Crafting a literature review for your MSc thesis can be a daunting task.

It requires comprehensive
research, critical analysis, and precise structuring to effectively synthesize existing literature and
contribute to your field of study. The literature review serves as the foundation for your research,
providing context, theoretical frameworks, and empirical evidence that support your thesis statement
and research objectives.

One of the main challenges in writing a literature review is navigating through a vast amount of
scholarly literature. The process involves identifying relevant sources, evaluating their credibility, and
synthesizing key findings and arguments. Additionally, organizing the literature coherently within
your review while maintaining a logical flow can be challenging.

Another difficulty lies in critically analyzing the literature. This requires more than just summarizing
existing studies; it involves identifying gaps, contradictions, and debates within the literature.
Analyzing and synthesizing these aspects help in forming your own argument and positioning your
research within the broader scholarly conversation.

Structuring your literature review is crucial for clarity and coherence. While there is no one-size-fits-
all structure, an effective literature review typically includes an introduction that outlines the scope
and purpose of the review, a body that organizes the literature thematically or chronologically, and a
conclusion that summarizes key findings and highlights the significance of your research.

Given the complexities involved, many students seek assistance in writing their literature reviews. ⇒
StudyHub.vip ⇔ offers professional writing services tailored to your MSc literature review needs.
Our team of experienced writers specializes in conducting thorough research, critically analyzing
literature, and crafting well-structured reviews that meet academic standards. With our assistance,
you can confidently present a literature review that strengthens the foundation of your MSc thesis.
Analyzing data using quantitative or qualitative methods. Like any other academic text, your
literature review should have an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion. Keep in mind that
UNC Libraries have research guides and to databases relevant to many fields of study. Systematic
literature reviews, meta-analyses of published data, and meta-analyses of individual data (pooled
reanalyses) are now being published with increasing frequency. Purpose: It serves to provide a
comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field. These figures
make it clear how increasingly difficult it is for physicians in private practice, clinicians and scientists
to obtain comprehensive current information on any given medical topic. People need to go to the
marketplace to transact which usually available in specific places and times. Instructions of this sort
help to lay down standards for the summary of individual studies. What are the benefits of writing a
literature review. There is likely some type of written literature review in every social science article
you have ever read. Goals of Literature Reviews What are the goals of creating a Literature Review.
Examples of consumer to consumer e-commerce are: eBay and Etsy. This step will help you work
out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will
contribute to existing knowledge. Rather, the purpose here is to reflect upon gaps in the current body
of literature and to describe how and in what ways you anticipate your research will begin to fill in
some or all of those gaps. E-commerce involves baying, selling products or services through an
electronic medium without using any paper document ( Niranjanamurthy, Kavyashree, 2013 ).
Information systems researchers, among others, have contributed to advancing knowledge on how to
structure a “traditional” review. More Features Connections Canva Create professional content with
Canva, including presentations, catalogs, and more. Types of Literature Reviews It is important to
think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. Many systematic reviews, but not
all, use statistical methods to combine the results of independent studies into a single quantitative
estimate or summary effect size. It should not feel like a glorified annotated bibliography. ( ).
Embed Host your publication on your website or blog with just a few clicks. This process can help
you to develop your own research skills, including your ability to find and use relevant sources of
information. The included studies were first summarized in a descriptive overview, as is common in
systematic review articles (Table 2). Prospectively planned meta-analyses will not be further
discussed in this article. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and
language to illuminate the following discussion: However, other studies have shown that even
gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil,
1990). Once a list of articles is generated from the keyword and subject heading search, the
researcher must then manually browse through each title and abstract, to determine the suitability of
that article before a full-text article is obtained for the research question. What else could the
author(s) have reasonably done to make a stronger case. This situation occurred with one of the
authors of this textbook?s research related to community resilience. Does the research use established
frameworks or take an innovative approach. The literature review gives you a chance to:
Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context Develop a theoretical framework
and methodology for your research Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate You might also have to write
a literature review as a stand-alone assignment.
For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899.
Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction, a main body, and a
conclusion. This post is based on our popular online course, Literature Review Bootcamp.
