College of Human Sciences

This page was developed to help users understand what a literature review was and to understand what steps are involved in completing a Literature Review. In addition, there are several boxes that refer you to materials that could be useful while building a Literature Review.  Particularly the flow diagram displayed below clearly shows the process.

Basic Steps: 

1. Define the Research Question
2. Plan the Review 
   • where will you search?
   • which databases?
   • what time frame?
   • what years included?
   • what keywords?
   • what subject terms?
   • what will you not search, if anything?
3. Research the Literature
4. Analysis the Gathered Items
5. Write the Review

An organization dedicated to  evidence-based minimum set of items for reporting in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. To learn more see their website at http://www.prisma-statement.org/. However, Prisma suggests citing one of their papers and therefore please see https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097. 

The Flow Diagram is in picture format in the box to the right. 

The checklist offer is useful as you start the process of putting the data together - see below

A Literature Review is the gathering of peer-review scholarly journal articles, books, dissertations, and thesis relevant to a particular topic, area of research, or theory, that provides a summary and critical evaluation of each item. The purpose is to offer an overview of significant literature published on a topic.

Literature Reviews can be one step in the process of writing peer-reviewed scholarly articles or can be a systematic review that stands alone. 

Literature Review

• Critiques and summarizes a body of literature
• Draws conclusions about the topic
• Identifies gaps or inconsistencies in the literature
• Requires a sufficiently focused research question
• Shows command of the subject area and understanding of the problem
• Brings the reader up-to-date with current literature on a topic
• Justification for future research in the area

Systematic Literature Review

• More rigorous and well-defined method described in detail
• Details the time frame within which the literature was selected
• Details the methods used to evaluate and synthesize findings of the primary research in question

Meta-analysis

• A form of systematic review
• Takes findings from several studies on the same subject and analyzes them using standardized statistical procedures
• Integrates findings from a large body of quantitative findings to enhance understanding
• Detects patterns and relationships

Meta-synthesis

• A form of systematic review
• Non-statistical technique
• Integrates, evaluates and interprets findings of multiple qualitative research studies
• Involves analyzing and synthesizing key elements
• Goal: transformative of the individual findings into new conceptualizations and interpretations

For more information, visit http://www.prisma-statement.org/PRISMAStatement/FlowDiagram