How To Write A Literature Review In 3 Simple Steps (FREE Template With Examples) — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:02Hey guys welcome to another episode of Grad Coach TV where we demystify the
2. 0:07ivory tower world of academia and show you how to work smart and earn the big
3. 0:12marks. My name is Derek and in this video we're gonna be looking at how to write
4. 0:16a literature review - and most importantly how to do that in three
5. 0:20pretty straightforward simple steps. Now this video is based on
6. 0:25our free dissertation 101 ebook, which you can download at the Grad Coach
7. 0:30website. I'll put the link to that below this video. So without any delay let's
8. 0:34get right into it. Now, before we jump into how to write a literature review,
9. 0:42it's really important to step back and ask what is the function, what is the why
10. 0:47of a literature review. If we understand the why then the how becomes a lot
11. 0:52simpler, and the what becomes a lot simpler. So let's talk about some of the most
12. 0:56important functions of the literature review. So step one, or function number
13. 1:00one of the literature review is for you to demonstrate that you have a solid
14. 1:05understanding of the literature, and the research the state of research around
15. 1:09your research questions. so your research is going to be on a certain topic and
16. 1:15the starting point for your discussion there is to show that whatever your
17. 1:20research question is, whatever the the aim of your research is, you need to
18. 1:24demonstrate that you know what has already been done. Academic writing is
19. 1:29about standing on the shoulders of giants and so you need to show who were
20. 1:33the giants, who were the people that have done this research before, what have they
21. 1:38said, what is the state of the argument. So that's really function number one and
22. 1:43and arguably it's the most important function. So let's look at function
23. 1:47number two. Function number two, the second why of a literature review, is for
24. 1:53you, from that basis of literature to show that there is a gap. To show that
25. 1:58there is a need for your specific research. so if you're doing masters are
26. 2:03you doing PhD research regardless of the level that you're at there's some
27. 2:07requirement for originality. Generally universities don't want you to research
28. 2:11something that's been done a million times, because what's the purpose of that. So
29. 2:15what the literature review serves to do is for you to go and do the work and to
30. 2:21figure out where are the gaps in the literature, where are the gaps in the
31. 2:26research, how can I take a unique angle and something that's not been done
32. 2:30before, hopefully not done to death but, how can I take a unique angle in
33. 2:35terms of context or in terms of a specific specific country a specific
34. 2:41environment etc. So the second function of your literature review and
35. 2:46of you just reviewing the literature the actual act of reviewing it, is for you to
36. 2:51establish that clear clear clear need for your research. Now, the third function
37. 2:57is not necessarily relevant to everyone, but for those of you who are planning to
38. 3:02build a theoretical model or conceptual model, conceptual framework the
39. 3:07literature review is the basis of that. So what you would then be doing is
40. 3:11taking the various theories the various pieces of research that have been
41. 3:17undertaken in the past and building some sort of conceptual model that you would
42. 3:21then go on to test and to validate. Perhaps not relevant to everyone but
43. 3:26that is an important function if you are doing any sort of quantitative
44. 3:29validation testing etc. The fourth important function of the literature
45. 3:35review is for you to have a foundation or to build a foundation of methodology.
46. 3:42So what I mean by this is when you are reviewing all the literature in your
47. 3:47space that is relevant to your research question your research aims, what you're
48. 3:52going to find naturally is you're going to get exposure to all the various
49. 3:57studies that have been done and you're going to see what methodologies they use.
50. 4:01Did they use qualitative, did they use quantitative, if they used quantitative,
51. 4:05did they have well-validated, well tested question sets, did they publish
52. 4:10questionnaires etc. So the literature review gives you an
53. 4:15opportunity to really dig into what's already been done and to build on that.
54. 4:19Very often if you're doing surveys, you can find through your literature review
55. 4:24you can find good question sets, you can find
56. 4:27a good set of scales that have decent Cronbach's alphas and so forth. If this
57. 4:32language doesn't make any sense, don't stress we'll get to it in another video.
