The Guidelines On Writing A Dissertation Literature Review

The literature review is one of the most important chapters of your dissertation. The basic aim of this chapter is to provide the critical analysis of the published sources related to your subject. It provides a summary, comparison and evaluation of the literature. A literature review also shows to the readers that you have read the literature and you have a grasp on the main published work that is related to your topic. Before going to write the literature review, you should keep in mind the requirements of the literature review.

1) Understand the requirements of the literature review

The most important requirements of the literature review are given below;

a) It provides a comparison and contrast of the views of the different authors on a particular problem or issue

b) It also tells us the type of methodologies used by the different authors

c) A literature review also highlights the gaps in research

d) It also shows that how your research is related to the previous research

e) At last, it is also necessary for us to provide the summary of the literature

2) Understand the purpose of the literature review

The purpose is the reason for which something is done. If we are going to write the literature review in our dissertation, then definitely, it should also have some purpose. The purpose of the literature review in our dissertation is explained in the following points;

a) A literature review will define the problem that we are looking for. It also tells the readers about the limits of the problem.

b) A literature review provides the historical perspective to the study

c) It is also a way to avoid the unnecessary duplication of your dissertation

d) With the help of the literature review, we will be able to evaluate the research problems

e) It is also a way to tell the readers that what is the relationship between your research and the previous research

3) Broaden your research

After understanding the requirements and the purpose of the literature review, it’s time to collect the data for the literature review. While collecting the data for the literature review, you should try to draw very tight mental borders across the research question. As a result, you will never try to see other research areas which are irrelevant to your topic and you will be able to collect exact that data which is required by the readers.

4) Formatting and organizing the literature review


After collecting the data for the literature review, the next step is to write the data. The format of the literature review consists of the three sections. In the first section, you should try to introduce the theoretical concepts that you are going to discuss in the literature review. In the second section, you should explain the each theoretical concept into different paragraphs. Make sure that you have explained only one theoretical concept in each paragraph and there should be a logical sequence between all the paragraphs. At last, you should try to summarize the main points of the literature review in a paragraph.