Lecture 3: Reviewing the literature

1. The Islamic University of Gaza- Higher Studies Deanery Research writing (MMCD 6304) Lecture 3: Reviewing the literature Mohammed Alhanjouri

2. literature review The literature review is an essential stage in conducting a research project, it amounts on average, to between 20 and 25 per cent of a dissertation content, Certain dissertations subjects may require a literature review amounting up to 50 per cent of the content. The literature review involves reading and appraising what other people have written about your subject area. It can be both descriptive and analytical. It is descriptive in that it describes the work of previous writers and it is analytical in that it critically analyses the contribution of others with the view of identifying similarities and contradictions made by previous writers.

3. Knowing the sources of information. • Understanding how the library works. • Collecting existing knowledge on the subject, reading and note-taking. • Systematically organizing the literature. • Appraising and writing up the literature review. There are five main activities involved in undertaking a literature review

4. Rationale for undertaking a literature review • In order to be able to make an original contribution to knowledge in your research area, the literature review should demonstrate that you have a comprehensive grasp of existing knowledge. • The literature review serves two purposes. • First, it seeks systematic reading of previously published and unpublished information relating to your area of investigation. The gathered information will develop issues and themes and should drive you to the next important stage, namely, research design. • Second, the literature review will help you to improve your research study by looking into previous research design or questionnaires which will give you some insights into how you can design your own study more effectively. • The authors of past dissertations, theses and published journal articles gave their research work a great deal of thought, and you can frequently benefit from their thinking when conducting your literature search. In other words, a literature review attempts to integrate what others have done and said, to criticize previous scholarly works, to build bridges between related topic areas, and/or identify the central issues in a field.

6. Knowing the sources of information There are three types of literature sources 1- Primary literature sources Academic research journals (refereed) Refereed conferences Dissertation/theses Reports/occasional papers 2- Secondary literature sources Textbooks Trade journals, newspapers and magazines 3- Reference guides Dictionaries and glossaries Encyclopaedias Handbooks

7. Understanding how the library works to know how to find the material. It is important to understand the library and how to use its sources most effectively Three important points that you need to bear in mind while conducting a literature research • Find the most relevant published materials quickly. • Avoid getting ‘bogged down’. • Get into the habit of recording information derived from your reading so that it can be easily found and understood weeks, months or years later.

8. You may have to spend a few days getting to know the services offered by your library, what materials it holds and where, as well as the coding or shelving system it uses (usually the Dewey decimal system). Each library should contain the following: • Library catalogue. • Abstracts/indexes. • Citation indexes. • Microfiche/microfilm. • CD-ROM, on-line database, Internet/World Wide Web, • Telnet, JANET/NISS. (Telnet is a client-server protocol) (Joint Academic NETwork/ National Information Services and Systems)

9. Note-taking Note-taking provides you with a focused framework and ensures that unnecessary detail is not incorporated into the review. To enable you to get the most out of the literature, it might be useful if you address each piece of literature with the following questions: • What do I know already? • What am I looking for in this source; what do I think I need? • What is useful or different in this source, given my existing • knowledge and interest?

11. Organising the literature review The summary and abstract for each article become important for quickly sifting out the irrelevant from the relevant research. The principle of structuring the literature file: • Subdivide your file into a number of topical areas. • In each of these sections you will include all the literature review that falls under the relevant topic area together with your summary note-taking form • Create an index sheet at the front of the file. This sheet will provide you with a list of all the articles, book chapters, etc. that are included in the file.

12. Such file/s will later help you to: suggest hunches الحدس and possible research design to test these hunches. intellectually argue the acceptance or refutation of various authors’ arguments. C. define key concepts and derive into logical relationships between these key concepts. D. write your literature review chapters. After all, your literature chapters will contain the same topic areas as in your file/s.

13. Critical appraisal of literature review A critical appraisal is analytical in nature. It critically examines the contribution of other people’s work with the view to identify the following: • Similarities in the statements made by previous writers; • Common issue(s) raised by previous writers; • Differences or contradiction of statements made by previous writers; • Criticisms made by previous writers.