Lecture - 3

Why literature review? Purpose?

Contents of literature review? What to be included?
Structure of literature review? Structure to be followed?
Sources of literature?
Process of reviewing literature?
(a) Planning literature search?
(b) Conducting literature search?
(c) Obtaining and evaluating the literature?
(d) Recording the literature?
(e) Referencing the references?
(f) Writing the review?
(g) Organizing the literature review
(h) Plagiarism?

 Without reviewing the existing literature, a

researcher starts from a dark room, heading towards
badly designed studies that are poorly carried out
and produce findings of little importance.
Similarly to policy makers and practitioners, reviews
of the relevant literature will allow informed choices
to be made regarding the costing, planning and
implementation of proposed interventions.
The review is therefore a part of your academic
development of becoming an expert in the field
(Hart, 1998:1).

Two major reasons

a. The preliminary search
This helps researcher to generate and refine
research ideas.

b. The critical review

This is an essential part of research that
requires researchers (1) to demonstrate
his/her awareness of the current state of
knowledge and (2) to show how his/her
research fits in the wider context of research
area.

Major purposes
To provide foundation to build research on
To develop a good understanding and insight into
relevant previous research and emerging trends
To help researcher to identify theories and ideas
that researcher test using data (deductive
approach)
To help researcher to relate his/her ideas and
theories developed through inductive approach
To help researcher to refer whether his/her
research findings are in line with the available
literature or are in contrast to those
To identify other research that may be in
progress
To help avoid charges of plagiarism
Continues next page---

Major purposes
Continued from previous page
Gall et al. (1996) highlight the purposes of literature
review as:
To help researcher to refine research question(s)
and objectives;
To highlight research possibilities that have been
overlooked;
To discover explicit recommendations for further
research;
To provide researcher superb justification for
pursuing specific research questions and objectives;
To help researcher to avoid simply repeating work
that has already been done;
To sample current opinion;
To gain an insight into research approaches,
strategies and techniques.
To organise valuable ideas and findings

Contents of literature review)

(Contents to be covered)
1. To include the key academic theories within the area
of research chosen;
2. To demonstrate that the researchers knowledge of the
chosen research area is up to-date;
3. To show how this research relates to previous
published research;
4. To assess the strength and weaknesses of previous
work , including omissions and bias; and
5. To justify arguments by referencing previous
research.

Structure of literature review

(Structure to be followed)
Start at a more general level;
Provide a brief overview of key ideas;
Summarize, compare and contrast the work of the key
writers;
Narrow down to highlight the work most relevant to
this research;
Provide a detailed account of findings of similar work;
Highlight those issues where this research will
provide fresh insights; and
Lead the readers into subsequent sections of this
research which will address such issues.

Literature sources

The literature review process

Planning the literature search

A careful planning of literature search is needed so that
it is ensured to have relevant and up-to-date
literature; this requires to take the following steps.
a. Define the parameters of the research, which are:
a. Language of publication (for example English)
b. Subject area (for example accountancy)
c. Business sector (for example manufacturing)
d. Geographical area (for example Asia)
e. Publication period (for example the last 10 years)
f. Literature type (for example refereed journals)
Continues next slide

Planning the literature search

Continued from previous slide

b. Generate key words and search terms

i. Key words or search terms help describe research
question(s) and objectives
ii. Using Relevance Tree can prove a good tool in
generating key words; a worked example for
generating key words through Relevance Tree is
provided in Reading Materials folder)
iii. Key words are used to search the tertiary literature
c. Discuss ideas as widely as possible

Conducting the literature search

Conducting literature search may involve
a variety of approaches, namely:
Searching using tertiary literature
sources;
Table 3.2 entitled Tertiary literature
sources and their coverage is
available in Reading Materials folder.

Continues next slide

Conducting the literature search

Obtaining relevant literature referenced in
books and journals already studies;
Scanning and browsing secondary literature
available in the libraries;
Table 3.4 entitled Selected publishers and
bookshops Internet addresses is available
in Reading Materials folder.
Searching using Internet.
See next slide.

Planning and conducting literature search3: searching the Internet

Obtaining and evaluating the

literature
Define the scope of your review
Assess relevance and value
Assess sufficiency

Recording the literature

Make notes for each item you read

Record the following

Bibliographic details

See details in Table 3.6 available in Reading Materials folder.

