How to write a literature review fast

6 tips on how to write a literature review FAST!

So, you want to do a literature review for your dissertation or research project? Not sure of the fastest and most effective way to do this? I will show you how to do so in six simple steps.

First, what is a literature review, and why do we bother with it?

A literature review is simply a critical recap of research that has been conducted on your specific narrow topic. Academic writing is about standing on the shoulders of giants. You do this review to develop and document your knowledge of the field. Without a literature review, you won’t know who the big guns in your field are or what others have said about your topic. No reader will take your research seriously if you don’t demonstrate your knowledge of the subject.

The literature review also serves another critical function. It helps you identify where to focus your study. Let’s say you have identified a topic about how teenagers communicate with their parents. As you do your literature review, you may find that a lot of work has been done on the topic in the United States but very little in Sub-Saharan Africa — this is a GAP. You may then decide to focus your study on parents and teenagers in one sub-Saharan African country — let’s say, Sierra Leone. Or you may find that researchers have focussed mostly on the perceptions of parents and little on the perceptions of teenagers so you may then decide to focus your study in this area. Remember, there is no point in simply repeating what others have already done unless you are setting out to verify what they did. For doctoral degrees, you are required to make a significant original contribution to knowledge — so you must be able to justify that your research is filling a specific gap. For research done by practitioners, your literature review will help you focus your field research, there’s no point in asking people questions you already know the answer to.

So now we know what a literature review is and why we do it, what should be our first step?

Step 1 — Search for relevant literature, i.e. journals articles or books on your topic

Create a list of keywords and phrases for your topic; for example, teenagers and parents and communication or Teenagers or adolescents communication. AND and OR are known as Boolean operators. AND narrows your search because you must have all of the keywords while OR makes it broader because it can include any of the keywords. Search for your keywords or phrases on scholarly databases such as Google Scholar, Pubmed or Science Direct. None of these databases are perfect — you will find some sources in one that you may not find in another.

Step 2 — Evaluate and select sources

Scan through the results (say the first 100 results) and tick or star the ones that seem relevant based on their title. All of these databases allow you to save the relevant articles. Then you need to log all of these results somewhere. I like to do this in excel. I simply note the date, the author, the title. If you are using Google Scholar, it also shows you the number of citations. The number of citations is important because it shows how many times other scholars have cited the study. The higher the number of citations, the more important the study is in the field. However, remember new studies may have fewer citations simply because scholars have not found them yet. I have linked to the template I use down below. Now you have all the sources listed, you need to find the actual documents. Some of these documents may be available for free then that’s great, but often you will find that there is a fee to download them. If you are a student, you should now head to your university’s database and search for these documents. If you are a practitioner, your organisation may be subscribing to a service that lets you access certain journals.

Step 3 File your sources

Once you have the documents, read the abstract to decide if the source is still relevant if it is, then save the document [show this abstract. I like to save my documents directly into my reference management software. I use Mendeley, and I have linked below to a video that that explains how to use it. Anyway, the important point is that you save the document. Once you have read the abstracts, decide on the articles that are most relevant.

Step 4 — Create your annotated bibliography

Now read the documents you have saved in full. Then write a short summary of each source. You can do all this in the excel template I have linked to down below. You should note the study design methods, any theories used, the results and conclusions. Make note also of your own critical analysis of the publication, for example, did the study results differ from what others had been reporting. This is your annotated bibliography.

Step 5 — Decide on how you will organise your literature review

By now, you know an awful lot about your topic, and you can start to see themes and connections between sources. How do you want to organise your literature? Do you want to organise it chronologically (from older to more recent publications), thematic (organised around key themes), methodological (the types of methods used) and theoretical (the theories and models used).

Step 6 — Write the review. Make sure your review has an introduction, a main body and a conclusion.

That’s it — you are done!