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  • How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

  • Search for relevant literature
  • Evaluate sources
  • Identify themes, debates, and gaps
  • Outline the structure
  • Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

  • Quick Run-through
  • Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

  • Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
  • Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
  • Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
  • Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
  • Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

Literature review guide

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

  • Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
  • Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
  • Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
  • Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

  • Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
  • Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
  • Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

  • Your university’s library catalogue
  • Google Scholar
  • Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
  • Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
  • EconLit (economics)
  • Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

  • What question or problem is the author addressing?
  • What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
  • What are the key theories, models, and methods?
  • Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
  • What are the results and conclusions of the study?
  • How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

  • Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
  • Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
  • Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
  • Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
  • Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

  • Most research has focused on young women.
  • There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
  • But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

  • Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
  • Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
  • Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

  • Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
  • Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
  • Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
  • Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

  • Sampling methods
  • Simple random sampling
  • Stratified sampling
  • Cluster sampling
  • Likert scales
  • Reproducibility

 Statistics

  • Null hypothesis
  • Statistical power
  • Probability distribution
  • Effect size
  • Poisson distribution

Research bias

  • Optimism bias
  • Cognitive bias
  • Implicit bias
  • Hawthorne effect
  • Anchoring bias
  • Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

  • To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
  • To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
  • To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
  • To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
  • To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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McCombes, S. (2023, September 11). How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved February 12, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

  • An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
  • A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
  • Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
  • Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
  • Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
  • Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
  • Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

  • Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
  • Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

  • Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
  • Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
  • Qualitative versus quantitative research
  • Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
  • Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
  • Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

  • It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
  • Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
  • Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
  • Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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The A level independent investigation literature review

The literature review is an important part of your independent investigation; this unit takes you through how to structure it, and think through using the review to best effect.

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The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Literature Reviews

What this handout is about.

This handout will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Introduction

OK. You’ve got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to issue a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” as you leaf through the pages. “Literature review” done. Right?

Wrong! The “literature” of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not necessarily the great literary texts of the world. “Literature” could be anything from a set of government pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Who writes these things, anyway?

Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.

Let’s get to it! What should I do before writing the literature review?

If your assignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

  • Roughly how many sources should you include?
  • What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
  • Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
  • Should you evaluate your sources?
  • Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Look for other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. You can simply put the word “review” in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference section of sources you’ve already read are also excellent entry points into your own research.

Narrow your topic

There are hundreds or even thousands of articles and books on most areas of study. The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a good survey of the material. Your instructor will probably not expect you to read everything that’s out there on the topic, but you’ll make your job easier if you first limit your scope.

Keep in mind that UNC Libraries have research guides and to databases relevant to many fields of study. You can reach out to the subject librarian for a consultation: https://library.unc.edu/support/consultations/ .

And don’t forget to tap into your professor’s (or other professors’) knowledge in the field. Ask your professor questions such as: “If you had to read only one book from the 90’s on topic X, what would it be?” Questions such as this help you to find and determine quickly the most seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be obsolete. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus.

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine. More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You’ve got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:

  • Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.
  • Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
  • Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:

You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you’ve just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale’s portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980’s. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

  • Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.
  • By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.
  • By trend: A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.
  • Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.
  • Methodological: A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed. Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

  • Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
  • History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
  • Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Begin composing

Once you’ve settled on a general pattern of organization, you’re ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage as well. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil, 1990). Hamilton (1988) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as “writer,” “pedestrian,” and “persons.” The students were asked to describe any image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each woman in the masculine “generic” condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect. (Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, “Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense,” Women and Language19:2).

Use evidence

In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.

Be selective

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of Hamilton’s study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study’s significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others’ ideas, your voice (the writer’s) should remain front and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author’s information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil’s. For more information, please see our handout on plagiarism .

Revise, revise, revise

Draft in hand? Now you’re ready to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your main objective is to present the material, not the argument. So check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline. Then, just as you would for most other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you’ve presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be sure to use terminology familiar to your audience; get rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you’ve documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. For tips on the revising and editing process, see our handout on revising drafts .

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. 1997. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines . New York: Harcourt Brace.

Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write . Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook , 5th ed. New York: Longman.

Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers , 11th ed. London: Pearson.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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What is a literature review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment.  Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

  • Explains the background of research on a topic.
  • Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
  • Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
  • Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
  • Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
  • Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

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1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

Your literature review should be guided by your central research question.  The literature represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

  • Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow.  Is it manageable?
  • Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
  • If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor and your class mates.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

  • This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search. 

Where to find databases:

  • use the tabs on this guide
  • Find other databases in the Nursing Information Resources web page
  • More on the Medical Library web page
  • ... and more on the Yale University Library web page

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

  • Use the key words in your question, as well as synonyms for those words, as terms in your search. Use the database tutorials for help.
  • Save the searches in the databases. This saves time when you want to redo, or modify, the searches. It is also helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results.
  • Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
  • Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
  • Check with your professor, or a subject expert in the field, if you are missing any key works in the field.
  • Ask your librarian for help at any time.
  • Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help.

Review the literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

  • What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
  • Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
  • What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions.
  • Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
  • If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
  • How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited? If so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

  • Review the abstracts carefully.  
  • Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.
  • Create a matrix of the studies for easy analysis, and synthesis, across all of the studies.
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  • What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

Published on 22 February 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 7 June 2022.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

  • Search for relevant literature
  • Evaluate sources
  • Identify themes, debates and gaps
  • Outline the structure
  • Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

Why write a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1: search for relevant literature, step 2: evaluate and select sources, step 3: identify themes, debates and gaps, step 4: outline your literature review’s structure, step 5: write your literature review, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, introduction.

  • Quick Run-through
  • Step 1 & 2

When you write a dissertation or thesis, you will have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

  • Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context
  • Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
  • Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
  • Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

Literature review guide

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

  • Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
  • Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
  • Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
  • Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research objectives and questions .

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list if you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

  • Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
  • Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
  • Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some databases to search for journals and articles include:

  • Your university’s library catalogue
  • Google Scholar
  • Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
  • Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
  • EconLit (economics)
  • Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

Read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out.

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

For each publication, ask yourself:

  • What question or problem is the author addressing?
  • What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
  • What are the key theories, models and methods? Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
  • What are the results and conclusions of the study?
  • How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
  • How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Remember that you can use our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using!

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It’s important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full reference information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

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To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

  • Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
  • Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
  • Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
  • Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
  • Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

  • Most research has focused on young women.
  • There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
  • But there is still a lack of robust research on highly-visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat – this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organising the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarising sources in order.

Try to analyse patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organise your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

  • Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
  • Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
  • Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into consideration”).

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, make sure to follow these tips:

  • Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
  • Analyse and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole.
  • Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources.
  • Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts.

In the conclusion, you should summarise the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasise their significance.

