Conducting a Research

literature review

critical discussion and summary of literature that is of ‘general’ and ‘specialized’ relevance to the particular area and topic of the research problem.

Generate a list of references

Make a preliminary list of literature that is relevant to your research topic.

Reading the literature

You must realize that not every reference will contain material that is relevant to your research problem. This is a necessary part of the process: Keep what is relevant and ignore what is irrelevant.

Update your list of references

As you read the references in your initial list, you will find other references you will need to read.

Presentation

As you continue to read, you will be generating more and more notes. At some point you must start writing the Literature Review.

General Reference

A reference source that provides broad, foundational overviews, basic facts, and universal definitions designed for a general audience across a wide range of disciplines.

Specialized Reference

A reference source that focuses deeply on a single specific subject, field, or academic discipline to provide detailed, technical, and domain-specific information for specialists and researchers.

Primary Sources

Accounts of the actual research that has been done. These materials are considered more strong sources as it provides specific information and original material from the field one is studying.

Secondary Sources

Sources of this type is considered ‘once removed’ from the actual research as it usually represents scholarly summary of the research that has been done in a particular area.

Tertiary Sources

This type provides clues about the location of references of a general nature on a topic. Usually, it gives general introduction to areas in which you might be interested.

Narrative literature review

critiques the literature and summarizes the body of a literature.

Systematic literature review

requires more rigorous and well-defined approach compared to most other types of literature review.

Conducting meta-analysis

you take findings from several studies on the same subject and analyze these using standardized statistical procedures.

Conducting meta-synthesis

You take findings based on non-statistical techniques. This technique integrates, evaluates and interprets findings of multiple qualitative research studies. Usually when following inductive research approach

Argumentative literature review

examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply imbedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature.

Integrative literature review

reviews, critiques, and synthesizes secondary data about research topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated.

Theoretical literature review

focuses on a pool of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena.

Chronological Structure

Arranging literature by time periods to highlight how opinions, theories, or practices have evolved over different eras.

Publication-Based Structure

Arranging literature by specific sources or publisher perspectives to illustrate a clear shift in viewpoints (e.g., from radical to conservative).

Trend-Based Structure

Arranging literature by recurring patterns or shifts across variables like time, region, or topic.

Thematic Structure

Arranging literature by core topics, themes, or methods related directly to the research thesis rather than by time.

Citations

way to tell your readers that certain material in your work came from another source.

• In-Text Citation Format: Author-Year inside square brackets (e.g., [Phillips 2001]).

  
  

• Reference List Order: Alphabetical by the author's last name.

  
  

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

• In-Text Citation Format: Author-Year inside parentheses (e.g., (Raskin, 2002)).

  
  

• Reference List Order: Alphabetical by the author's last name.

  
  

APA (American Psychological Association)

• In-Text Citation Format: Sequential numbers inside square brackets (e.g., [1] or [8, 10]).

  
  

• Reference List Order: Numerical, strictly in the order the sources appear/are cited in the text.

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

in-text citation

A reference (author surname/s and the publication date of the source) within the body of the essay or report

Quotations

an exact copy of the original words, used in a way that preserves their intended context.

Paraphrasing

takes a passage from something you have read but the content is re-written using your own words.

Secondary Referencing

practice of citing an original work or author that you have not directly read or accessed yourself, but instead encountered as quoted, summarized, or cited within another author's text.