PSC 530: Quantitative Analysis: Literature Review

Literature Review Goals

A literature review is not the same as an annotated bibliography or a typical research paper.

The goals of a literature review are to:

1. Show you understand the background of your research project
2. Help the reader understand the context of your research
3. Prove that your research adds something to the existing body of work on this topic

Components of a Literature Review

A literature review is a detailed critical review of the existing research on a specific topic. This review can include:

1. Patterns within the research
2. Shared ideas between different authors
3. Contrasting viewpoints or major arguments
4. Missing perspectives or unexplored ideas
5. Suggestions for future research that should/could happen

You can stay organized while working on your literature review by writing as you read.

Writing as you read helps you avoid plagiarism. You can track which ideas from which authors you are using.

When you read an important section of text that is relevant to your research assignment, paraphrase the text. When you paraphrase, you:

1. Apply another authors' ideas to your research topic.
2. Show you understand the other authors' ideas and the context of your research topic.
3. Still cite the author from whom the ideas originated.

To paraphrase as you read, you can follow these steps:

1. Read the original text. Focus on the main ideas from the author. Check the author's citations and consider if those might be closer sources to the idea you want to paraphrase.
2. In your own words, explain the original text to yourself or to a friend. Check your understanding of the passage.
3. Ask yourself: How does this text apply to my research project?
4. Write out a paraphrased version of the original text, including explaining how the text connects to your research topic. Keep track of what text you are citing.
5. Check the paraphrased text you wrote. If you copied any of the original author's phrases, then those phrases need to be in quotation marks.
6. Whenever you use your paraphrased text in your research project, always properly cite where you paraphrased from.

ResearchRabbit is an AI tool that you can use to find more resources related to resources you have already collected.

To do this, you will need to feed a collection of citations into ResearchRabbit. Each citation represents the resource that you have already found and liked.

You can add citations directly, or you can use a citations folder existing in a Citation Management Software app you use. Please see the Citation Management LibGuide for how to use Zotero. Zotero can be directly linked to ResearchRabbit.

Please be cautious of whether or not you want your Zotero account live-linked and constantly updated to match your ResearchRabbit findings. This can cause duplicate citations inside of Zotero as it can re-add the same citations that were already copied over into ResearchRabbit.