If the literature review is part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead directly into your methodology section.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

  • To familiarise yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
  • To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
  • To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
  • To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
  • To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your  dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

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Literature review

A general guide on how to conduct and write a literature review.

Please check course or programme information and materials provided by teaching staff , including your project supervisor, for subject-specific guidance.

What is a literature review?

A literature review is a piece of academic writing demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the academic literature on a specific topic placed in context.  A literature review also includes a critical evaluation of the material; this is why it is called a literature review rather than a literature report. It is a process of reviewing the literature, as well as a form of writing.

To illustrate the difference between reporting and reviewing, think about television or film review articles.  These articles include content such as a brief synopsis or the key points of the film or programme plus the critic’s own evaluation.  Similarly the two main objectives of a literature review are firstly the content covering existing research, theories and evidence, and secondly your own critical evaluation and discussion of this content. 

Usually a literature review forms a section or part of a dissertation, research project or long essay.  However, it can also be set and assessed as a standalone piece of work.

What is the purpose of a literature review?

…your task is to build an argument, not a library. Rudestam, K.E. and Newton, R.R. (1992) Surviving your dissertation: A comprehensive guide to content and process. California: Sage, p49.

In a larger piece of written work, such as a dissertation or project, a literature review is usually one of the first tasks carried out after deciding on a topic.  Reading combined with critical analysis can help to refine a topic and frame research questions.  Conducting a literature review establishes your familiarity with and understanding of current research in a particular field before carrying out a new investigation.  After doing a literature review, you should know what research has already been done and be able to identify what is unknown within your topic.

When doing and writing a literature review, it is good practice to:

  • summarise and analyse previous research and theories;
  • identify areas of controversy and contested claims;
  • highlight any gaps that may exist in research to date.

Conducting a literature review

Focusing on different aspects of your literature review can be useful to help plan, develop, refine and write it.  You can use and adapt the prompt questions in our worksheet below at different points in the process of researching and writing your review.  These are suggestions to get you thinking and writing.

Developing and refining your literature review (pdf)

Developing and refining your literature review (Word)

Developing and refining your literature review (Word rtf)

Writing a literature review has a lot in common with other assignment tasks.  There is advice on our other pages about thinking critically, reading strategies and academic writing.  Our literature review top tips suggest some specific things you can do to help you submit a successful review.

Literature review top tips (pdf)

Literature review top tips (Word rtf)

Our reading page includes strategies and advice on using books and articles and a notes record sheet grid you can use.

Reading at university

The Academic writing page suggests ways to organise and structure information from a range of sources and how you can develop your argument as you read and write.

Academic writing

The Critical thinking page has advice on how to be a more critical researcher and a form you can use to help you think and break down the stages of developing your argument.

Critical thinking

As with other forms of academic writing, your literature review needs to demonstrate good academic practice by following the Code of Student Conduct and acknowledging the work of others through citing and referencing your sources.  

Good academic practice

As with any writing task, you will need to review, edit and rewrite sections of your literature review.  The Editing and proofreading page includes tips on how to do this and strategies for standing back and thinking about your structure and checking the flow of your argument.

Editing and proofreading

Guidance on literature searching from the University Library

The Academic Support Librarians have developed LibSmart I and II, Learn courses to help you develop and enhance your digital research skills and capabilities; from getting started with the Library to managing data for your dissertation.

Searching using the library’s DiscoverEd tool: DiscoverEd

Finding resources in your subject: Subject guides

The Academic Support Librarians also provide one-to-one appointments to help you develop your research strategies.

1 to 1 support for literature searching and systematic reviews

Advice to help you optimise use of Google Scholar, Google Books and Google for your research and study: Using Google

Managing and curating your references

A referencing management tool can help you to collect and organise and your source material to produce a bibliography or reference list. 

Referencing and reference management

Information Services provide access to Cite them right online which is a guide to the main referencing systems and tells you how to reference just about any source (EASE log-in may be required).

Cite them right

Published study guides

There are a number of scholarship skills books and guides available which can help with writing a literature review.  Our Resource List of study skills guides includes sections on Referencing, Dissertation and project writing and Literature reviews.

Study skills guides

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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

  • interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
  • an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
  • a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

  • keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
  • keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
  • use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
  • define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
  • do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

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The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

  • discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
  • trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
  • incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

  • be thorough,
  • use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
  • look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

  • the major achievements in the reviewed field,
  • the main areas of debate, and
  • the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

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15 Literature Review Examples

literature review examples, types, and definition, explained below

Literature reviews are a necessary step in a research process and often required when writing your research proposal . They involve gathering, analyzing, and evaluating existing knowledge about a topic in order to find gaps in the literature where future studies will be needed.

Ideally, once you have completed your literature review, you will be able to identify how your research project can build upon and extend existing knowledge in your area of study.

Generally, for my undergraduate research students, I recommend a narrative review, where themes can be generated in order for the students to develop sufficient understanding of the topic so they can build upon the themes using unique methods or novel research questions.

If you’re in the process of writing a literature review, I have developed a literature review template for you to use – it’s a huge time-saver and walks you through how to write a literature review step-by-step:

Get your time-saving templates here to write your own literature review.

Literature Review Examples

For the following types of literature review, I present an explanation and overview of the type, followed by links to some real-life literature reviews on the topics.

1. Narrative Review Examples

Also known as a traditional literature review, the narrative review provides a broad overview of the studies done on a particular topic.

It often includes both qualitative and quantitative studies and may cover a wide range of years.

The narrative review’s purpose is to identify commonalities, gaps, and contradictions in the literature .

I recommend to my students that they should gather their studies together, take notes on each study, then try to group them by themes that form the basis for the review (see my step-by-step instructions at the end of the article).

Example Study

Title: Communication in healthcare: a narrative review of the literature and practical recommendations

Citation: Vermeir, P., Vandijck, D., Degroote, S., Peleman, R., Verhaeghe, R., Mortier, E., … & Vogelaers, D. (2015). Communication in healthcare: a narrative review of the literature and practical recommendations. International journal of clinical practice , 69 (11), 1257-1267.

Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ijcp.12686  

Overview: This narrative review analyzed themes emerging from 69 articles about communication in healthcare contexts. Five key themes were found in the literature: poor communication can lead to various negative outcomes, discontinuity of care, compromise of patient safety, patient dissatisfaction, and inefficient use of resources. After presenting the key themes, the authors recommend that practitioners need to approach healthcare communication in a more structured way, such as by ensuring there is a clear understanding of who is in charge of ensuring effective communication in clinical settings.