58. 4:36The point is that a very important function of the literature review is for
59. 4:41you to get some inspiration, to get some insights and perhaps even some useful
60. 4:45practical tools and takeaways to inform your methodology. So those are the four
61. 4:52important functions of the literature review and the first two are really what you
62. 4:58need to keep in mind. In other words, showing that you understand what you're
63. 5:02talking about, showing that you're not just coming in and trying to reinvent
64. 5:05the wheel, show that you have read the literature that is relevant to your
65. 5:10specific problem and then of course show that the angle you're gonna take is is
66. 5:15actually original, is somehow unique and somehow warranted in terms of going out
67. 5:22and doing the research. So let's not harp on about this anymore. Let's jump into
68. 5:26the three steps of how to write your literature review. Alright, so on to step
69. 5:36one of how to write your literature review. Step one is really no surprise.
70. 5:42Step one is to go out and find the relevant research. This probably sounds pretty obvious
71. 5:48but you'll be surprised how some people approach this. So step one is go out
72. 5:52there and do the digging. Get out and find the research. Now if you've already
73. 5:57done your proposal and that's been accepted then chances are you've got
74. 6:01some sort of foundation of core literature already, but nevertheless even
75. 6:06though your proposal has been accepted, your university and your supervisor will
76. 6:10expect that you go on and do more review, deeper review of what's the relevant
77. 6:16literature. So in this section, we're going to talk about four pretty useful
78. 6:21tactics to go out and find the relevant literature. This part of the process can
79. 6:26really take a lot of time. If you don't have the right approach to going out and
80. 6:32hunting you can waste a lot of time going down dead ends
81. 6:36and really no one wants to do that. This is a big project and you want to get
82. 6:40through the literature as quickly as possible. So yeah, I'll talk about four
83. 6:43techniques / four methods to find the literature find the relevant research
84. 6:47that's out there. Sso let's have a look at that.
85. 6:52Method number one of finding the literature is what we call Google
86. 6:58Scholar scrubbing and really there's nothing to this. You probably already are
87. 7:03familiar with Google Scholar. If you're not, you can check it out at
88. 7:06scholar.google.com. Google Scholar is just a search engine for academic
89. 7:13material, much like Google is a search engine for the rest of the Internet. So
90. 7:18Google Scholar is really a powerful search engine it's using Google's
91. 7:21technology and so in terms of finding material that is super relevant to
92. 7:27whatever keywords whatever focal topic you're you're looking at, you can't
93. 7:32beat google scholar. Google Scholar is really great for getting that initial
94. 7:36idea of what is the literature that's out there. What also makes Google Scholar
95. 7:40really awesome is that they show the citation data. In other words, how
96. 7:46often has any particular article journal article been cited. So this gives you a
97. 7:52good idea of the authority and the credibility of any given article. If
98. 7:56there are specific requirements from your university in terms of the
99. 8:00credibility of the the content that you're citing, then you should definitely
100. 8:05be paying very good attention to how many times each of these articles has
101. 8:10been cited. So, step one is get into Google Scholar and just search for any
102. 8:16possible relevant keyword and have a dig through all of the articles that are
103. 8:20there. A good way to figure out what's relevant is to open the
104. 8:25articles that that seem relevant in terms of their title and have a look at
105. 8:29the abstract. Having a quick read through that that will give you a decent
106. 8:33idea of whether or not this is something that that suits you, or that fits within
107. 8:38your research aims and objectives. What you will find when you use Google
108. 8:43Scholar is that some articles are totally free to access - you click
109. 8:48the link and open sesame - there it is. It's accessible.
110. 8:52But a lot of them you'll find are behind some sort of pay wall, so you're going to
111. 8:58run into that wall quite often - you might get lucky and you might find that
112. 9:02everything you need is free and openly accessible, but you're likely going to
113. 9:06run into a lot of dead ends in terms of hitting the journals where you have to
114. 9:12pay, you have to log in etc. Don't worry about that at this point. What you
115. 9:17want to do is you just want to take down the titles of all of these articles. If
116. 9:20you can download anything for free, go for it and download it, but what
117. 9:24you're going to do is take down these titles. Take them down exactly as you see
118. 9:29them, including the author name date etc, and then head on over to method number
119. 9:36two, which is your university database or your university library. Every
120. 9:41university will generally give you access to their licensed set of content
121. 9:48and this is usually quite broad, so most often what you'll find is that you're
122. 9:53going to find a lot of content on Google Scholar method number one and you're
123. 9:57going to bring that to method number two you're gonna go and copy/paste that
124. 10:01title exactly as you found it in Google Scholar. You go and copy paste that into
125. 10:06your universities search engine and then most often you'll find that there you'll
126. 10:11be able to access it there. If you can't, you might want to shoot an email over to
127. 10:16your institution and just ask them if there is any way that we could get
128. 10:20access to to this article. What is really important when you use method number two,
129. 10:26in other words your universities database, is that you copy paste the
130. 10:30article title exactly as you see it. The reason I say this is that unlike
131. 10:37Google Scholar, the university databases and the university search engines are
132. 10:41usually pretty basic, pretty rudimentary in terms of the technology
133. 10:46they're using - so if you don't put the title in exactly as they have it in the
134. 10:51article, there's a good chance that your one word out and you're just going to
135. 10:55totally miss the results that you need. It's going to look like they don't exist.
