Writing the Literature Review: A Practical Guide

by Sara Efrat Efron, Ruth Ravid

This accessible text provides a roadmap for producing a high-quality literature review--an integral part of a successful thesis, dissertation, term paper, or grant proposal. Each step of searching for, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing prior studies is clearly explained and accompanied by user-friendly suggestions, organizational tips, vignettes, and examples of student work. Also featured are excerpts from peer-reviewed quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods articles. This is the first book to focus on crafting different types of reviews (systematic, traditional–narrative, or hermeneutic–phenomenological) that reflect the writer's research question, methodological choices, and approaches to knowledge. It describes what all reviews have in common and highlights distinct characteristics of each type. The book includes dos and don'ts for evaluating studies and constructing an argument, and software suggestions for locating, organizing, and arranging sources.
 
Pedagogical Features
*Checklists and "To Do" activities that break down key steps to take.
*Boxed examples, graphics that organize and visually illustrate key concepts, and summary tables.
*Group activities that invite students to further explore and apply the methods discussed in each chapter.
*Detailed directions for using four different organizing synthesis matrix, summary table, mapping, and topic outline.
*End-of-chapter summaries and "What's Next" sections.
*Assessment matrices for reviewing and refining the completed literature review.

Winner (First Place)-- American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award, Nursing Research Category

Genres: Education, School, Nonfiction

298 pages, Hardcover

Published November 14, 2018

Reviews

[Wenjing]

SIMM52, mainly read chapter 2 as an introduction. I feel like the most important thing is to practise, only byreading more papers and materials related to the topic then the knowledge of literature review can be put into practise.

[Leon O'Flynn]

This is a great tool to help write a literature review, in my case for a PhD. I think this is something I will go back to many times.

[Carrie]

Great step-by-step directions for tackling my literature review.

[Jay Wells]

A great step by step guide for those learning about the literature review process.

[BiblioBrandie]

This book is the most useful I've read for my dissertation, with useful information I will reference repeatedly and often.

[Ricardo]

Well written process of developing an academic literature review.