A literature review is a comprehensive summary of previous research on a topic.

The literature review

surveys scholarly articles, books, and other sources relevant to a particular area of research. The review
should enumerate, describe, summarize, objectively evaluate and clarify this previous research. It
should give a theoretical base for the research and help you (the author) determine the nature of your
research. The literature review acknowledges the work of previous researchers, and in so doing, assures
the reader that your work has been well conceived. It is assumed that by mentioning a previous work in
the field of study, that the author has read, evaluated, and assimiliated that work into the work at hand.

A literature review creates a "landscape" for the reader, giving her or him a full understanding of the
developments in the field. This landscape informs the reader that the author has indeed assimilated all
(or the vast majority of) previous, significant works in the field into her or his research.

The purpose of the literature review

The purpose of a literature review is simple; it is to educate oneself in the

topic area and to understand the literature before shaping an argument or

justification.

Conducting a literature review involves collecting, evaluating and analyzing publications (such as books
and journal articles) that relate to your research question. There are five main steps in the process of
writing a literature review:

Search for relevant literature

Evaluate sources

Identify themes, debates and gaps

Outline the structure

Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources – it analyzes, synthesizes, and critically
evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

Over the years, numerous types of literature

reviews have emerged, but the four main types are traditional or narrative,

systematic, meta-analysis and meta-synthesis.

„ The primary purpose of a traditional or narrative literature review is to analyse and summarise a body
of literature. This is achieved by presentinga comprehensive background of the literature within the
interested topic to highlight new research streams, identify gaps or recognise inconsistencies. This type
of literature review can help in refining, focussingand shaping research questions as well as in developing
theoretical andconceptual frameworks (Coughlan et al., 2007).

„ The systematic literature review in contrast undertakes a more rigorous

approach to reviewing the literature, perhaps because this type of reviewis often used to answer highly
structured and specific research questions. „ The meta-analysis literature review involves taking the
findings from thechosen literature and analysing these findings by using standardisedstatistical
procedures (Coughlan et al., 2007).

Polit and Beck (2006) arguethat meta-analysis methods help in drawing conclusions and
detectingpatterns and relationships between findings. „ They also discuss

meta-synthesis, which is a non-statistical procedure;instead it evaluates and analyses findings from

qualitative studies andaims to build on previous conceptualisations and interpretations.