Other Examples

  • Burnout in United States Healthcare Professionals: A Narrative Review (Reith, 2018) – read here
  • Examining the Presence, Consequences, and Reduction of Implicit Bias in Health Care: A Narrative Review (Zestcott, Blair & Stone, 2016) – read here
  • A Narrative Review of School-Based Physical Activity for Enhancing Cognition and Learning (Mavilidi et al., 2018) – read here
  • A narrative review on burnout experienced by medical students and residents (Dyrbye & Shanafelt, 2015) – read here

2. Systematic Review Examples

This type of literature review is more structured and rigorous than a narrative review. It involves a detailed and comprehensive plan and search strategy derived from a set of specified research questions.

The key way you’d know a systematic review compared to a narrative review is in the methodology: the systematic review will likely have a very clear criteria for how the studies were collected, and clear explanations of exclusion/inclusion criteria. 

The goal is to gather the maximum amount of valid literature on the topic, filter out invalid or low-quality reviews, and minimize bias. Ideally, this will provide more reliable findings, leading to higher-quality conclusions and recommendations for further research.

You may note from the examples below that the ‘method’ sections in systematic reviews tend to be much more explicit, often noting rigid inclusion/exclusion criteria and exact keywords used in searches.

Title: The importance of food naturalness for consumers: Results of a systematic review  

Citation: Roman, S., Sánchez-Siles, L. M., & Siegrist, M. (2017). The importance of food naturalness for consumers: Results of a systematic review. Trends in food science & technology , 67 , 44-57.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092422441730122X  

Overview: This systematic review included 72 studies of food naturalness to explore trends in the literature about its importance for consumers. Keywords used in the data search included: food, naturalness, natural content, and natural ingredients. Studies were included if they examined consumers’ preference for food naturalness and contained empirical data. The authors found that the literature lacks clarity about how naturalness is defined and measured, but also found that food consumption is significantly influenced by perceived naturalness of goods.

  • A systematic review of research on online teaching and learning from 2009 to 2018 (Martin, Sun & Westine, 2020) – read here
  • Where Is Current Research on Blockchain Technology? (Yli-Huumo et al., 2016) – read here
  • Universities—industry collaboration: A systematic review (Ankrah & Al-Tabbaa, 2015) – read here
  • Internet of Things Applications: A Systematic Review (Asghari, Rahmani & Javadi, 2019) – read here

3. Meta-analysis

This is a type of systematic review that uses statistical methods to combine and summarize the results of several studies.

Due to its robust methodology, a meta-analysis is often considered the ‘gold standard’ of secondary research , as it provides a more precise estimate of a treatment effect than any individual study contributing to the pooled analysis.

Furthermore, by aggregating data from a range of studies, a meta-analysis can identify patterns, disagreements, or other interesting relationships that may have been hidden in individual studies.

This helps to enhance the generalizability of findings, making the conclusions drawn from a meta-analysis particularly powerful and informative for policy and practice.

Title: Cholesterol and Alzheimer’s Disease Risk: A Meta-Meta-Analysis

Citation: Sáiz-Vazquez, O., Puente-Martínez, A., Ubillos-Landa, S., Pacheco-Bonrostro, J., & Santabárbara, J. (2020). Cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease risk: a meta-meta-analysis. Brain sciences, 10(6), 386.

Source: https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10060386  

O verview: This study examines the relationship between cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Researchers conducted a systematic search of meta-analyses and reviewed several databases, collecting 100 primary studies and five meta-analyses to analyze the connection between cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease. They find that the literature compellingly demonstrates that low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels significantly influence the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

  • The power of feedback revisited: A meta-analysis of educational feedback research (Wisniewski, Zierer & Hattie, 2020) – read here
  • How Much Does Education Improve Intelligence? A Meta-Analysis (Ritchie & Tucker-Drob, 2018) – read here
  • A meta-analysis of factors related to recycling (Geiger et al., 2019) – read here
  • Stress management interventions for police officers and recruits (Patterson, Chung & Swan, 2014) – read here

Other Types of Reviews

  • Scoping Review: This type of review is used to map the key concepts underpinning a research area and the main sources and types of evidence available. It can be undertaken as stand-alone projects in their own right, or as a precursor to a systematic review.
  • Rapid Review: This type of review accelerates the systematic review process in order to produce information in a timely manner. This is achieved by simplifying or omitting stages of the systematic review process.
  • Integrative Review: This review method is more inclusive than others, allowing for the simultaneous inclusion of experimental and non-experimental research. The goal is to more comprehensively understand a particular phenomenon.
  • Critical Review: This is similar to a narrative review but requires a robust understanding of both the subject and the existing literature. In a critical review, the reviewer not only summarizes the existing literature, but also evaluates its strengths and weaknesses. This is common in the social sciences and humanities .
  • State-of-the-Art Review: This considers the current level of advancement in a field or topic and makes recommendations for future research directions. This type of review is common in technological and scientific fields but can be applied to any discipline.

How to Write a Narrative Review (Tips for Undergrad Students)

Most undergraduate students conducting a capstone research project will be writing narrative reviews. Below is a five-step process for conducting a simple review of the literature for your project.

  • Search for Relevant Literature: Use scholarly databases related to your field of study, provided by your university library, along with appropriate search terms to identify key scholarly articles that have been published on your topic.
  • Evaluate and Select Sources: Filter the source list by selecting studies that are directly relevant and of sufficient quality, considering factors like credibility , objectivity, accuracy, and validity.
  • Analyze and Synthesize: Review each source and summarize the main arguments  in one paragraph (or more, for postgrad). Keep these summaries in a table.
  • Identify Themes: With all studies summarized, group studies that share common themes, such as studies that have similar findings or methodologies.
  • Write the Review: Write your review based upon the themes or subtopics you have identified. Give a thorough overview of each theme, integrating source data, and conclude with a summary of the current state of knowledge then suggestions for future research based upon your evaluation of what is lacking in the literature.

Literature reviews don’t have to be as scary as they seem. Yes, they are difficult and require a strong degree of comprehension of academic studies. But it can be feasibly done through following a structured approach to data collection and analysis. With my undergraduate research students (who tend to conduct small-scale qualitative studies ), I encourage them to conduct a narrative literature review whereby they can identify key themes in the literature. Within each theme, students can critique key studies and their strengths and limitations , in order to get a lay of the land and come to a point where they can identify ways to contribute new insights to the existing academic conversation on their topic.

Ankrah, S., & Omar, A. T. (2015). Universities–industry collaboration: A systematic review. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 31(3), 387-408.

Asghari, P., Rahmani, A. M., & Javadi, H. H. S. (2019). Internet of Things applications: A systematic review. Computer Networks , 148 , 241-261.