136. 10:59So make sure that you copy/paste it what is being shown. So that's
137. 11:04method number two. Method number one Google Scholar method number two go
138. 11:08hand-in-hand very well so let's take a look at method number three. Method
139. 11:13number three is what we call snowballing. Snowballing is really really effective
140. 11:19once you find a few core articles that are super super relevant to your topic.
141. 11:24So what snowballing is that you download two or three articles that are
142. 11:31hyper relevant to whatever your research questions are, whatever your
143. 11:36research aims are, whatever the focus of your research is. You get those three
144. 11:42articles and go to the end of those three articles, As always, as in any journal
145. 11:48article, there will be a list of references at the end. This is
146. 11:52usually just completely ignored or even not even printed out by students but
147. 11:56really, this is the gold mine, because this is showing you everything that that
148. 12:00article that article that was super relevant to you it's showing you
149. 12:04everything that that's built on. In other words all the sources for you to go and
150. 12:09unpack the foundations of that article. So what you do with those two or three
151. 12:14core articles is you pay very close attention to the articles that they are
152. 12:20referencing, you go and find those using Google Scholar or your your university's
153. 12:26database, and you read through those. You see whether they're relevant. If they are
154. 12:31relevant, you do the same thing - you go to their reference list and you dig through
155. 12:35those references and you're going to find a snowball effect where you're
156. 12:38just picking up more and more and more and more and more and you're going to
157. 12:42eventually end up with a wealth of highly relevant articles. Generally what
158. 12:48you'll find is as you snowball further and further, the article references might
159. 12:52start getting older and older and older because naturally articles are built on
160. 12:57articles over time. So it is something to be aware of that you might
161. 13:02find that you you start running into very old territory - so just be aware of
162. 13:06that. Right, the final method for hunting down relevant resources, hunting down
163. 13:12relevant articles, is pretty straightforward.
164. 13:15That is to have a look at other people's dissertations that are related
165. 13:20to your topic. Ideally you want to be looking at dissertations from your own
166. 13:24institution, but realistically you're probably not going to find too many
167. 13:29articles or too many dissertations about your exact topic or that link to your
168. 13:34topic within your own institution unless it's a really big institution. So you're
169. 13:39probably gonna have to look at other people's dissertations from
170. 13:43other countries or from other universities, etc etc. The good news is it
171. 13:48doesn't really matter too much, because at this point all you're looking for is
172. 13:52sources. You're not looking for inspiration about how they laid out
173. 13:56their dissertation, how they how they connected various parts. All you're
174. 14:02looking for is sources that are relevant to your research topic. So other peoples'
175. 14:06dissertations are a great place to look because obviously they've been in a
176. 14:09similar situation and they've gone and done the work that you're
177. 14:14currently doing. There are various databases that you can look at in
178. 14:19addition to your own school's database. EBSCO Host,
179. 14:22ProQuest, etc - there's quite a few of them. What I'll do is include some links to
180. 14:27the main ones below this video. So you can just check below this video and you
181. 14:31can jump through to those. Dissertations generally are easy to access, free to
182. 14:36access, obviously people are not charging money for them - so that is a great way to
183. 14:42to quickly look at other people's literature reviews that were in a
184. 14:47similar space. A big word of warning through all of this is you are dealing
185. 14:52with students work - so you don't know whether that student got a good mark, you
186. 14:57don't know that they got a bad mark. All you know is that they passed. So do be
187. 15:02careful when you're using this method. Do use common sense and don't rely too
188. 15:06heavily on anyone's dissertation. Nevertheless use it as a starting point
189. 15:12for finding relevant articles. So those are the three methods for finding the
190. 15:19literature. Step one is the most important step - you can't do anything
191. 15:24until you have gone and done the digging. So many students avoid the digging. It's
192. 15:28hard work, it's painful, it's slow. But as I say
193. 15:31the smart way to approach this is use the combination of the methods that I've
194. 15:35spoken about and don't go and read full articles - just read the abstract. If the
195. 15:40abstract doesn't tell you enough, look at the introduction and the conclusion of
196. 15:44any given article and that should give you a feel for if its relevant or
197. 15:48isn't relevant. So that's pretty much step one in a nutshell -
198. 15:52find the literature. So let's jump on to step two. Step two of how to write your
199. 16:01literature review is that you now need to log, catalog and synthesize the
200. 16:07literature. So, three important functions and they're essential as a next step. Now
201. 16:12I'm presenting this as step one and then step two - it's not necessarily sequential.
