The literature review is a summary of any previous study. This study or research work can be of any field. Researchers can include a literature review in new research work as a reference to their thesis, or they can conduct a new thesis or research work based on the previous one.
Adding a good literature review in any new research means the scientist or researcher has a good knowledge of their new study and can justify his research by giving previous references.
Literature Review Matrix:
A literature review matrix is a method used to write a literature review in a very concise and direct way. In the literature review matrix, we write the literature review in a matrix or table form so that it becomes easy to read. We can also write lots of information in a single presentable table.
A researcher writes a literature review to check what information about the research work he has. A literature review is not just a way of summarizing the research papers you have studied. So it should not be organized according to the summaries of each paper; rather, it should be organized according to each subtopic of your research.
Suppose you need a well-organized method to summarise such a large number of articles about your research. A literature review matrix is a method through which you can organize your literature review effectively.
Structure Of A Literature Review:
Let’s see the wrong and right ways to write a literature review. It’s not the right way to write the summary of each article one after another like we normally do. People normally think a literature review is a summary of articles.
Rather you will synthesize your studies. Not understanding yet? Well, more precisely, you need to arrange information from multiple sources so that after reading the literature review, the reader narrows down to an overall understanding of the articles and studies you have added. This means the literature review should help understand the research works you have added and help further understand your research work. However, if you are facing any issues, you can get PhD dissertation help.
Let’s Start Step By Step Method of Writing A Literature Review Matrix:
First, we will see how to start writing a literature review, then learn how to read the article, and finally, we will design a literature review matrix.
1- How To Start A Literature Review?
PhD dissertations are very long and need detailed information about the research. Then how can we write an effective literature review? For writing an effective literature review most important thing is research. If you do not know the previous studies on any topic, you cannot write it. Plus most important factor is summarising the information. If you do not know about previous studies, it would not be easy to summarise them.
So you should write a summary of the articles you have read so that writing does not bother you when you summarise them in the literature review matrix. Plus, it would be more important if you would highlight the lines you found as the crust of the article. Then you would mark the published date and the names of the writers who participated in the research work for each article. A research paper can have one or more than one writers.
2- How To Read A Research Paper?
Before writing the literature review, let’s see how to read a research paper to summarise the information of each paper easily.
Almost all research papers contain the same headings. It means if we successfully read one, it becomes easy to read others. Abstract, methods, introduction, results, and conclusion are general headings in almost every article.
Start reading each article carefully with attention and make notes of important points you need to add to your literature review. One by one, write all information or mark it on a research paper.
3- Designing A Literature Review Matrix and Filling In Information:
A literature review matrix enables the writer to write the differences and similarities in the research works. You can quickly compare all the writings just after having a general reading of the literature review. Well, the question here is how to do so.
In the literature review matrix, every row will consist of data from one article, and every column will contain different information about any particular research study. Every column will have specific names and contain particular data about research studies. Here is sample information you can add to the literature review matrix.
You will add the Author’s publication date, Author surname, conclusions, Theoretical, conceptual framework, Analysis results, conclusions and methodology.
These are the columns you need to fill in for each article. In the first column, you will write the serial number of each research and then the publication date, author surname, results, conclusions and other information for each article in other columns.
Some points you need to consider while filling in the literature review matrix:
- Writing a good research paper and an impactful literature review is another art. No matter how good you are, you should always consult a supervisor to avoid any inconvenience before submitting your thesis.
- Make sure you wrote every piece of information with correct grammar and avoid spelling mistakes.
- It would be best to be careful about plagiarism for writing methodology, results, or conclusions. Do not just try to paraphrase information.
- Fill the literature review matrix with understandable comprehension.
How To Organize The Literature Review:
You can organize your literature review by publication date in a chronological way. You can also organize it based on the methodology of a research paper. There are other methods to organize literature review but choose only one that suits best according to your paper.
Summary:
Literature reviews contain lots of information from many research papers. But you can summarise all the information and then organize it using the literature review matrix method. In this method, you will first decide what information of a particular paper you want to add to your literature review, like methodology, Author’s surname and results etc. Afterwards, you add information about each article to the matrix table and organize it chronologically.
For detailed information, read the full article and always consult your supervisor for more good guidelines.
