You probably believe that your research will be significant in contributing to knowledge in your field, but how can you support that belief? The challenge is to provide a solid justification.
Support your topic choice by providing a review of research that has been done before. This becomes your ‘literature review’. Research builds on what has been done before, so past research reported in academic literature is what you need to source.
There is plenty of advice on how to use and cite literature. Databases are very helpful in getting you started and the AUT library has excellent search engines for accessing literature.
The literature review is one piece of the jigsaw that will make up your thesis and provides the context for your work. It informs the reader of the gap or space for your research topic and leads the way into what you have discovered.
Structuring your literature review can seem daunting, so here are some useful tips to guide you with structuring your review:
- Find models of reviews to help you
- Problem formulation – which topic is under consideration and what are the constituent issues?
- Literature search
- Evaluation of findings
- Analysis and interpretation of literature
If you like examining a process through diagrams, try this link.
Author: Dr Jennie Billot
Understanding, or even grappling with thinking about one’s philosophical position has been helpful for me.
🙂