WRITING THE LITERATURE REVIEW

Number of articles reviewed. Published review articles may cite more than 100 studies. Fortunately, most instructors require fewer than 20 (5-15 is typical). However, writing a less than exhaustive literature review means that student authors must be discriminating in choosing the most representative articles.

Length. Student papers are typically 8-20 pages, double-spaced, but standards vary. Check with your instructor for course guidelines.

Organization. Remember, you either began your literature review process with some theme or point that you wanted to emphasize, or you discovered some sort of theme as you read your articles. Either way, the organization of your paper should highlight the main theme. Although no two reviews look exactly the same (at least, they shouldn’t!), they tend to be organized something like this:

• Introduce research question (what it is, why it is worth examining)
• Narrow research question to the studies discussed.
• Briefly outline the organization of the paper (for example, if there is a major controversy in this literature, briefly describe it and state that you will present research supporting first one side, then the other. Or, if three methodologies have been used to address the question, briefly describe them and then state that you will compare the results obtained by the three methods).
• Describe studies in detail
• Compare and evaluate studies
• Discuss implications of studies (your judgment of what the studies show, and where to go from here)