How to Organize a Literature Review?
There are a number of ways of organizing a literature review. Here is one suggestion:
- Introduction: define the topic, together with your reason for selecting the topic. You could also point out overall trends, gaps, particular themes that emerge, etc., as in the previous Cooper (1988) quote.
- Body: this is where you discuss your sources. Here are some ways in which you could organize your discussion:
- Chronologically: for example, if writers’ views have tended to change over time. There is little point in doing the review by order of publication unless this shows a clear trend;
- Thematically: take particular themes in the literature, for example in the literature review of poverty and disability cited in the next section, the author takes the themes of the prevalence and structure of disability, education, employment, income and poverty, causes of disability, the path from poverty to disability and vice versa, and finally, policies for disabled people;
- Methodologically: here, the focus is on the methods of the researcher, for example, qualitative versus quantitative approaches.
- Conclusion: summarize the major contributions, evaluating the current position, and pointing out flaws in methodology, gaps in the research, contradictions, and areas for further study.
Instructions
- Access the detailed list of the research problem areas provided by your lecturer.
- Find and report on a minimum of ten (10) articles from academic journals relevant to the research problem area.You need to find articles to help you understand relevant research in this field and to assist in formulating research questions and your approach to tackling the research problem.
- While the minimum requirement above is 10 academic articles – they must be relevant to the research problem area. To find 10 relevant papers it is likely that you will have to read at least 20. So your search will include a larger number of papers.
- Your assessment must show your research and include a table at the end which lists all the academic papers you read, including those you did not use in your report. This table should include all the papers you found and a summary of the five key pieces of information you got from each and an assessment of how relevant each one was to the research problem. This assessment of relevance should only be a sentence or two long. If you evaluate a paper as relevant but did not include in the literature review you must also explain why not.
- Write a critical/thematic literature review. Do not organise this review reference by reference, sometimes referred to as an annotated bibliography
- For an explanation of the difference visit these links http://www.library.arizona.edu/help/tutorials/litreviews/whatis.html , http://www.literaturereviewhq.com/the-annotated-bibliography-literature-review-friend-or-foe/
- Summarize the type of information found from your search for existing information and any key conclusions that you can draw relevant to the decision or problem. At the end you should have a section summarizing the gaps and limitations in the information found and a few sentences describing your overall conclusions. This review should be between (1800 and 2500 words) not including reference list and any tables or figures that you may use.
Leisure Shopping
- Leisure shopping behaviour in general
- how often
- Enjoyment of shopping in different places including malls, urban shopping precincts, direct outlet, small towns, markets, around tourist attractions and in duty free shops
- Importance of leisure shopping in travel decisions
- Importance of motives for a day visit to a shopping village
- Appeal of different shopping village themes
- Importance of shop features
- Importance of shopping village/precinct facilities
- Satisfaction with their visit to the place where they were surveyed
- Expenditure during this trip – how much and on what
- Likelihood of buying product online/direct from producers
- Recommendations for others