Doing a Literature Review- Jeffrey W. Knopf

1. Doing a Literature Review- Jeffrey W. Knopf Author: Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School; BA and MA from Harvard, Ph.D. from Stanford Audience: Graduate students! Professor Knopf teaches a research methods course Three bullet points: (Thanks Paul!) • Literature review should be a synthesis of body of work/knowledge on topic (summarize and evaluate) • Be sure to include or frame how your research will contribute to the body of knowledge on your subject • Proceed systematically and thoroughly

2. Synthesis • Summarize body of knowledge on topic; findings and claims made in prior research • Evaluate research critically; present a conclusion about state of the knowledge and how “accurate and complete” it is. Consider what may be missing, incomplete, right/wrong

3. Questions a literature review answers Knopf lists four tasks or sets of questions a literature review should address: • What has this study or work examined? • What has this study or work concluded? • Summarize the results into three categories: what the studies/works have in common, what they disagree about and what they overlook or ignore • Reach a judgment: what are the key findings that appear to be valid and where is more work needed?

4. Contribution to Knowledge • Include how your topic will contribute or add to the body of knowledge researched in the review • Author identifies two types of knowledge: - What we believe - How strongly we believe it • Contribution can include new knowledge, contradict existing knowledge or affect the certainty or degree of confidence with which ones believes a set of knowledge

5. Sources- “Casting your net” Traditional books & academic journals expand to consider consider governmental agencies, NGOs, theses etc. • Avoid too few and too many sources UMI Dissertations- ProQuest • Go to Hollis • Under “Search & Find” choose “Dissertations & Theses” • Once there can also choose to “search all databases” - Select various works, examples: • Encyclopedias and Reference Works • Conference Papers & Proceedings • Government and Official Publications

6. Academic Press • Association of American University Presses member list: http://www.aaupnet.org/aaup-members/membership-list • Harvard University Press: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/ • Princeton University Press: http://press.princeton.edu/ • Yale University Press: http://yalepress.yale.edu/ • Cambridge University Press: http://www.cambridge.org/ • Oxford University Press: http://global.oup.com

7. Knopf’s seven tips for an effective review: • Read other literature reviews to get an idea of format, ideas you like and don’t like etc. • For each work you read be sure you understand the central premise and can explain it in a sentence or two • Written review should be selective- don’t include everything you read • Do not only summarize • Impose order on your sources, categorize them in some way (theories, methods, policies etc.) • Review essays and articles are no substitute for your own reading • Associate individual authors and points of view with one another as they are variedly referred in both ways

8. Footnotes In his footnotes, Knopf discusses a few resources for the literature review: • An Appendix to Finding Sources (Booth, Colomb, & Williams) • Political Science Research methods, Ch. 5 (Johnson and Reynolds) My own footnote: http://guides.library.harvard.edu/literaturereview