The Review of the Literature

The Review of the Literature
By Bruce Fraser

The review of existing research literature provides a guide for the reader with respect to what is known about the question being addressed, both from a theoretical and descriptive standpoint, and occasionally, from a methodological standpoint.  (I am using research literature here to stand for both reports on empirical research as well as scholarship on theory/model building.)  The review serves to orient the reader to the specific research question: the gap the proposed research is being designed to fill.  The review of the literature is like a well-organized tutorial for the uninitiated.  At the end, the reader should understand how past research bears on the research question.

The review of the literature is a narrative which must draw on primary not secondary sources, must be critical in that it must analytically assess all of the relevant literature and not merely describe it, and must be integrative in that it must weave the knowledge presented in the literature into a coherent whole.

Typically, the literature can be divided into two or more domains of research which bear on your question.  For each domain that is identified, you must first analyze the relevant literature of the topics it treats that are relevant to your question.  It may be helpful to arrange this information in a table like the following:

Domain No. 1
	Topic
Article	A	B	C	D	E
1	X		X
2	X				X
3		X
4				X	X
5				X
6		X	X
7	X	X	X	X	X

Suppose your question was: “How has the ERA of 1993 changed the role of urban principals?”

The domains you identified might be

D1. The climate of school reform today

D2. The role of the principal pre-ERA of 1993: Ideal (conceptual research)

D3. The role of the principal pre-ERA of 1993: Actual (case studies)

D4. Mandate of the ERA of 1993 (the legislation)

Suppose the topics you identified in 7 articles/books of D2 were:

A.   Leadership

B.    Curriculum Development

C.    Discipline

D.   Hiring/Staffing

E.    Public Relations

The above table shows, for example, that article 1 treats topics A and C, while article 5 only treats topic D.

For each domain, you should discuss the individual topics, one at a time, by drawing on the literature you reviewed and analyzed, typically treating the most general topic first and ending up with the most specific.  But there certainly may be exceptions to this rule-of-thumb.

Within each domain of the literature review, your organization may be:

Historical

By topics

By research designs or methods

By the most general literature to most relevant

Some combination of these

It may be useful to think of an intersecting Venn diagram, each circle representing one domain of research, with your research question lying in the intersection, represented here by the “X.”

The prior research is compared and contrasted in terms of the way it contributes or fails to contribute to the background/framework for your research.  You should include only that part of an article/book which is germane to the topic/category you are discussing at the moment and nothing more.

Essentially, you perform a qualitative analysis of the literature: for each domain you deconstruct the literature into topics treated by each article insofar as they are relevant to your research question and then you reconstitute the literature organized around the topics, not the individual articles.

The number of articles/books you use will depend on the complexity of your problem area and the particular research question.  All articles/books will not be as relevant as others and thus will not be treated in as much detail.  If you perceive defects in a study, for example, confusing data collection, inadequate sample, inconsistent results, no basis for generalization, you should indicate why you find this problematic.

You should recognize that in the development of your proposal you will probably move back and forth between the general problem area, your review of the relevant research literature and your specific research question.  You might start with the general problem area, identify the domains of research literature, start your review, and then decide on the research question.  You needn’t have your specific research question in mind from the start, although you may.

You may wish to refer to secondary literature to get you started, but with rare exceptions, it should not be used in the review itself.  The primary sources include journal articles, research reports, conference presentations, scholarly books, monographs, and dissertations.  It may be useful to look at the same topics in neighboring fields for similar research.

In addition to framing your research study, the review of the prior research literature may be useful for:

Focusing – by becoming familiar with the broad topic, you can focus with more perspective on your specific question;

Developing the research design – by reviewing other’s methodology, you can avoid unnecessary replication and you may learn alternative designs;

The presentation of the review of the research literature typically takes the following form:

Introduction, indicating what is to follow in the review;

Review of the literature by domain;

Summary and possibly a restatement of your research question

The following points may be helpful:

1.     In qualitative research, there may be two reviews: a macro review, a general review which places the research in a conceptual framework; and a micro review, a presentation of prior research results against which your results are compared.

2.     Tables/charts may prove useful in cases where there are many articles dealing with the same topic.