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ACADEMIC AND CONTENT WRITING TIPS AND TRICKS

4 Key Elements of Your Lit Review

Any major academic research paper, including a thesis, dissertation, DNP project, or quality improvement project, calls for a thorough literature review. This review positions your study in the context of related research and, ideally, highlights the contributions that your study brings to your field.

Writing the literature review might seem daunting because it requires a thorough search of the literature to identify worthwhile studies and then a careful analysis of these studies. Follow these four tips to compose an insightful literature review.

1. Choose Your Keywords Carefully

Thoughtful selection of your keywords can reduce the time you spend poring over the literature. Here are some ways to generate targeted keywords that will yield the results you need:

  • Think of your ideal content headings for the lit review and pull keywords from those headings.

  • Check out abstracts of some literature you’ve already found to find keywords those researchers used.

  • Make a list of potential single-word keywords based on your research. Then, combine them for further specificity, which will lead to more targeted results.

2. Organize Findings by Theme

Before you dive into your research, consider those ideal content headings you used to inspire your keyword development. Now, as you read through the literature, take note of what theme (or themes) each piece of literature relates to. You can jot this down on paper or create a table in a Google Doc or Word file where you can plug each publication under a particular theme. This will help you identify any gaps in the literature that require further research as well as commonalities that pull your research together.

3. Be Selective

Not every piece of literature you discover will end up being included in your lit review. Some just won’t fit, perhaps for these reasons:

  • Publication Date – Try to choose works published within the last 5 years, except for a few notable works known for their historical significance

  • Generalizability – Some studies won’t deliver results that are generalizable to the population in your study, thus making them less relevant.

  • Redundancy – While you do want to identify trends in your area of research, you don’t want to be redundant, so strike a balance between showing relevance without presenting study after study with the same results.

4. Synthesize Your Findings

Your paper is not just a summary of the literature. It’s a synthesis. So, you need to present each study and its findings and then frame those findings in a way that relates to your study. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What do the findings tell me about my study?

  • What gaps in the literature exist, and how will my study help fill that gap?

Remember, your search for relevant literature is just the start of your review process. Your analysis is key. For literature review editing services and a reference check, contact me!

About the Author

Barbie Carpenter is the owner of Carpenter Document Consulting, which offers full-service academic editing and content writing services to its many clients. She has more than 15 years of experience editing academic manuscripts and peer-reviewed journal articles for clients from colleges and universities across the U.S.

Barbie Carpenter