What I’ve Learned About Literature Reviews

Posted on by

As part of the preparation for the upcoming course, I’m reading journal articles relating to the topic of literature reviews. It’s mind-boggling to think about how many articles and blog posts have been written on this topic, Seems to be something many PhD students and candidates struggle through. This topic even came up in recent conversation with a classmate in the PhD program. So what have I learned from my reading and reflections?

There are suggested processes for literature reviews, as suggested in Combs, Pustamante & Onwuegbuzie (2010) where this task is done collaboratively in an interactive process with a supervisor. This interactive literature review process (ILRP) follows a series of steps from exploring belief systems, topic selection, exploring themes, establishing a focus, collecting and analyzing the literature, writing the review, and evaluating the process and product. While this process is interesting, it’s not one that I will use or apply in my work with a supervisor. Undoubtedly, the collaboration and co-construction of literature reviews may be welcome and necessary at the Masters level, it’s not something I feel should be integrated into the PhD process. There is a need for mentor support at the PhD level, and parts of this process could benefit those who are mentored or those who mentor others in a PhD program. Relying on a supervisor to also take on a mentoring role is not necessarily the best fit for the needs or skills of those involved.

Hart (2005) presents a range of purposes for literature reviews. From this list, there are several that stand out for the work I am doing, and these may change and evolve in the coming years.

  • identify what has been done and what needs to be done
  • examine variables used in the research; analyze for topic related trends
  • synthesize articles to gain insights
  • identify how ideas connect to practices in the field of study; how these shift in different fields of study
  • examine contextualized topics or problems and how they connect to your area of interest or field of study
  • rationalize the significance of the research to your topic or interests
  • build vocabulary, subject matter information, and related topics
  • grasp the underlying layers in research within your field of study or domain
  • connect theories to your own ideas and those ideas of others
  • link methodological practices and research techniques to your work & interests
  • build an historical timeline with research in your field of study

For me, the current focus is finding the edges of the field of study, cross-connecting differing fields of research, and building vocabulary and expertise in the areas I hope to research. There are many problems I’ve faced and will continue to face in this literature review work. As outlined by Chen, Wang & Lee (2016) there are methodological, conceptual and ontological challenges. Chen et al. suggest that decisions made at each stage of the literature review impact and impinge future phases of research. I don’t want future work to be negatively impacted by novice questions and questionable practices, so my critical self-reflections need to focus on fine-tuning my research for not only scope, analysis, synthesis, and discussion but also on my voice, identity and presence (Chen et al., 2016)as a researcher.

With these strategic readings, I’ve analyzed my most recent literature review and will make some recommendations on a ‘go-forward’ basis.

  1. look for tighter themes in the literature and comprehensively integrate ideas rather than listing articles in random order with threads of ideas tying pieces together
  2. refine and rewrite since there are too many quotations in the body of my writing. I need to reveal my own voice and only quote those ‘diamond gems’ of pithy wisdom that can’t be restated without losing their lustre.
  3. scope wide AND deep to find interlinking articles and fields of thought; then knit and fuse them together (cnyttan) (This notion was shared at Domains 19 on Virtually Connecting by Lora Taub.)
  4. analysis is important, it’s part of that knitting that needs to be done. I could go deeper into themes by using coding and concept mapping tools (Combs et al., 2010; Chen et al., 2016). Since I have not done any systematic coding or coding analysis, it’s time to learn how to work with software options (Randolph, 2009) such as NVivo.

References

Combs, J. P., Bustamante, R. M., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2010). An interactive model for facilitating development of literature reviews. International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches, 4(2), 159-182.

Hart, C. (2005). Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science research imagination. London: Sage.

Chen D. T., Wang, Y. M., & Lee, W. C. (2016). Challenges confronting beginning researchers in conducting literature reviews. Studies in Continuing Education. 38(1), 47-60. doi:10.1080/0158037X.2015.1030335.