202. 16:18What you'll often do is you will find a wholle lot of literature in step one, you'll
203. 16:24start logging and cataloging and synthesizing it - and then some new
204. 16:27thoughts will come up and you'll potentially go back to step one, start
205. 16:31looking for more literature. So it might be a more iterative approach, in
206. 16:35fact, it should be a more iterative approach - but I'm trying to simplify the
207. 16:38process here and saying that step two is logging and cataloging and synthesizing
208. 16:43the literature. So let's dig into step two - what do we mean by logging
209. 16:48cataloging and synthesizing the literature? So step one is logging the
210. 16:57reference information. Logging is really a simple activity and all it means is
211. 17:02you've gone and dug up a whole lot of articles - some of which are relevant, some
212. 17:07which aren't - and you can throw them out. But you've gone and gathered all of
213. 17:13these articles and the most important thing to do right up front now is to go
214. 17:18and put that into your reference management software. Now if you're not
215. 17:23using a reference manager like Mendeley or Zotero or something like that,
216. 17:27now is the time to learn how to use one, because you're just never going to
217. 17:31manage your references any other way for a good dissertation or thesis. We
218. 17:37do have videos on on both of those pieces of software - I'll include the
219. 17:41links below video. So step one is go and log all your
220. 17:44information. What you'll find with a lot of pieces of software, specifically
221. 17:50Mendeley (which you can check out that video on this channel) is there is a good
222. 17:56deal of synchronizing and easy importing from the likes of Google
223. 18:02Scholar or the likes of your university database. You can pretty easily import
224. 18:06those references directly into Mendeley, so you don't need to physically go and
225. 18:10type everything out. If you are doing importing, I would recommend you just run
226. 18:14over it and check all the data that's been imported. Make sure that it makes
227. 18:17sense. Sometimes there can be small errors. Sometimes they can be typos in the
228. 18:22reference data, but overall the import tends to work pretty well. So step one,
229. 18:26get all that data into your reference manager, even if stuff doesn't look
230. 18:31particularly relevant right now, put it in because it's just gonna save you time
231. 18:35later. You don't need to go back and forth so as you find content. Dump it
232. 18:39into your reference manager and then it's there. When it comes time to
233. 18:43actually cite it it's as simple as just entering in the title and clicking drag
234. 18:47and drop and boom it's in your word document. So step 1 is to log all your data or
235. 18:53log all your references or your journal articles into your reference manager.
