Define literature survey and explain the importance of a good literature review and also state it’s types.
Define literature survey and explain the importance of a good literature review and also state it’s types.
Ans.
A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.
Importance of a Good Literature Review
A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:
(i) Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
(ii) Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
(iii) Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
(iv) Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.
The purpose of a literature review is to:
(i) Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
(ii) Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
(iii) Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
(iv) Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature..
Types of Literature Reviews
(1) Argumentative Review: This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply imbedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint.
(2) Integrative Review: Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems.
(3) Historical Review: Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline.
(4) Methodological Review: A review does not always focus on what someone said (findings), but how they came about saying what they say (method of analysis). Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels.