Check also Appendix 2 entitled Systems of referencing available in
Reading Materials folder.

Brief summary of content

(covered in slide 7 & 8)
Supplementary information
See details in Table 3.7 available in Reading Materials folder.

Referencing the references

Examples
In text:
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2009)

In references (or bibliography)

Saunders, M.N.K, Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2009)
Research Methods for Business Students (5th ed),
Prentice Hall
Study Systems of referencing, including the Harvard
system, the American Psychological Association
(APA) system and Footnotes (or Vancouver system)
in Reading Materials

Basically, any approach that works for

YOU is appropriate; one possible
procedure follows
1. Arrange your notes in a logical order. If you
are having difficulty seeing an order, look for
clues in the sequence of your ideas or try
concept mapping the topic.
2. Identify the main ideas - sorting your notes
to fit under the headings.

 Develop a table of contents, that can then

be fleshed out with descriptive bullet-points
(annotated table of contents). By
subjecting an annotated table of contents
(or outline) to review, a novice researcher
can receive a self leading advice on
contents and structure of the planned
literature review.
Example follows(next slde)

 Example: a step-by-step, hierarchical list of

the points you plan to cover, e.g.,
1st main idea
1st supporting point
evidence, argument, or example
evidence, argument, or example
evidence, argument, or example
2nd supporting point
evidence, argument, or example
evidence, argument, or example
evidence, argument, or example
2nd main idea, etc

 Try to avoid long lists of supporting points;

combine into related ideas.
If you can't decide where to put something,
put it in two or more places in the outline.
As you write, you can decide which place is
the most appropriate.
Now you are ready to write your review.
Introduce the topic and give a brief
statement of the main ideas.

 Write some plausible synthesis or analysis for

these ideas using headings according to the stepby-step hierarchical list and guide the reader
through the material.
If the literature review is part of a research project,
stop at the end of each topic, to mention the main
relevant ideas and how they fit together relating to
your research.
Leave it, then reread, edit and revise what you have
written, to make sure that it makes sense and
'flows' in a way that the reader will understand
what you are tying to convey.

Chronological order
By publication date
By trend

Thematic order

A structure which considers different

themes

Methodological order

Focuses on the methods/methodology

adopted, e.g., qualitative versus
quantitative approaches

24

Four common forms

Stealing material from another source
Submitting material written by another
Copying material without quotation marks
Paraphrasing material without
documentation
Adapted from Park (2003), cited in Easterby-Smith et al. (2008)

Data Entry with Codes

In addition to the data entry in direct way as we did last
time, SPSS provides the facility to data entry with codes
for gender, educational status, marital status and so on.
Lets enter data on gender and educational status of 10
respondents (for example).
Steps for data entry (with Codes)
+Open SPSSs Data Editor
+Go to the Variable View first, and type Gender
under column Name and Gender of employee under
column Labels, in Row 1.
.continued next slide

Data Entry with Codes

Continued from previous slide
+Click column Values; you will get a small box,
clicking that box, you will reach Value Label entry
box. Type 1 for Value and Male for Value label, and
click Add. Repeat the process for code 2 for Female
and add. Click OK.
+Go to row 2 , type Education and Educational status
under columns Name and labels. Repeat the process
for coding: 0 for Uneducated, 1 for Primary, 2 for
Matriculate, 3 for Bachelor, 4 for Master and 5 for
PhD.
+Go to Data View and check whether the two
columns created above (Gender and Education) are
there. Enter codes as per data of next slide.

Respondent
Number

Gender

Education

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Female = 2
Male = 1
Male = 1
Male = 1
Female = 2
Female = 2
Male = 1
Male = 1
Male = 1
Female = 2

Primary = 1
Batchelor = 3
PhD = 5
Batchelor = 3
Matric = 2
Unedu.= 0
Primary = 1
Batchelor = 3
Matric = 2
Batchelor = 3

Analysis of the data

1.(a) Click Analyze .Descriptive
Statistics. Frequencies.
(b) Check the output.
2. (a) Click Analyze .Descriptive
Statistics. Crosstabs.
(b) Transfer Gender to Rows box
and Educational Status to
columns box, and click OK
(b) Check the output.