Communications of the Association for Information Systems. 2005; 16:1. Kirkevold M. Integrative
nursing research — an important strategy to further the development of nursing science and nursing
practice. The heterogeneity was also formally investigated with statistical tests and various subgroup
analyses were performed. Parts of a Literature Review Introduction Purpose: To explain the focus
and establish the importance of the subject In general, your introduction should provide the
framework, selection criteria, or parameters of your literature review provide background or history
outline what kind of work has been done on the topic 5. Introduction 2. Definitions Associated with
XXX (optional section) 3. Therefore, this study aims to review and analyze the factors that improve
and affect e-commerce customers’ purchase intention. Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique
your sources by discussing a common theme or issue. University students will most often write
literature reviews as individual pieces in order to demonstrate their ability to conduct research and
understand course content. It tests your own research question against what is already known about
the subject. There are several common mistakes that students make when writing a literature review.
Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for
example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically). The
Research Proposal 83 Components of the Literature Review Krathwohl (2005) suggests and
describes a variety of components to include in a research proposal. An evaluation of the current
state of research on the topic, including a discussion of any gaps in existing knowledge. However,
regardless of which method you choose, there are a few other significant aspects to keep in mind
such as using powerful and logical transitions between ideas. For social sciences, the reference list or
bibliography should be prepared in American Psychological Association (APA) referencing format.
Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transitions and topic sentences to draw connections,
comparisons and contrasts. The question to be answered in the review or meta-analysis and the
hypotheses must be clearly defined and laid down in writing prospectively in a study protocol. 2.
Were the inclusion and exclusion criteria specified in advance. Essentially, your goal in the literature
review is to place your research study within the larger whole of what has been studied in the past,
while demonstrating to your reader that your work is original, innovative, and adds to the larger
whole. Table 2 ( gif ppt ) shows an example of such a table, taken from a meta-analysis with
published data (C) ( 14 ). Specifically, it is a review and synthesis of prior research that is related to
the problem you are setting forth to investigate. We classified the research papers after the review
stage into 17 categories of IS based theories. Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as
assignments in a class or as publications. You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick,
correct, consistent citations. Where to find databases: use the tabs on this guide Find other databases
in the Nursing Information Resources web page More on the Medical Library web page. Fourthly,
business to costumer refers to business companies selling products to individuals. Here is a potential
outline for your conclusion: Discuss why the study should be done. You should provide a critical
evaluation of each source, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses. When you find a useful book or
article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.
What are the ways in which this idea has been studied from an epistemological and methodological
perspective. Reviews Tips for Writing Literature Reviews Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
Citation Resources Other Academic Writings What are Literature Reviews. Publications Account
settings Browse Titles NCBI Bookshelf. In such cases, an abstract should provide an overview of
what it is you plan to study, your main research question, a brief explanation of your methods to
answer the research question, and your expected findings. The theoretical literature review helps to
establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing
theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Given that you are
presenting what the literature says about a field of study, not what you think or believe, you must
cite those authors that actually make and provide the research evidence, theories, frameworks for
practice etc. The research team started with an exploratory review of background documents and
research studies to identify ways in which patient portals may contribute to health service delivery
and patient outcomes. In this blog post, we’ll give you a basic overview of how to write a literature
review, from brainstorming to editing. Tip 5: create your personalised template for literature
summaries Often templates are available for data extraction and development of literature summary
tables. Utilize a wide range of materials; may not evaluate the quality of the studies as much as
count the number. A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has
an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. Consider organization You’ve
got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. What are its most exciting and promising areas
of innovation. However, there are situations in which it is neither reasonable nor appropriate to pool
studies together using meta-analytic methods simply because there is extensive clinical heterogeneity
between the included studies or variation in measurement tools, comparisons, or outcomes of
interest. We here describe the essential features of these methods and discuss their strengths and
weaknesses. Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the
subject? II. Types of reviews 1. Define your research question 2. Secondly, another type is business
to government e-commerce which is understood as a business model that refers to trading which
involves sales of products, information or services to the government parastatals. In addition, the
results are quantitatively summarized using statistical methods and pooled effect estimates ( Glossary
gif ppt ) are calculated ( 1 ). This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the
process. Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and
social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. They also allow
the results of different studies to be evaluated together when these are inconsistent. Look at sources
the authors cite to in their work. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is
important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed
your research methodology. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. You want to
make sure that you have identified something that you are looking for, rather than just randomly
searching. Analyzing and synthesizing data: As a final step, members of the review team must
collate, summarize, aggregate, organize, and compare the evidence extracted from the included
studies. You’ll need to present a critical analysis that addresses some (if not all) of the following
questions: What have different studies found in relation to your research questions. However, it is
also important to acknowledge that researchers often find themselves returning to the literature as
they collect and analyze their data. Making it the most accurate and reliable proofreading tool for
students.