236. 18:57Step 2 is cataloguing your information. So this
237. 19:03is again really really important - arguably even more important than step
238. 19:07one. You're going to through this process you're going to build up a huge wealth
239. 19:13of literature and it's tempting in the beginning to think that you are gonna
240. 19:20remember what everything was called. You're gonna remember that point that
241. 19:23that guy made over there, that framework that someone did that was super relevant
242. 19:29or maybe not so relevant. It's tempting to think that you're gonna remember all
243. 19:32the stuff and in reality you're not - simply not. As you build out more and
244. 19:38more and more and more it's just going to become a haze of information and yeah
245. 19:44you'll start remembering certain author's names and surnames and whatnot,
246. 19:48but in reality there's no way you can navigate this. If you if you're doing a
247. 19:52good literature review, you're probably working with a hundred, 200, who
248. 19:56knows how many different references or sources and and you're just not gonna
249. 20:00remember them. So what becomes really important is to build a catalog. I
250. 20:04recommend building a catalog in Excel - we've got a free template that you can
251. 20:10download from the Grad Coach website I'll include that link below this
252. 20:16video. Whether you use that or not, you need some sort of database of all of
253. 20:22your articles and what that database needs to be it's not particularly
254. 20:26sophisticated, but it needs to be something that
255. 20:29includes for every for every article needs to include: the author, the date
256. 20:34the title, obviously their core information and some sort of summary
257. 20:38about what the article is about. Some sort of summary about the key points, the
258. 20:43the key insights in relation to your topic. Perhaps some summary of
259. 20:48methodological components or suggestions or assets that you could use and just
260. 20:54any other notes about each article. What you ideally want is for that to
261. 21:00be split up over as many columns. In other words, to have as granular data as
262. 21:06possible so that you can go and you can sort and you can filter. So that you can
263. 21:10sort for example by a certain time period because your literature review
264. 21:13might be in in time order (we'll talk about that next). You want to be able to
265. 21:19sort by key topics. So I usually recommend putting some keywords.
266. 21:23For each article, you want to be able to sort by key variables - for example if you're
267. 21:30doing a quantitative study and you're testing the the relevance of certain
268. 21:33variables, you want to be able to go quickly in Excel just filter out and see
269. 21:38who was it that spoke about this variable having an impact on on X or Y.
270. 21:43So you want to get down to as much detail as possible there so that when
271. 21:48you come to a point where you have 100, 200, 300 different sources, you can just
272. 21:52quickly run through that and that becomes super super important when
273. 21:56you're writing you're finally writing up your literature review, because you don't
274. 21:59want to have to go and say okay who was it who were all of the people that spoke
275. 22:03about this. You just want to go into Excel. and say okay, this variable
276. 22:07here - just say we're talking about a specific variable that contributes
277. 22:12towards trust. Hypothetically let's say competence is that variable. Who were all
278. 22:18of the articles or all of the authors that spoke about trust that spoke about
279. 22:22competence being an antecedent of trust for example. Then Excel will just go
280. 22:27boom and you know these were the five authors. Then you can very quickly go and put
281. 22:31together a really chunky piece in your literature review saying these people
282. 22:35these people these people these people spoke about it and they had a slightly
283. 22:38different angle. So this is super super important and it's something that
284. 22:43students tend to rush past because it feels like you're just doing double work
285. 22:46having to build a catalog and and put all that detail in there and then still
286. 22:49having to go and write about it, but trust me literature reviews take time and
287. 22:54over time you're not gonna remember who said what. So very importantly, use the
288. 22:59catalog and as I say, if you don't want to build your own one there's a free one
289. 23:04you can download from the Grad Coach website. Whatever you do,
290. 23:07build a catalog. Right let's get on to step three.
291. 23:12Naturally step three is to digest all of this content and to synthesize it in
292. 23:18your mind. So far you've gone and logged all your data into your reference
293. 23:25manager. You've gone and cataloged the stuff into Excel, but it's tempting to
294. 23:33think okay well we've got it all ,it's all there
295. 23:36now let's just write up. But you've got to take a step back and you've got to
296. 23:40really spend your time synthesizing all of this information in your head
297. 23:45thinking about how does it all fit together. This is an important step
298. 23:51and it's not one that I can give you too much prescription on. It's not one that I
299. 23:56can give you too much advice about. You've gotta spend time in your literature.
300. 24:01You've got to spend time thinking about how the research questions that you're
301. 24:06asking are being answered by the current theory, by the current literature, the
302. 24:12current research. How do all of these pieces fit together. Who is agreeing
303. 24:17about what. What are people disagreeing about.
