The Literature Review Maze: How to Conduct a Literature Review (Part 1)

One of the first steps on the journey to a PhD or any research project is conducting a literature review. After the first few weeks of trying to settle into the UK when I moved to start my PhD, the literature review was the first thing that I started working on based on my rough idea of a topic. The literature review that I worked on eventually ended up constituting a large chunk of my 10,000 word first year progress report. In PhD programmes in the United Kingdom, you enter as a probationary student, and you have to present an extended piece of writing at the end of the first year called the first year progress report before your status is upgraded to a full PhD student. In my case, my first year progress report was an expanded research proposal for my project. In this blog post, I’ll be sharing the steps that I took in writing up my literature review.

1. Search for relevant sources (articles and books) on library databases: The search engine of your university library is always a good place to start to find articles and books that you would like to read for your literature review. Based on keywords from your research topic, you can begin to find relevant articles and books. My topic was “The Social Networks and Job Quality of Self-Employed Young People in Ghana and Nigeria” so keywords I could input into search engines included “social networks”, “youth employment in Africa”, “social networks of self-employed” etc. Also, you can search on databases, which are online collections of various sources. In the field of sociology, databases that you could search for relevant literature include JSTOR, ProQuest Sociology, SAGE Research Methods, Sociological Abstracts etc.

2. Create an Annotated Bibliography: Basically, an annotated bibliography is a short summary of each source that you read. Typically, an annotated bibliography entry I would make of a particular article or book would contain a short summary of the source, the strengths of the source, the weaknesses of the source and how the source could contribute to my literature review.

To be continued…