During the interviews, the researchers heard many participants discuss individual resilience factors
and how they believed these individual factors helped make the community more resilient, overall.
Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination. If at all possible,
this should be in several literature databases. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s
impact on American presidential politics, it would still be organized chronologically reflecting
technological developments in media. A literature review may be a stand alone work or the
introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment. Methodological A
methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. From the deep research,
we came up with the following conclusions. In a literature review it is best to build a case with
selected sources by grouping them thematically so that you can analyze, compare and contrast the
theories, and that policies and practices in the field you are studying or conveyed in an organized
way. Retrieved from Basic. Appl. Sci. Res., 2(6)6128-6132, 2012.pdf. You might argue for the
relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a
framework for your research. Take notes on the concepts used and make a note of which authors are
cited. Adobe InDesign Design pixel-perfect content like flyers, magazines and more with Adobe
InDesign. The structure of your literature review will depend on the style of writing you are using.
Definition: A literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of existing scholarly
research on a specific topic or subject. Are all the key ideas, findings and trends presented backed up
by multiple sources. Including your themes in the summary tables (see figure 1 ) demonstrates to the
readers that a robust method of data extraction and synthesis has been followed. New York:
Longman. Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for
Writers, 11th ed. The extracted data must be presented in a meaningful way that suggests a new
contribution to the extant literature ( Jesson et al., 2011 ). Webster and Watson (2002) warn
researchers that literature reviews should be much more than lists of papers and should provide a
coherent lens to make sense of extant knowledge on a given topic. With the individual data, the
outcome parameters, risk factors, and confounders used in the analysis can be categorized in a
standard manner and properly incorporated in the analysis. Avoid making uncited or overly
generalized claims. If you feel a generalization is warranted, you must follow it up with multiple,
specific examples to justify such generalization. Through clear referencing provide an opportunity for
others to follow up the cited work and 6. Tentative interpretation on relationships between examples
posed as questions. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have
anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you: It often helps to
remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand
your research, to help them read the rest of your paper. Is it manageable? Begin writing down terms
that are related to your question. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with
your instructor. How were the effect estimates of the individual studies calculated?—Systematic
review articles (B) usually contain tables with the effect estimates of the individual studies. Or the
review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. Methods
The various types of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of scientific articles will be defined and
the procedure will be explained. However, integration may not have occurred at the analysis,
interpretation and reporting levels. Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have
shaped the direction of the field.
However, this can be easier to state and harder to do, simply due to the fact there is usually a
plethora of related research to sift through. Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science
research imagination. The research papers distribution by year of publication is highlighted in Figure.