Dyrbye, L., & Shanafelt, T. (2016). A narrative review on burnout experienced by medical students and residents. Medical education , 50 (1), 132-149.

Geiger, J. L., Steg, L., Van Der Werff, E., & Ünal, A. B. (2019). A meta-analysis of factors related to recycling. Journal of environmental psychology , 64 , 78-97.

Martin, F., Sun, T., & Westine, C. D. (2020). A systematic review of research on online teaching and learning from 2009 to 2018. Computers & education , 159 , 104009.

Mavilidi, M. F., Ruiter, M., Schmidt, M., Okely, A. D., Loyens, S., Chandler, P., & Paas, F. (2018). A narrative review of school-based physical activity for enhancing cognition and learning: The importance of relevancy and integration. Frontiers in psychology , 2079.

Patterson, G. T., Chung, I. W., & Swan, P. W. (2014). Stress management interventions for police officers and recruits: A meta-analysis. Journal of experimental criminology , 10 , 487-513.

Reith, T. P. (2018). Burnout in United States healthcare professionals: a narrative review. Cureus , 10 (12).

Ritchie, S. J., & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2018). How much does education improve intelligence? A meta-analysis. Psychological science , 29 (8), 1358-1369.

Roman, S., Sánchez-Siles, L. M., & Siegrist, M. (2017). The importance of food naturalness for consumers: Results of a systematic review. Trends in food science & technology , 67 , 44-57.

Sáiz-Vazquez, O., Puente-Martínez, A., Ubillos-Landa, S., Pacheco-Bonrostro, J., & Santabárbara, J. (2020). Cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease risk: a meta-meta-analysis. Brain sciences, 10(6), 386.

Vermeir, P., Vandijck, D., Degroote, S., Peleman, R., Verhaeghe, R., Mortier, E., … & Vogelaers, D. (2015). Communication in healthcare: a narrative review of the literature and practical recommendations. International journal of clinical practice , 69 (11), 1257-1267.

Wisniewski, B., Zierer, K., & Hattie, J. (2020). The power of feedback revisited: A meta-analysis of educational feedback research. Frontiers in Psychology , 10 , 3087.

Yli-Huumo, J., Ko, D., Choi, S., Park, S., & Smolander, K. (2016). Where is current research on blockchain technology?—a systematic review. PloS one , 11 (10), e0163477.

Zestcott, C. A., Blair, I. V., & Stone, J. (2016). Examining the presence, consequences, and reduction of implicit bias in health care: a narrative review. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations , 19 (4), 528-542

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Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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  • USC Libraries
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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

  • 5. The Literature Review
  • Purpose of Guide
  • Design Flaws to Avoid
  • Independent and Dependent Variables
  • Glossary of Research Terms
  • Reading Research Effectively
  • Narrowing a Topic Idea
  • Broadening a Topic Idea
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  • Academic Writing Style
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A literature review surveys prior research published in books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have used in researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within existing scholarship about the topic.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.

Importance of a Good Literature Review

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

  • Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
  • Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
  • Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
  • Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

Given this, the purpose of a literature review is to:

  • Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
  • Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
  • Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
  • Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
  • Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
  • Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
  • Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
  • Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2011; Knopf, Jeffrey W. "Doing a Literature Review." PS: Political Science and Politics 39 (January 2006): 127-132; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012.

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally among scholars that become part of the body of epistemological traditions within the field.

In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Argumentative Review This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply embedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below].

Integrative Review Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social sciences.

Historical Review Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review A review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis]. Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels [i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own study.

Systematic Review This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem . Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?" This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social sciences.

Theoretical Review The purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

NOTE : Most often the literature review will incorporate some combination of types. For example, a review that examines literature supporting or refuting an argument, assumption, or philosophical problem related to the research problem will also need to include writing supported by sources that establish the history of these arguments in the literature.

Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary. "Writing Narrative Literature Reviews."  Review of General Psychology 1 (September 1997): 311-320; Mark R. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature." Educational Researcher 36 (April 2007): 139-147; Petticrew, Mark and Helen Roberts. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2006; Torracro, Richard. "Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples." Human Resource Development Review 4 (September 2005): 356-367; Rocco, Tonette S. and Maria S. Plakhotnik. "Literature Reviews, Conceptual Frameworks, and Theoretical Frameworks: Terms, Functions, and Distinctions." Human Ressource Development Review 8 (March 2008): 120-130; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following in support of understanding the research problem :

  • An overview of the subject, issue, or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,
  • Division of works under review into themes or categories [e.g. works that support a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative approaches entirely],
  • An explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others,
  • Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research.

The critical evaluation of each work should consider :

  • Provenance -- what are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence [e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings]?
  • Methodology -- were the techniques used to identify, gather, and analyze the data appropriate to addressing the research problem? Was the sample size appropriate? Were the results effectively interpreted and reported?
  • Objectivity -- is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
  • Persuasiveness -- which of the author's theses are most convincing or least convincing?
  • Validity -- are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

II.  Development of the Literature Review

Four Basic Stages of Writing 1.  Problem formulation -- which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues? 2.  Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored. 3.  Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic. 4.  Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1.  Roughly how many sources would be appropriate to include? 2.  What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites; scholarly versus popular sources)? 3.  Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique sources by discussing a common theme or issue? 4.  Should I evaluate the sources in any way beyond evaluating how they relate to understanding the research problem? 5.  Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history? Find Models Use the exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature review sections. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read, such as required readings in the course syllabus, are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make the act of reviewing easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the USC Libraries Catalog for recent books about the topic and review the table of contents for chapters that focuses on specific issues. You can also review the indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. For example, a book surveying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may include a chapter on the role Egypt has played in mediating the conflict, or look in the index for the pages where Egypt is mentioned in the text. Consider Whether Your Sources are Current Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. This is particularly true in disciplines in medicine and the sciences where research conducted becomes obsolete very quickly as new discoveries are made. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be required. In other words, a complete understanding the research problem requires you to deliberately examine how knowledge and perspectives have changed over time. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to explore what is considered by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not.

III.  Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

Chronology of Events If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of German economic power after the fall of the Soviet Union. By Publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Thematic [“conceptual categories”] A thematic literature review is the most common approach to summarizing prior research in the social and behavioral sciences. Thematic reviews are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time, although the progression of time may still be incorporated into a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it would still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The difference in this example between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: themes related to the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note that more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point being made. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. For the Internet in American presidential politics project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of American presidents on American, British, and French websites. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Other Sections of Your Literature Review Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. However, sometimes you may need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. However, only include what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship about the research problem.

