Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Research Imagination, 1st Edition

by Chris Hart

Reviewing the literature for a research project can seem a daunting, even overwhelming task. New researchers, in particular, wonder: Where do I start? What do I do? How do I do it?

Doing a Literature Review can help. This accessible text offers advice on how to:
– search out existing knowledge on a topic;
– analyse arguments and ideas;
- map ideas, arguments and perspectives;
– produce a literature review;
– construct a case for investigating a topic.

Doing a Literature Review is a practical and comprehensive guide to researching, preparing and writing a literature review, a major component of research projects. It is an essential tool not only for postgraduate students but also for undergraduate and novice researchers across the social sciences and humanities.

Genres: Academic, Reference, Research, Academia, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Sociology

230 pages, Hardcover

Published November 1, 1998

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Please see: Chris Hart


Chris Hart was awarded his doctorate in advertising and linguistics in 1993. He has held posts at several UK universities. Chris has been involved in national and international research projects and has authored numerous books on a wide range of topics and issues. His current research interests include: the role of advertising in in the UK in a Covid-19 and post-EU environment, music bands as brands, television detective dramas, and popular culture and entertainments during times of national crisis.

source: university faculty page

The author can also be found at:
Christopher Hart

Reviews

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did a great job in outlining all kinds of difficulties and counterstrategies imo.

However, i was confused at times: The advice was partly given to
(a) curious readers who know the stuff that is written about here but dont have a set of solutions ready to employ, and
(b) curious readers who know more than (a) and have advanced requirements that (a)-members do not understand.
While not being a problem per se, this could have been clearer at certain points.

But still, well written overall and valuable resource that gave me what i looked for.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up after hearing good reviews from a few of my PhD student twitter mates. I have never put together a formal literature review the size of a dissertation before, and needing help with my analytical and social science writing skills I thought this book would be a good fit. I was especially excited about this text as it is written by a scholar in the information science field.

What this book does well is present schemas and and frameworks for organizing and analyzing texts and I will use these frameworks to inform my own approach to conducting the literature review.

I think the biggest challenge with this book is that the author wrote for a perceived audience of undergraduate, Masters and PhD researchers. Thus, the text spent a lot of time explaining basic research methods and tips (e.g. how to use keywords to search a database) and not enough time digging down into issues more prevalent to a PhD audience. And, like most research methods books, it is just no replacement for actually doing the work. I just wish the text would have given more guidance.

[Glenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me a lot of good points to consider before writing the dissertation for an MA. The book covers not only how to research information but how to approach critically evaluating research. Discussion of Fisher's (1993) approach to argumentation analysis was extremely helpful and whilst I would have liked more discussion on inference indicators, I was able to take themes and ideas from the book and follow them up. My overall impression is that this book offers more an opportunity to critically reflect on aspects of writing a literature review rather than serving as a how-to do a literature review book. For a how-to approach I found that Diana Ridley's book "The Literature Review" offers a more basic approach which less discussion.

[Alexander Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book does not dive heavily into technologies of literature review, this is an excellent outline of what literature reviews do. Here Hart focuses primarily on Theses and Dissertation literature reviews in information studies and social sciences. Because of this, he assumes that (1) the reader needs an overview of critical reading skills, and (2) that documents of review will be more diverse and harder to trace. This sets this book apart from most of the literature review texts I've read. The downside to this book is that it does not actively move to explaining the mechanisms of literature review until nearly the end of the book.

This book's key to clarity that it does not attempt to revolutionize what a literature review process is. It leans on skills that were already developed during graduate education. This book focuses a good bit on telling you to write down the things research oriented students are already thinking about when they read an article or a book. This book has an excellent pedagogy, but as I said, it could focus a little more on what a literature review does and how you organize it to do those things.

[Carole Tansley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for business studies and humanities students. Clearly written and full of ideas for doing that 'deep dive' into texts and constructing visual presentations of the overall picture provided by your literature review.

[Mark Ward · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not really necessary and overly complicated.

[Marcus Goncalves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great resource for any researcher doing the often required literature review. The author offers excellent insights and techniques to the process.

[k8inorbit · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very very very comprehensive and detailed intro to writing a lit review. The overview is interesting, but I can't help feeling like this could also just all be simplified into a really handy 5-10 page handout.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the idea of being able to do this without having to run experiments to get published.

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helpful, a very well-informed and well-organised book for those undertaking literature reviews as well as those reflecting on research methodologies more broadly.

[Dajuroka Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Valuable insights into qualitative analysis and literature analysis.

[Mzayyat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Much better lit review self-help books out there - 1.5*