The second component of this research project is a literature review. Your literature review should be 5-6 pages (not including your title and references page) and should synthesize the body of literature that is important to your case study.

Assignment Instructions
Assignment 2: Literature Review

The second component of this research project is a literature review. Your literature review should be 5-6 pages (not including your title and references page) and should synthesize the body of literature that is important to your case study.

All research projects include a literature review to set out for the reader what knowledge exists on the subject under study and to demonstrate how the study being conducted with help fill current knowledge gaps. A good literature review is a thoughtful synthesis of important information that pertains to the current study. Literature reviews are arranged thematically, and typically reference more than one source within each paragraph. At the end of your literature review, you should discuss some of the clear gaps in knowledge and explain how your research will help fill this void and further our knowledge of the subject under investigation.

Developing a clear and concise literature review can be challenging. For this reason it will be important for you to review the following documents: 1) literature review tip sheet and 2) synthesis matrix. Together these documents will give you everything you need to carry out a successful literature review.

How many sources should I review?

This is a common question asked by students. Essentially the key to an excellent research paper is the research that helps back up its arguments. While this might be an unsatisfactory answer for those in need of a clear \”magic number\” a few additional observations can be made. Students writing a course paper 15-20 pages in length should expect to cite 15-30 peer-reviewed sources within their papers. Though in order to get to this point they should expect to read 25-50 peer-reviewed sources. For this assignment you should have 8-10 or more scholarly sources.

Format: Your literature review should include a title page, body, and reference page. Your paper should have 1-inch borders on all four sides, use times new roman-12 point font, be double spaced, and not have an extra space in between paragraphs. (You may need to turn this off in MS word by going to paragraph and clicking \”Don\’t add space between paragraphs of the same style). Since this is an INTL course you need to use the Turabian parenthetical citation style with a references page.

The literature review must be submitted as a Word Document Attachment in the Assignments section of the classroom by Sunday, 11:55pm EST at the end of week 5.

In addition to this guidance you have also been provided with a grading rubric, a synthesis matrix to help you take notes as you read, a journal article with a clearly marked \”literature review\” section to help you see how this section is written in terms of tone and style, and a formatting guide for your paper (something you\’ll also be able to use for your final case study assignment.)

Writing a Literature Review

Most research projects include a literature review to determine what knowledge exists on the subject under study and to develop the theoretical framework that will be used in the study. The literature review sets the context for the entire research project by explaining what others have found in researching the same or similar specific research questions. Literature reviews are also done to help summarize the current state of knowledge on a topic and the current knowledge gaps up to this point. In this format, they are often published as a pure literature review within peer-reviewed journals. One example can be found here specific to the literature on psychobiography as a method, here is another example article. Students often have a hard time writing literature reviews because it seems like a foreign way to organize information, however in a way you can equate the way that an essay is written to that of a literature review. In an essay one will bring in numerous references within each paragraph, the same would be the case for a literature review in that literature reviews are organized thematically. NCSU has a fantastic video (https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/litreview/) that helps explain what a literature review is an how they are written at the graduate and professional levels, I recommend taking a look as it will help give you some additional perspective on how these are written. For some additional information on how to organize your theoretical framework into your paper, check out this USC Library guide on Theoretical Frameworks.

A literature review begins with an introductory paragraph in which the writer frames the research topic and its significance, or the puzzle or topic area that the researcher is addressing. To do that, the writer will summarize the major relevant arguments on the research subject, highlighting the main issues and how schools of thought might differ. If there are key terms to be defined, the writer would also do that here, if the literature review is part of a larger research paper.

The body of the literature review tells readers what others have found in their studies about your specific research question, or topic under investigation (the extent of existing knowledge on your specific research question/current state of the research on a particular topic), critiques what is right or wrong with these other studies, and discusses how the body of knowledge needs to be moved forward (and/or how the work is distinguishable from the research study you are proposing). Your review should organize material by theme or method or what makes sense for the project.

The conclusion should summarize the primary “sense of the literature”, encapsulating for the reader where the existing literature ends and if carrying out a study, where your research will start.