Here are examples of other sections, usually in the form of a single paragraph, you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

  • Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the current topic or focus of the literature review.
  • Sources Used : Describes the methods and resources [e.g., databases] you used to identify the literature you reviewed.
  • History : The chronological progression of the field, the research literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
  • Selection Methods : Criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed [i.e., scholarly] sources.
  • Standards : Description of the way in which you present your information.
  • Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

IV.  Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence A literature review section is, in this sense, just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence [citations] that demonstrates that what you are saying is valid. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Related items that provide additional information, but that are not key to understanding the research problem, can be included in a list of further readings . Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are appropriate if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated cannot be easily paraphrased. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terminology that was coined by the author, is not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for using your own words in reviewing the literature. Summarize and Synthesize Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each thematic paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own work and the work of others. Keep Your Own Voice While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice [the writer's] should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. Use Caution When Paraphrasing When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

V.  Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature.

  • Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
  • You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
  • Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
  • Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
  • Does not describe the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review;
  • Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
  • Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.

Cook, Kathleen E. and Elise Murowchick. “Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?” Psychology Learning and Teaching 13 (March 2014): 3-11; Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . London: SAGE, 2011; Literature Review Handout. Online Writing Center. Liberty University; Literature Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2016; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012; Randolph, Justus J. “A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. vol. 14, June 2009; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016; Taylor, Dena. The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Writing a Literature Review. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra.

Writing Tip

Break Out of Your Disciplinary Box!

Thinking interdisciplinarily about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. For example, what might cultural anthropologists say about the continuing conflict in the Middle East? In what ways might geographers view the need for better distribution of social service agencies in large cities than how social workers might study the issue? You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions to a problem or gaining a new perspective. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research literature.

Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Just Review for Content!

While conducting a review of the literature, maximize the time you devote to writing this part of your paper by thinking broadly about what you should be looking for and evaluating. Review not just what scholars are saying, but how are they saying it. Some questions to ask:

  • How are they organizing their ideas?
  • What methods have they used to study the problem?
  • What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research problem?
  • What sources have they cited to support their conclusions?
  • How have they used non-textual elements [e.g., charts, graphs, figures, etc.] to illustrate key points?

When you begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was designed and constructed because it establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research problem.

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1 998.

Yet Another Writing Tip

When Do I Know I Can Stop Looking and Move On?

Here are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've thoroughly reviewed the literature:

  • Look for repeating patterns in the research findings . If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. At this point consider: Does your study extend current research?  Does it forge a new path? Or, does is merely add more of the same thing being said?
  • Look at sources the authors cite to in their work . If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been generated to address the research problem.
  • Search Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review [see next sub-tab]. This is called citation tracking and there are a number of sources that can help you identify who has cited whom, particularly scholars from outside of your discipline. Here again, if the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the topic.

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2016; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

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  • Library Catalogue

Literature reviews for graduate students

On this page, what is a literature review, literature review type definitions, literature review protocols and guidelines, to google scholar, or not to google scholar, subject headings vs. keywords, keeping track of your research, project management software, citation management software, saved searches.

Related guides:

  • Systematic, scoping, and rapid reviews: An overview
  • Academic writing: what is a literature review , a guide that addresses the writing and composition aspect of a literature review
  • Media literature reviews: how to conduct a literature review using news sources
  • Literature reviews in the applied sciences
  • Start your research here , literature review searching, mainly of interest to newer researchers

For more assistance, please contact the Liaison Librarian in your subject area .

Most generally, a literature review is a search within a defined range of information source types, such as, for instance, journals and books, to discover what has been already written about a specific subject or topic.  A literature review is a key component of almost all research papers.  However, the term is often applied loosely to describe a wide range of methodological approaches. A literature review in a first or second year course may involve browsing the library databases to get a sense of the research landscape in your topic and including 3-4 journal articles in your paper. At the other end of the continuum, the review may involve completing a comprehensive search, complete with documented search strategies and a listing of article inclusion and exclusion criteria. In the most rigorous format - a Systematic Review - a team of researchers may compile and review over 100,000 journal articles in a project spanning one to two years! These are out of scope for most graduate students, but it is important to be aware of the range of types of reviews possible.

One of the first steps in conducting a lit review is thus to clarify what kind of review you are doing, and its associated expectations.

Factors determining review approach are varied, including departmental/discipline conventions, granting agency stipulations, evolving standards for evidence-based research (and the corollary need for documented, replicable search strategies), and available time and resources.

The standards are also continually evolving in light of changing technology and evidence-based research about literature review methodology effectiveness. The availability of new tools such as large-scale library search engines and sophisticated citation management software continues to influence the research process.

Some specific types of lit reviews types include systematic reviews , scoping reviews , realist reviews , narrative reviews , mapping reviews, and qualitative systematic reviews , just to name a few. The protocols and distinctions for review types are particularly delineated in health research fields, but we are seeing conventions quickly establishing themselves in other academic fields.

The below definitions are quoted from the very helpful book, Booth, A., Papaioannou, D., & Sutton, A. (2012). Systematic approaches to a successful literature review . London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

For more definitions, try:

  • Grant, M.J. & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: an analysis of the 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information & Libraries Journal , 26(2), 91-108. doi: 10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x
  • Sage Research Methods Online. A database devoted to research methodology. Includes handbooks, encyclopedia entries, and a research concepts map.
  • Research Methods
  • Report Writing
  • Research--Methodology
  • Research--Methodology--Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Note:   There is unfortunately no subject heading specifically for "literature reviews" which brings together all related material.

Mapping Review : "A rapid search of the literature aiming to give a broad overview of the characteristics of a topic area. Mapping of existing research, identification of gaps, and a summary assessment of the quantity and quality of the available evidence helps to decide future areas for research or for systematic reviews." (Booth, Papaioannou & Sutton, 2012, p. 264)

Mixed Method Review : "A literature review that seeks to bring together data from quantitative and qualitative studies integrating them in a way that facilitates subsequent analysis" (Booth et al., p. 265).

Meta-analysis : "The process of combining statistically quantitative studies that have measured the same effect using similar methods and a common outcome measure" (Booth et al., p. 264).

Narrative Review: "A term used to describe a conventional overview of the literature, particularly when contrasted with a systematic review" (Booth et al., p. 265).

Note: this term is often used pejoratively, describing a review that is inadvertently guided by a confirmation bias.

Qualitative Evidence Synthesis : "An umbrella term increasingly used to describe a group of review types that attempt to synthesize and analyze findings from primary qualitative research studies" (Booth et al., p. 267).

Rapid Review : "Assessment of what is already known about a policy or practice issue, by using systematic review methods to search and critically appraise existing research" (Grant & Booth, 2009, p.96).

