting and appropriate search terms. These are terms that you will later use to find relevant literature on your topic. They will also guide you as to which literature you will or will not include in your research. 

For search terms, you often also look at your problem statement,the research question, and your sub-questions. Crucial terms that appear in those are often also important for the keywords you choose.

Suppose you are doing research on students' summarization skills. Then, some appropriate search terms might include "summarizing," "excerpting," "writing a summary," and "summarizing college.”

Note: also include the translations of these search terms into any other languages that may be relevant for your project population (unless you have an important reason not to). That way you can find as much literature as possible. 

Furthermore, you can think about other search criteria, like time. For example, check the box to find only articles published in the last 20 years if this is important to your research.  

3. Find appropriate literature for the review

Using the criteria, you will search for appropriate sources to include in your literature review. You can use databases such as Google Scholar, your university or college's online library, or JSTOR (an online library that contains all academic journals, books and primary sources). To find appropriate sources, use your chosen search terms. 

Here are four tips for finding the right sources:

• Have you found an interesting source from an author with expertise within this field? See if this author has written more relevant literature. 

• Use the snowball method. This means looking in the bibliography of sources you found useful, and consulting those sources yourself.

• Keep in mind that it is best to consult recent literature. A pitfall of the snowball method is that you will find many somewhat older sources.

• Sometimes, you will only see an article’s abstract at first glance. In that case, log in with your university or college account. That way, you may be able to read and download the entire article for free. 

Save and clearly label all the literature you find so that it is easier to access all the sources in one place when you begin writing. 

4. Assess the literature you found

Not all the literature you have collected will be relevant and of a good quality. Moreover, you cannot discuss all the existing literature in your thesis. Therefore, only select the best sources you want to include in your thesis. To do so, look at the following factors:

• Assess whether the source is actually relevant to your research question or problem statement. You can often tell just based on the summary and conclusion of the publication, but sometimes more reading will be necessary to narrow it down.

• Preferably use only scholarly sources and those published in leading scientific journals. 

• Beware of online sources from websites or blogs. These are often less reliable (with a few exceptions).

• See how often the source has been cited by others(especially for slightly older sources). That can also say something about its quality.

• Find out who the author is. Is this someone who researches your topic often? Is this person affiliated with a university, college, or research institute? 

• Focus mainly on recent literature. If necessary, determine what the latest year a publication may be from in order to include it in your research. 

5. Conduct the literature review

Now it is time to read the literature in detail and discuss it in your thesis. In addition to doing a literature review, do you also collect your own data? If so, you often include your literature review in the problem analysis or theoretical framework. 

While reading the articles, make notes in a Word document on points of interest you find relevant to your research. You can also make digital markups in the articles (e.g., via Adobe). While reading, look closely at the results and conclusions, but also ask yourself if the research has any weaknesses. How do the different articles you read relate to each other? What theories are they based on? 

Based on these points, you can discuss the literature in your thesis. Your thesis supervisor will often give you tools for this. In any case, it is important that you discuss the literature in a logical way. Consider one of the following structures:

• Discuss the sources in chronological order to reveal how your topic changes through time. 

• Discuss the sources theme by theme. 

• Engage first with several studies using the same method and then discuss various sources that all use adifferent method. 

• Address them by their different theories. First discuss all sources that use one theory, then sources that apply the next theory, etc.

6. Include correct source citations

When conducting the literature review, you should be sure to correctly cite the sources you discuss. Always directly record which source you get certain information from.

This way you won’t forget to add the correct source citation when information is quoted or paraphrased, and you can avoid plagiarism, which is crucial for every thesis and essay.

Most programs require students to use  APA style  citations. Students in legal programs usually follow the Guidance for Legal Authors, which has a slightly different reference style. 

For correct source citations, use AthenaCheck's free source generator. Want to make sure you don't make mistakes in your source citations? Have your sources checked by our experienced editors, for just a small amount per source!