PSC 530: Quantitative Analysis: Literature Review

Literature Reviews

Literature reviews can be part of a larger research project, or they can stand alone. 

Literature reviews are all meant 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. The exact parts of the review depend on your assignment. Always check with your syllabus/professor. Literature reviews can include:

• Patterns within the research
  • Who is being researched?
  • Where is research being conducted?
  • What kind of research is being done? (interviews, observations, surveys...)
• Shared ideas between different authors
  • Do they all seem to agree on something?
• Contrasting viewpoints or major arguments
  • How strongly different are the views?
  • Is any view rising to the top?
• Missing perspectives or unexplored ideas
  • Is there a group of people that hasn't been included in research?
  • Is there a location that has been overlooked?
• 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.

Before using AI tools in a research assignment, check the syllabus (or with your instructor) to make sure AI tools are permitted.

When using AI tools, always document three things:

1. What AI tool you used
2. How you used the tool
3. What part of your work the AI tool created

Different AI tools will work better for your thinking style and project goals. Be open to trying a few different tools that do similar actions.

• ResearchRabbit finds articles related to articles you have already identified as useful. These articles might share authors, citations, or topics. They may be older or newer than the articles you have already found.
• Elicit can be used to find articles. Elicit will usually skip lots of useful articles, so never use it as your only search strategy. Elicit can also be used for parts of the literature review process. 
• NotebookLM is available through your JagMail account. NotebookLM can do a broad variety of tasks. It can process and connect a body of multiple works (websites, YouTube videos, PDFs, plain text).