In brief, the Literature Review is structured in three parts:
- Introduction: Introduces the topic, uses statistics to show the importance of the topic, identifies trends, indicates the themes and the organizational pattern of the review.
- Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically.
- Conclusions/Recommendations:
Summarizes the major contributions of the significant articles, identifies the gaps in literatrue, makes recommendations for futher study.
The body of the Literature Review is the major portion of the document. It is important to create an organizational method for this section of the review. There are several options: Chronological, Thematic, Methodological.
- Chronological: If you use the chronological method, you would write about the selected articles according to when they were published. This might be helpful if you're doing a historical review of a topic or if you have found trends. For example you can examine the sources by trends, such as the history, development, and then current findings of the research.
- Thematic. Thematic reviews are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. For example a search on college students and cheating will find articles about self esteem, gender, faculty perceptions, online vs. classroom settings.
- Methodological. This approach differs from the others in that the focus is on the "methods" of the researcher or writer. One methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences for students who cheat or the psychological impact of cheating.