304. 24:20How does everything fit together and
305. 24:26what narrative am I going to write about. This is why it's really important to give
306. 24:31some thought to how it all comes together and piece it together in your
307. 24:36mind. Start thinking about the arguments that you want to develop in
308. 24:39your literature review. Spend some time taking a step back, because up until now
309. 24:46everything you've done has been very very focused on this article and then
310. 24:49this article and then this article in this article. What what happens
311. 24:54while you're doing that is that you start thinking
312. 24:57in silos. So you want to take a step back from all of that and you want
313. 25:02to say okay, how does it all fit together. If I were to give a speech on all
314. 25:10that has been said, how could I combine that into something that's cohesive and
315. 25:15how can I combine that into a narrative - because that's what you're going to be
316. 25:18doing in your literature review chapter. So take a step back - think about what is
317. 25:24going on. This is not something that you'll do in one session - you're
318. 25:28probably going to do it over a good few days perhaps a few weeks. What I'd
319. 25:32recommend is to use some sort of visual aid. Everyone is different but I find
320. 25:38that visual aids are super useful. What I mean by that is spend some time
321. 25:45mind mapping all of these bits and pieces that you've got. You can use mind
322. 25:51mapping software like Freemind or any of the hundreds of apps that are
323. 25:55available - or my preference is a nice big whiteboard and a marker and just free
324. 26:02handing it and connecting this idea to that idea to
325. 26:06that idea and raising new questions. Just putting it all down
326. 26:10in a visual format trying to bring all of the stuff together visually for me
327. 26:16works well because I can just keep track of everything that's being said as
328. 26:20opposed to trying to keep it in my mind. Do whatever works for you - perhaps it's
329. 26:25just sitting down and making notes, perhaps it's drawing up mind maps.
330. 26:30Whatever you do don't rush into writing up because what you're
331. 26:35gonna do is you're gonna rush in and you're gonna write you're gonna write a
332. 26:41decent literature review (because all the contents fresh in your mind) but you're
333. 26:45gonna fail to see how the things fit together and that means synthesizing all
334. 26:51of this content. If you fail to see that, you're really not gonna have a
335. 26:56strong piece of literature or a strong a strong literature review, because
336. 27:01outsiders will be able to step in, take a zoomed out perspective and ask what
337. 27:06about this, why didn't he talk about this. The reason you didn't talk about
338. 27:11that is because you were so narrowly focused in on these key variables that
339. 27:17you didn't take a step back and think about how it all fits together.
340. 27:20I know I'm harping on about this but take the time to step back and digest and then
341. 27:24synthesize all of the information that's in front of you. So that is step two of
342. 27:30the literature review process. Log it catalog it and then step back and
343. 27:36synthesize all of this in your mind into some sort of big picture view. Right step
344. 27:41two is done - let's move on to step three.
345. 27:46Right - finally on to step three: outlining and writing up. Finally we're gonna get
346. 27:54writing. Right, so it's really important to notice that I said two things there:
347. 27:59one outlining two writing up. Don't write up before your outline. I know it's
348. 28:05really tempting at this stage you've gone through all of these steps before
349. 28:08you've gone through all of the process and you just say "I just want to get
350. 28:12writing! I just want to get my thoughts down onto paper! I just want to get
351. 28:15some sort of tangible product that I can give to my supervisor give to
352. 28:20my committee!". I understand, I understand but trust me, the first step is outlining.
353. 28:26Outlining can mean going back to your whiteboard and again doing things
354. 28:31visually, or it can just be a Word document with the set of bullet points.
355. 28:35Whatever your preference is the most important thing is to figure out how
356. 28:39you're going to structure your discussion upfront. If you don't
357. 28:43spend that time, what you're going to do is
358. 28:45gonna get writing and you're gonna say a lot, but it's not necessarily going to be
359. 28:51conveying things in a an optimized fashion. It's not going to be necessarily
360. 28:56conveying things in a way that is easy for a first-time reader to understand
361. 29:00and it is really important that you take the time to communicate well, because
362. 29:07you've done all this work. It's very easy for a student who knows their
363. 29:13literature inside-out to do a poor job of communicating that on paper and and
364. 29:20that's obviously very sad because they've done the work, they've put in the
365. 29:23effort but they just didn't communicated well on paper. So let me not harp on - the
366. 29:28point is spend some time outlining how you're going to approach your
367. 29:31dissertation or how you're going to approach your literature review first.
368. 29:34There are, broadly speaking, two ways that you can structure a
369. 29:39literature review. One is chronologically - so just
370. 29:43structuring it based on how the narrative is developed over time.