Note: Rapid reviews are often done when there are insufficient time and/or resources to conduct a systematic review. As stated by Butler et. al, "They aim to be rigorous and explicit in method and thus systematic but make concessions to the breadth or depth of the process by limiting particular aspects of the systematic review process" (as cited in Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 100). 

Scoping Review: "A type of review that has as its primary objective the identification of the size and quality of research in a topic area in order to inform subsequent review" (Booth et al., p. 269).

Systematic Review : "A review of a clearly formulated question that uses systematic and explicit methods to identify, select and critically appraise relevant research and to collect and analyse data from the studies that are included in the review" (Booth et al., p. 271).

Note : a systematic review (SR) is the most extensive and well-documented type of lit review, as well as potentially the most time-consuming. The idea with SRs  is that the search process becomes a replicable scientific study in itself. This level of review will possibly not be necessary (or desirable) for your research project.

Many lit review types are based on organization-driven specific protocols for conducting the reviews. These protocols provide specific frameworks, checklists, and other guidance to the generic literature review sub-types. Here are a few popular examples:

Cochrane Review - known as the "gold standard" of systematic reviews, designed by the Cochrane Collaboration. Primarily used in health research literature reviews.

  • Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions . "The official document that describes in detail the process of preparing and maintaining Cochrane systematic reviews".

Campbell Review - the sister organization of the Cochrane Institute which focuses on systematic reviews in the social sciences.

  • So you want to write a Campbell Systematic review?
  • Campbell Information Retrieval Guide. The details of effective information searching

Literature Reviews in Psychology

A recent article in the  Annual Review of Psychology  provides a very helpful guide to conducting literature reviews specifically in the field of Psychology.

How to Do a Systematic Review: A Best Practice Guide for Conducting and Reporting Narrative Reviews, Meta-Analyses, and Meta-Syntheses. (2019). Annual Review of Psychology, 70 (1), 747-770. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-102803

Rapid Reviews have become increasingly common due to their flexibility, as well as the lack of time and resources available to do a comprehensive systematic review. McMaster University's National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools (NCCMT) has created a  Rapid Review Guidebook , which "details each step in the rapid review process, with notes on how to tailor the process given resource limitations."  

Scoping Review

There is no strict protocol for a scoping review (unlike Campbell and Cochrane reviews). The following are some recommended guidelines for scoping reviews:

  • Scoping Reviews  from the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis
  • Current best practices for the conduct of scoping reviews, from the EQUATOR Network

In addition to protocols which provide holistic guidance for conducting specific kinds of reviews, there are also a vast number of frameworks, checklists, and other tools available to help focus your review and ensure comprehensiveness. Some provide broader-level guidance; others are targeted to specific parts of your reviews such as data extraction or reporting out results.

  • PICO or PICOC A framework for posing a researchable question (population, intervention, comparisons, outcomes, context/environment)
  • PRISMA Minimum items to report upon in a systematic review, as well as its extensions , such as  PRISMA-ScR (for scoping reviews)
  • SALSA framework: frames the literature review into four parts: search (S), appraisal(AL), synthesis(S), analysis(A)
  • STARLITE Minimum requirements for reporting out on literature reviews.
  • Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) Checklists Includes a checklist for evaluating Systematic Reviews.

These are just a sampling of specific guides generated from the ever-growing literature review industry.

Much of the online discussion about the use of Google Scholar in literature reviews seems to focus more on values and ideals, rather than a technical assessment of the search engine's role. Here are some things to keep in mind.

  • It's good practice to use both Google Scholar and subject-specific databases (example: PsycINFO) for conducting a lit review of any type. For most graduate-level literature reviews, it is usually recommended to use both.
  • You should search Google Scholar through the library's website when off-campus. This way you can avoid being prompted for payment to access articles that the SFU Library already subscribes to.
  • Search tips for Google and Google Scholar

Google Advantages:

  • Allows you to cast a wide net in your search.
  • The most popular articles are revealed
  • A high volume of articles are retrieved
  • Google's algorithm helps compensate for poorly designed searches
  • Full-text indexing of articles is now being done in Google Scholar
  • A search feature allow you to search within articles citing your key article
  • Excellent for known-item searching or locating a quote/citation
  • Helpful when searching for very unique terminology (e.g., places and people)
  • Times cited tool can help identify relevant articles
  • Extensive searching of non-article, but academic, information items: universities' institutional repositories, US case law, grey literature , academic websites, etc.

Disadvantages:

  • The database is not mapped to a specific discipline
  • Much less search sophistication and manipulation supported
  • Psuedo-Boolean operators
  • Missing deep data (e.g., statistics)
  • Mysterious algorithms and unknown source coverage at odds with the systematic and transparent requirement of a literature review.
  • Searches are optimized (for example, by your location), thwarting the replicability criteria of most literature review types
  • Low level of subject and author collocation - that is, bringing together all works by one author or one sub-topic
  • Challenging to run searches that involve common words. A search for "art AND time", for example, might bring up results on the art of time management when you are looking for the representation of time in art. In contrast, searching by topic is readily facilitated by use of subject headings in discipline-specific databases. Google Scholar has no subject headings.
  • New articles might not be pushed up if the popularity of an article is prioritized
  • Indexes articles from predatory publishers , which may be hard to identify if working outside of your field

Unlike Google Scholar, subject specific databases such as  PsycINFO , Medline , or Criminal Justice Abstracts are mapped to a disciplinary perspective. Article citations contain high-quality and detailed metadata. Metadata can be used to build specific searches and apply search limits relevant to your subject area. These databases also often offer access to specialized material in your area such as grey literature , psychological tests, statistics, books and dissertations.

For most graduate-level literature reviews, it is usually recommended to use both. Build careful searches in the subject/academic databases, and check Google Scholar as well.

For most graduate-level lit reviews, you will want to make use of the subject headings (aka descriptors) found in the various databases.

Subject headings are words or phrases assigned to articles, books, and other info items that describe the subject of their content. They are designed to succinctly capture a document's concepts, allowing the researcher to retrieve all articles/info items about that concept using one term. By identifying the subject headings associated with your research areas, and subsequently searching the database for other articles and materials assigned with that same subject heading, you are taking a significant measure to ensure the comprehensiveness of your literature review.

About subject headings:

  • They are applied systematically : articles and books will usually have about 3-8 subject headings assigned to their bibliographic record.
  • The subject headings come from a finite pool of terms -  one that is updated frequently.
  • They are often organized in a hierarchical taxonomy , with subject headings belonging to broader headings, and/or having narrower headings beneath them. Sometimes there are related terms (lateral) as well.
  • They provide a standardized way to describe a concept. For instance, a subject heading of "physician" may be used to capture many of the natural language words that describe a physician such as doctor, family doctor, GP, and MD.

