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The Literature Review Maze: How to Conduct a Literature Review (Part 2)

In the first part of this blog post, I began to share about my journey of conducting a literature review for my topic as I began to refine my project in the first year of my PhD. Here below, I list the remaining steps that I took to complete my literature review.


1. Structure your literature review: After I had read some articles and books related to my topic, I began to think of ways in which I could structure my literature review. Broadly, there are two ways that you can structure your literature review depending on what it is for. If it is going to be a standalone literature review which could possibly be published, you typically would have an introduction, the body and conclusion.

a. Introduction: This introduces the topic of the literature review and the main point/argument that you would like to make.

b. Body: In the body, you will detail out the various strands of the body of literature that you will be including.

c. Conclusion: The conclusion summarizes the state of the literature and gives possible directions for future research in the field.

If the literature review is part of a larger body of work such as a proposal or dissertation, it would be structured slightly differently. Similar to the standalone literature review, there will be an introduction and body. However, the introduction and body will be followed by a section detailing out the significance of your project. In this section, you will discuss how your particular research project is going to contribute to the existing body of literature through the questions that you are seeking to answer.


2. Write…a little bit everyday: The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. The journey of a five-thousand word literature review begins with one word. Once you have read relevant sources and you have a structure in mind, begin to write down some words everyday, and soon you will have a complete literature review.

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