HSCI 4204 (Kethireddy) - Research Methods and Evaluation in Public Health: Literature Review

What is the "Literature"?

The "literature" is the body of scholarly work in any given field.

A literature review surveys scholarly articles, books, dissertations, and conference proceedings relevant to your research problem, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work.

Purpose of the literature review:

• Provides a historical background for your research problem
• Describes its current status
• Supports the purpose of the study
• Identifies gaps in the literature
• Become aware of variables relevant to the problem
• Understand the seminal studies widely cited
• Identifies the leading scholars relevant to the problem 

(Lunenburg, 2008)

Nearly every scholarly research article begins with a brief, basic review of existing literature. This review introduces the subject being investigated and what is already known about it, in order to provide context for the author's original research.

Check the "Introduction" section of this original research article for an example: 

There is also a whole category of scholarly articles known as literature reviews. (Generally, these will use words like "Literature Review," "Review," or "Review of the Literature" right in the title.) These articles do not conduct new research, but only review existing research on some subject, in order to summarize the current state of knowledge and help other researchers exploring the same topic.

An example of a Literature Review article:

Three important things to know about research

• Start early: the library has thousands of books and articles online. If we don’t have what you need, we will get it for you, but this process takes about a week.
• Be prepared: bring a flash drive with you always so you can save what you find, OR use a citation manager.
• Take notes about how you found your results! Maybe keep a “research journal.”

     A literature review is a guide to the published information on a topic. While a literature review summarizes each author’s ideas and contributions, it is not just an alphabetical or numbered list. Sources are usually grouped into subtopics or ideas important to the topic. For example, a review of the literature on crop circles might be divided into specific geographic areas or it might represent the skeptic’s viewpoint as well as the believer’s.

     Here is an excerpt from The Writing Center at UNC-Chapel Hill:

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

     Literature reviews are very valuable to researchers who need an overview of what’s been written about a topic, but they do not count as scholarly journal articles when you are collecting sources for a term paper.

If you have any of these questions

How far back should you look?

How many sources should you have?

What kinds of sources should you use?

Ask your instructor! Different departments have different requirements.