One way to identify subject headings (SHs) of interest to you is to start with a keyword search in a database, and see which SHs are associated with the articles of interest.

A. In the below example, we start with a keyword search for "type a" personality in PsycINFO .  A more contemporary term to describe this phenomena is then found in the subject heading field:

keyword search in Psycinfo

B. Another way to identify subject headings related to your topic is to go directly to a database's thesaurus or index. For example, if we are researching depression, the PsycINFO entry for major depression suggests some narrower terms we could focus our search by.

using the thesaurus or index

For more in-depth help with using subject headings in a literature review, please contact the Liaison Librarian in your subject area .

  • NEW! Covidence . Covidence is a web-based literature review tool that will help you through the process of screening your references, data extraction, and keeping track of your work. Ideal for streamlining systematic reviews, scoping reviews, meta-analyses, and other related methods of evidence synthesis.
  • NVivo is a robust software package that helps with management and analysis of qualitative information.The Library's Research Commons offers extensive support for NVivo.
  • Research Support Software offered by the Research Commons

Citation management software such as Zotero, Mendeley, or Endnote is essential for completing a substantial lit review. Citation software is a centralized, online location for managing your sources. Specifically, it allows you to:

  • Access and manage your sources online, all in one place
  • Import references from library databases and websites
  • Automatically generate bibliographies and in-text citations within Microsoft Word
  • Share your collection of sources with others, and work collaboratively with references
  • De-duplicate your search results* (*Note: Mendeley is not recommended for deduplication in systematic reviews.)
  • Annotate your citations. Some software allows you to mark up PDFs.
  • Note trends in your research such as which journals or authors you cite from the most.

More information on Citation Management Software

Did you know that many databases allow you to save  your search strategies? The advantages of saving and tracking your search strategies online in a literature review include:

  • Developing your search strategy in a methodological manner, section by section. For instance, you can run searches for all synonyms and subjects headings associated with one concept, then combine them with different concepts in various combinations.
  • Re-running your well-executed search in the future
  • Creating search alerts based on a well-designed search, allowing you to stay notified of new research in your area
  • Tracking and remember all of the searches you have done. Avoid inadvertently re-doing your searches by being well-documented and systematic as you go along - it's worth the extra effort!

Databases housed on the EBSCO plaform (examples: Business Source Complete, PsycINFO, Medline, Academic Search Premier) allow you to create an free account where you might save your searches:

  • Using the EBSCOhost Search History - Tutorial [2:08]
  • Creating a Search Alert in EBSCOhost - Tutorial [1:26]

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Evidence-Based Practice (EBP)

  • The EBP Process
  • Forming a Clinical Question
  • Inclusion & Exclusion Criteria
  • Acquiring Evidence
  • Appraising the Quality of the Evidence
  • Writing a Literature Review
  • Finding Psychological Tests & Assessment Instruments

What Is a Literature Review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis of scholarly writings that are related directly to your research question. Put simply, it's  a critical evaluation of what's already been written on a particular topic . It represents the literature that provides background information on your topic and shows a connection between those writings and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand-alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment. Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

What a Literature Review Is Not:

  • A list or summary of sources
  • An annotated bibliography
  • A grouping of broad, unrelated sources
  • A compilation of everything that has been written on a particular topic
  • Literary criticism (think English) or a book review

Why Literature Reviews Are Important

  • They explain the background of research on a topic
  • They demonstrate why a topic is significant to a subject area
  • They discover relationships between research studies/ideas
  • They identify major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic
  • They identify critical gaps and points of disagreement
  • They discuss further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies

To Learn More about Conducting and Writing a Lit Review . . .

Monash University (in Australia) has created several extremely helpful, interactive tutorials. 

  • The Stand-Alone Literature Review, https://www.monash.edu/rlo/assignment-samples/science/stand-alone-literature-review
  • Researching for Your Literature Review,  https://guides.lib.monash.edu/researching-for-your-literature-review/home
  • Writing a Literature Review,  https://www.monash.edu/rlo/graduate-research-writing/write-the-thesis/writing-a-literature-review

Keep Track of Your Sources!

A citation manager can be helpful way to work with large numbers of citations. See UMSL Libraries' Citing Sources guide for more information. Personally, I highly recommend Zotero —it's free, easy to use, and versatile. If you need help getting started with Zotero or one of the other citation managers, please contact a librarian.

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Grad Coach

How To Structure Your Literature Review

3 options to help structure your chapter.

By: Amy Rommelspacher (PhD) | Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | November 2020 (Updated May 2023)

Writing the literature review chapter can seem pretty daunting when you’re piecing together your dissertation or thesis. As  we’ve discussed before , a good literature review needs to achieve a few very important objectives – it should:

  • Demonstrate your knowledge of the research topic
  • Identify the gaps in the literature and show how your research links to these
  • Provide the foundation for your conceptual framework (if you have one)
  • Inform your own  methodology and research design

To achieve this, your literature review needs a well-thought-out structure . Get the structure of your literature review chapter wrong and you’ll struggle to achieve these objectives. Don’t worry though – in this post, we’ll look at how to structure your literature review for maximum impact (and marks!).

The function of the lit review

But wait – is this the right time?

Deciding on the structure of your literature review should come towards the end of the literature review process – after you have collected and digested the literature, but before you start writing the chapter. 

In other words, you need to first develop a rich understanding of the literature before you even attempt to map out a structure. There’s no use trying to develop a structure before you’ve fully wrapped your head around the existing research.

Equally importantly, you need to have a structure in place before you start writing , or your literature review will most likely end up a rambling, disjointed mess. 

Importantly, don’t feel that once you’ve defined a structure you can’t iterate on it. It’s perfectly natural to adjust as you engage in the writing process. As we’ve discussed before , writing is a way of developing your thinking, so it’s quite common for your thinking to change – and therefore, for your chapter structure to change – as you write. 

Need a helping hand?

literature review example a level

Like any other chapter in your thesis or dissertation, your literature review needs to have a clear, logical structure. At a minimum, it should have three essential components – an  introduction , a  body   and a  conclusion . 

Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

1: The Introduction Section

Just like any good introduction, the introduction section of your literature review should introduce the purpose and layout (organisation) of the chapter. In other words, your introduction needs to give the reader a taste of what’s to come, and how you’re going to lay that out. Essentially, you should provide the reader with a high-level roadmap of your chapter to give them a taste of the journey that lies ahead.