371. 29:46That's suitable for some topics, for some research questions etc. Another
372. 29:53way to structure it is thematically. Very often if you are looking at
373. 29:59antecedents/drivers/causes of X or contributors to X, a nice way to
374. 30:05structure it is per antecedent or per group of drivers, so that there's driver
375. 30:12number one, driver number two, driver number 3, driver number four, and how all
376. 30:15of these things contribute to a certain outcome. How are you gonna structure
377. 30:20your your literature review is is really down to two each person. I can't really
378. 30:26recommend how you do that in this sort of video. If you're unsure, you're more than
379. 30:30welcome to book a free consultation with one of our Grad Coach guides and they
380. 30:35can probably give you some good advice in that respect. Regardless of what your
381. 30:39structure is going to be, make sure that you're outlining everything first. Have a
382. 30:44clear outline on paper. Obviously you're not going to stick to this 100%. You
383. 30:48might take a turn once you start writing - that's absolutely fine. But have
384. 30:53something that you start with. Have a clear idea of how you're going to
385. 30:58develop a narrative before you start writing. Don't fall into
386. 31:01the trap of just running off and writing up five thousand, ten thousand
387. 31:06words, with lots of information, but not a clear narrative - because the narrative is
388. 31:12what wins. Having a clear line of argument that builds a plus B plus C
389. 31:18plus D equals whatever outcome - that is the most important thing in terms of
390. 31:25communicating what you have. So step one - outline - then step two is time to write
391. 31:32it up. In terms of writing up, I can't give you really too much advice on
392. 31:40this but I can say that there is a very very important thing to keep in mind
393. 31:46when you're writing up. That is that on your first literature review draft, perfection is not
394. 31:53the objective. I'm gonna say that again because this is so so important to just
395. 31:59getting things down on paper. Don't try go for perfect. Perfect is the
396. 32:06wrong objective at this stage. A really good mantra to work with is "done
397. 32:11is better than perfect". What you're trying to do in your first draft of your
398. 32:17literature review (and really your first draft of anything in your dissertation
399. 32:20or thesis) is to just get the rough content down. You've already got an
400. 32:26outline, so whatever you put down is gonna be a reasonably decent narrative.
401. 32:31Don't get stuck on conveying points in the best possible fashion. Don't get
402. 32:37stuck in trying to create this perfectly smooth argument and smooth
403. 32:42narrative on first draft of the literature review. Rather just get everything down onto
404. 32:47paper for version one. Then what you do once you've done that is you go back. I
405. 32:54would suggest once you've dumped everything onto paper,
406. 32:58I would just take a day or two step away from it. Just clear your mind get away
407. 33:02from the literature because your mind will be foggy about this point
408. 33:06in time. Then come back and have a read through and do
409. 33:10rough edits to improve the flow from one section to another,
410. 33:15to strengthen certain points, to improve the prominence of some
411. 33:20certain component that everything hinges on. Tighten it up, basically. Then what I
412. 33:26would suggest you do is give your literature review to a friend or a
413. 33:32family member or someone who cares enough to actually read it. Ask them
414. 33:39to have a read through. Don't give them too much information. Ask them to have a
415. 33:43read through and to just give you some feedback. Did they understand it? Did they
416. 33:49find it interesting to read?
417. 33:52Did it make any sense?
