Writing Your Doctoral Dissertation or Thesis Faster

A Proven Map to Success

by E. Alana James and Tracesea Slater

Are You Ready to Write Your Review of Literature?

What is Included in an Award-Winning Literature Review?

•  Length (over 60 pages long) •  Organization clearly showing how the author

determined what concerns to focus on •  Moved from wide scope to more specific

 

Basic Literature Review Approaches or Layouts

One common approach is to go from the broad topic area to the specifics leading to the variables you will measure

A literature review that pulls form diverse fields of study but where topics overlap can resemble a Venn diagram.

Another approach might be a case where your topics, although diverse, fit together without overlap, much like a jigsaw puzzle.

How is the Literature Review Assessed?

•  Minimum standard – a well researched, well presented adequate assessment/interpretation of the others’ work on your topic

•  Draw the reader into your work in an elegant way that clearly shows the importance of your ideas and the significance of your as it relates to others

•  Discussing the topics from multiple angles helps convince others of your neutrality

Organizing and Analyzing the Literature in a Concise Manner

•  Organizing Authors and Ideas –  Discussions shouldn’t be presented one author

at a time, but instead by concept, idea, problem, solution across various authors

•  Analyzing Gaps –  Primary sources

The Theoretical and/or Methodological Sections

•  Stressing Certain Issues •  Examining Concepts •  Describing Complexity •  Unpacking Methodological Assumptions in Previous

Studies •  Argumentation •  Limitations to What You Are Reading

Writing a Formal Review of Literature

•  Preliminary Activities –  R eaching saturation

•  Procedures –  Analysis, synthesis, interpretation, knowledge

•  Helpful Hints –  Capturing and Organizing Notes –  Citing and Referencing While You Write

Lit Review Writing Tips: Do...

•  Engage in your mind (and maybe in real life) with the authors you are reading.

•  Read the classics and consider how the thoughts are put together. •  Notice and analyze the linkage between different authors and their

ideas and methods. •  Keep searching the literature surrounding your topic until you

understand where the disagreements within it occur. •  Write in a voice similar to the language and cadence of your speech. •  Use your personal research journal to keep a list of the key words and

phrases from your reading that will need to be discussed in your “terms section.”

•  Frequently double-check to ensure that all topics covered in your instruments or interviews are discussed.

Lit Review Writing Tips: Don’t...

•  Stop searching as soon as you have enough to build the argument you want to make.

•  Mistake the number of citations for quality of the research. •  Assume that because no one has done your exact study that

there is no literature on it (Patton, 2008).

An excerpt from ‘Writing Your Doctoral Dissertation or Thesis Faster’

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Where Should I Go to Dig Deeper? Suggested Resources to Consider

•  Hart, C. (1998). Doing a literature review: Releasing social science research imagination. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. This entire book is excellent, but we believe every student should be familiar with pages 143 through 195 for his or her discussion of analysis of literature and how to write it up.