These limitations are justified due to students are not completely conscientious of the importance of
this previous work along any research. The purpose of this descriptive or mapping review was to
characterize publication trends in the medical informatics literature over a 20-year period (1987 to
2006). In SOR model environmental stimuli (S) affects consumer internal states (O) and influences
consumers' overall responses ( Liu et al., 2016 ). However, since the focus of this research is on
obesity in children, these will not be reviewed in detail and will only be referred to as appropriate. In
a prospectively planned meta-analysis (E), the summary of the individual studies and the combined
analysis is included in the planning of the individual studies. First, exhaustive coverage means an
effort is made to be as comprehensive as possible in order to ensure that all relevant studies,
published and unpublished, are included in the review and, thus, conclusions are based on this all-
inclusive knowledge base. In other words, you want to start laying a little breadcrumb trail in those
sections so that your discussion of the research gap is firmly rooted in the rest of the literature
review. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been
portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as
the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. Essentially, this section should only be one or
two paragraphs in length. Suppose the authors only collected qualitative and quantitative data and
did not state the intent and timing of integration. In qualitative reviews (reviews synthesising results
of qualitative studies), this information is beneficial for readers to recognise the underlying
philosophical and paradigmatic stance of the authors of the included articles. We also provide
examples from our published reviews to illustrate how useful literature summary tables can be
developed and what sort of information should be provided. The only proofreading tool specialized
in correcting academic writing - try for free. What are the ways in which this idea has been studied
from an epistemological and methodological perspective. In this blog post, we’ll give you a basic
overview of how to write a literature review, from brainstorming to editing. In other words, your
theoretical framework should reveal some insights about what answers you might expect to find to
your research questions. Missed appointments are a major cause of inefficiency in healthcare delivery
with substantial monetary costs to health systems. These authors sought to assess whether mobile
phone-based appointment reminders delivered through Short Message Service ( sms ) or Multimedia
Messaging Service ( mms ) are effective in improving rates of patient attendance and reducing overall
costs. Introduction PDF How to Write a Literature Review This handout will focus on defining what
a literature review is, how to organize and synthesize information, and what the different parts of a
literature review are. The commonly used information may include authors, purpose, methods, key
results and quality scores. The same applies to the meta-analysis of published data (C). The only
difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the
most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic
reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A thematic review would have subtopics based
upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. Were the results effectively interpreted and reported.
Go beyond stating what you hope to achieve through the methods you have chosen. Select the
databases you will use to conduct your searches. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the
UNC Libraries citation tutorial. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed
on whales in the early 18th century.
Reviews Tips for Writing Literature Reviews Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites Citation
Resources Other Academic Writings What are Literature Reviews. This is because literature reviews
provide an overview of the latest thinking in a particular subject area. Since there are multiple types
of reviews (eg, systematic, integrative, scoping, critical and mixed methods) with distinct purposes
and techniques, 2 there could be various approaches for developing literature summary tables
making it a complex task specialty for the novice researchers or reviewers. For example, weave
references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and
ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. How is knowledge on the topic structured
and organized. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s
focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Analytical framework aids in
identification of issues. Regardless of which structure you opt for, each of the three components will
make an appearance in some shape or form. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of
your literature review. Always follow the Preview Question, Read and Summarise (PQRS) approach.
The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read, such as required readings in
the course syllabus, are also excellent entry points into your own research. This process can help you
to develop your own research skills, including your ability to find and use relevant sources of
information. It is a “dual-process” theory that explains the persuasion’s process. In other words,
you’re first explaining what the problem is (some sort of gap) and then proposing how you’ll solve it.
A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in
which these documents are discussed. In some cases, the research question will drive the type of
literature review that is undertaken. Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make
sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. In other words, a chronological
review would have subsections for each vital time period. The basic research question — what
works? — which is usually associated with systematic reviews changes to: what is it about this
intervention that works, for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and why. A literature
review can also be a valuable tool in identifying potential gaps in the existing research. Literature
reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and
methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought
processes during the research process. WHO collaborative study of neoplasia and steroid
contraceptives. They are commonly written in social and health science classes, but may be a part of
any course in any field. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized
by the researcher. The “experiential” part of the rubric does not mean that you must bring in your
experience and voice throughout the work, but rather provide context to the topic, mainly in the
introduction. Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the
sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. Remember that you can use
our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Components of the
Literature Review 83 Components of the Literature Review Krathwohl (2005) suggests and
describes a variety of components to include in a research proposal. The trust issue have been
investigated in several researches in the context of e-commerce, information system, market and
recommender systems fields (Nilashi et al., 2016). Trust formation theories were inspected deeply in
the literature and identified by several processes such as: cognition, knowledge, transference and
calculation.