418. 33:56A good way of judging whether or not you got your key points of across is to ask
419. 34:01them to explain the the literature review back to you. Obviously not in
420. 34:05great detail but ask them to just give you a bit of a summary of what was
421. 34:11it all about. What you'll see when you get that feedback from someone who's
422. 34:15completely fresh, someone who hasn't been in the thick of all this
423. 34:19literature and the thick of your research topic and the thick of of a
424. 34:22dissertation or thesis. What you'll get is a very clear indication of what
425. 34:28points stuck, what points were clear and what points were not clear. So that's
426. 34:32super super useful feedback and this is where I say if you're gonna get a friend
427. 34:36to look at your content, don't give them all of the information upfront. Don't
428. 34:41don't give them a warm up. Just give them your document. If there's some
429. 34:45technical jargon that you need to explain, maybe you want to explain your
430. 34:48research questions that would be a good start so at least they understand what you're
431. 34:52trying to achieve - but don't give them the mini version. Give them your
432. 34:58literature review and ask them to have a read of it. Whatever they tell you in response,
433. 35:04whatever they give back to you when you ask them to explain it, that's
434. 35:07going to give you a very good view of what points were strong which
435. 35:11points were clear, which arguments really need some some propping up. So I would do
436. 35:19that, then obviously do an edit after that, maybe maybe have a few friends that
437. 35:23could give you feedback. The more the merrier. Once you've got that
438. 35:28feedback, once you see what's lacking, do another tightening up of your
439. 35:32document at that point and then it's probably a good idea to send it off to
440. 35:37your supervisor and get some feedback from them. You can also work
441. 35:42with one of our Research Specialists at Grad Coach and they can give you an
442. 35:47in-depth critique before you send it off to your supervisor. That's up to every
443. 35:53student. What is beneficial if you work with a professional beforehand is that
444. 35:58they will iron out all the the straightforward issues or the all the
445. 36:04basic issues and what that does is it clears up your your supervisors plate so
446. 36:09that they can really focus on key issues, as opposed to fairly rudimentary things.
447. 36:13It's up to you how you want to work that, but whatever you do, get that
448. 36:19that pretty tightened up document over to your supervisor and get the feedback
449. 36:23from them before you go tighten it up any further. That is
450. 36:29pretty important and depending on your university, you might have multiple
451. 36:33review sessions with your supervisor, you might only have one. You've got to figure
452. 36:37out how best you to utilize that resource of supervision and feedback.
453. 36:42Do you pay a lot of attention to whatever feedback they give you because
454. 36:47very often the supervisor is the first marker and so you want to be satisfying
455. 36:52whatever requests they're putting in. So that is step three - as I say really
456. 36:58important to outline, then get writing but when you're writing remember that
457. 37:03done is better than perfect. Don't get stuck
458. 37:08in trying to make things 100% the first time around. Just get your thoughts down
459. 37:12onto paper and then tighten up, tighten up, tighten up, give to a friend, give to
460. 37:18someone at Grad Coach, give to your research supervisor and tighten up
461. 37:23tighten up, through the process. But don't try to write the perfect literature review the first
462. 37:27time because you're just gonna get stuck, you're just gonna get writer's block and
463. 37:30you're never going to finish this thing.
464. 37:35So there you have it - those are the three steps of how to write a literature
465. 37:42review. Really no rocket science - this is all pretty straightforward stuff,
466. 37:46but as I'm sure you've noticed there are some key points to remember as you
467. 37:50progress through this whole literature review process. To recap: start with why.
468. 37:57Start with understanding what is a literature review all about. What is the
469. 38:03purpose of the literature review. Then get on to going and digging up content
470. 38:09and I shared with you a good few techniques there and there's some links
471. 38:13below this video to help you with that. Find your content and step two, log that
472. 38:19stuff straight into your reference manager, catalog it into a detailed
473. 38:23Excel spreadsheet. If you remember, we have a free one that you can use - link
474. 38:28below this video as always - and then spend the time synthesizing all of it in
475. 38:34your mind, perhaps on a whiteboard. Then step three, finally get to the writing
476. 38:40but before you write, outline your argument outline - how you're going to
477. 38:44structure this chapter and then get writing and don't worry about perfection.
478. 38:48Get your arguments down on paper. Three pretty straightforward steps to write a
479. 38:54literature review. One last thing to say before we go - if you have any questions
480. 39:03about your dissertation, thesis, literature review or any components of the
481. 39:07research process, you are most welcome to drop us an email and we'll do our best
482. 39:13to give you an answer if we can. Our email address is [email protected]
483. 39:18you can also book a free consultation with
484. 39:21one of our Research Specialists. we have a group of really really experienced and
485. 39:27skilled PhD qualified research specialists that help students like you
486. 39:31every day with their research and you're more than welcome to grab a free
487. 39:35consultation with them. Again I'll put the link below this video. If you enjoyed
488. 39:40the video, please give us a like please give us a thumbs up, share it with your
489. 39:43friends, subscribe to our YouTube channel - whatever works for you. More than
490. 39:49anything we hope we provided you with some value in this video. So for today or
491. 39:53at least for this video, this is Grad Coach signing out!