Not to be confused with a book review, a literature review surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources relevant to a particular issue. The purpose is to offer an overview of significant literature published on a topic. The literature review itself does not present new primary scholarship, but it is still a contribution of scholarly value.
Development of the literature review requires four stages:
• Problem formulation—which topic or field is being examined and what are its issues?
• Literature search—finding materials relevant to the subject being explored
• Data evaluation—determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the
understanding of the topic
• Analysis and interpretation—discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent
literature
Literature reviews should comprise the following elements:
• An overview of the subject, issue or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review
• Division of works under review into categories (e.g. those in support of a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative theses entirely)
• Explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others
• Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most
convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research
In assessing each piece, consideration should be given to the quality (objectivity, reliability) of the study. You should think about your literature review as constituting an essential section of a paper. For example, for writing up results from a regression study, Stock and Watson suggest (http://wps.aw.com/wps/media/objects/11422/11696965/stoc2517.ch10.343-350.C1.pdf)
Paper should be built as 5*5*5, which means 5 sections, each section has 5 paragraphs, each paragraph has 5 sentences.
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Five section:
1.Introduction
2.Literature Review
3.Data Description
4. Data Analysis
5. Conclusion.
For the purposes of your class assignment, your literature review should have five paragraphs.
1. Paragraph one describes the topic and summarizes the state of the extant literature.
2. Paragraph two describes 3 or 4 studies that relate to one another closely.
3. Paragraph three describes 3 or 4 studies that relate to one another closely.
4. Paragraph four describes 3 or 4 studies that relate to one another closely.
5. Paragraph five concludes by reiterating the state of the literature, and pointing out some gaps in the literature (thus providing a transition to a section on further analysis).