Here’s an example of the layout visualised in a literature review introduction:

Example of literature review outline structure

Your introduction should also outline your topic (including any tricky terminology or jargon) and provide an explanation of the scope of your literature review – in other words, what you  will   and  won’t   be covering (the delimitations ). This helps ringfence your review and achieve a clear focus . The clearer and narrower your focus, the deeper you can dive into the topic (which is typically where the magic lies). 

Depending on the nature of your project, you could also present your stance or point of view at this stage. In other words, after grappling with the literature you’ll have an opinion about what the trends and concerns are in the field as well as what’s lacking. The introduction section can then present these ideas so that it is clear to examiners that you’re aware of how your research connects with existing knowledge .

Free Webinar: Literature Review 101

2: The Body Section

The body of your literature review is the centre of your work. This is where you’ll present, analyse, evaluate and synthesise the existing research. In other words, this is where you’re going to earn (or lose) the most marks. Therefore, it’s important to carefully think about how you will organise your discussion to present it in a clear way. 

The body of your literature review should do just as the description of this chapter suggests. It should “review” the literature – in other words, identify, analyse, and synthesise it. So, when thinking about structuring your literature review, you need to think about which structural approach will provide the best “review” for your specific type of research and objectives (we’ll get to this shortly).

There are (broadly speaking)  three options  for organising your literature review.

The body section of your literature review is the where you'll present, analyse, evaluate and synthesise the existing research.

Option 1: Chronological (according to date)

Organising the literature chronologically is one of the simplest ways to structure your literature review. You start with what was published first and work your way through the literature until you reach the work published most recently. Pretty straightforward.

The benefit of this option is that it makes it easy to discuss the developments and debates in the field as they emerged over time. Organising your literature chronologically also allows you to highlight how specific articles or pieces of work might have changed the course of the field – in other words, which research has had the most impact . Therefore, this approach is very useful when your research is aimed at understanding how the topic has unfolded over time and is often used by scholars in the field of history. That said, this approach can be utilised by anyone that wants to explore change over time .

Adopting the chronological structure allows you to discuss the developments and debates in the field as they emerged over time.

For example , if a student of politics is investigating how the understanding of democracy has evolved over time, they could use the chronological approach to provide a narrative that demonstrates how this understanding has changed through the ages.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you structure your literature review chronologically.

  • What is the earliest literature published relating to this topic?
  • How has the field changed over time? Why?
  • What are the most recent discoveries/theories?

In some ways, chronology plays a part whichever way you decide to structure your literature review, because you will always, to a certain extent, be analysing how the literature has developed. However, with the chronological approach, the emphasis is very firmly on how the discussion has evolved over time , as opposed to how all the literature links together (which we’ll discuss next ).

Option 2: Thematic (grouped by theme)

The thematic approach to structuring a literature review means organising your literature by theme or category – for example, by independent variables (i.e. factors that have an impact on a specific outcome).

As you’ve been collecting and synthesising literature , you’ll likely have started seeing some themes or patterns emerging. You can then use these themes or patterns as a structure for your body discussion. The thematic approach is the most common approach and is useful for structuring literature reviews in most fields.

For example, if you were researching which factors contributed towards people trusting an organisation, you might find themes such as consumers’ perceptions of an organisation’s competence, benevolence and integrity. Structuring your literature review thematically would mean structuring your literature review’s body section to discuss each of these themes, one section at a time.

The thematic structure allows you to organise your literature by theme or category  – e.g. by independent variables.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when structuring your literature review by themes:

  • Are there any patterns that have come to light in the literature?
  • What are the central themes and categories used by the researchers?
  • Do I have enough evidence of these themes?

PS – you can see an example of a thematically structured literature review in our literature review sample walkthrough video here.

Option 3: Methodological

The methodological option is a way of structuring your literature review by the research methodologies used . In other words, organising your discussion based on the angle from which each piece of research was approached – for example, qualitative , quantitative or mixed  methodologies.

Structuring your literature review by methodology can be useful if you are drawing research from a variety of disciplines and are critiquing different methodologies. The point of this approach is to question  how  existing research has been conducted, as opposed to  what  the conclusions and/or findings the research were.

The methodological structure allows you to organise your chapter by the analysis method  used - e.g. qual, quant or mixed.

For example, a sociologist might centre their research around critiquing specific fieldwork practices. Their literature review will then be a summary of the fieldwork methodologies used by different studies.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself when structuring your literature review according to methodology:

  • Which methodologies have been utilised in this field?
  • Which methodology is the most popular (and why)?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of the various methodologies?
  • How can the existing methodologies inform my own methodology?

3: The Conclusion Section

Once you’ve completed the body section of your literature review using one of the structural approaches we discussed above, you’ll need to “wrap up” your literature review and pull all the pieces together to set the direction for the rest of your dissertation or thesis.

The conclusion is where you’ll present the key findings of your literature review. In this section, you should emphasise the research that is especially important to your research questions and highlight the gaps that exist in the literature. Based on this, you need to make it clear what you will add to the literature – in other words, justify your own research by showing how it will help fill one or more of the gaps you just identified.

Last but not least, if it’s your intention to develop a conceptual framework for your dissertation or thesis, the conclusion section is a good place to present this.

In the conclusion section, you’ll need to present the key findings of your literature review and highlight the gaps that exist in the literature. Based on this, you'll  need to make it clear what your study will add  to the literature.

Example: Thematically Structured Review

In the video below, we unpack a literature review chapter so that you can see an example of a thematically structure review in practice.

Let’s Recap

In this article, we’ve  discussed how to structure your literature review for maximum impact. Here’s a quick recap of what  you need to keep in mind when deciding on your literature review structure:

  • Just like other chapters, your literature review needs a clear introduction , body and conclusion .
  • The introduction section should provide an overview of what you will discuss in your literature review.
  • The body section of your literature review can be organised by chronology , theme or methodology . The right structural approach depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your research.
  • The conclusion section should draw together the key findings of your literature review and link them to your research questions.

If you’re ready to get started, be sure to download our free literature review template to fast-track your chapter outline.

Literature Review Course

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling Udemy Course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

You Might Also Like:

Literature review 101 - how to find articles

27 Comments

Marin

Great work. This is exactly what I was looking for and helps a lot together with your previous post on literature review. One last thing is missing: a link to a great literature chapter of an journal article (maybe with comments of the different sections in this review chapter). Do you know any great literature review chapters?

ISHAYA JEREMIAH AYOCK

I agree with you Marin… A great piece

Qaiser

I agree with Marin. This would be quite helpful if you annotate a nicely structured literature from previously published research articles.

Maurice Kagwi

Awesome article for my research.

Ache Roland Ndifor

I thank you immensely for this wonderful guide

Malik Imtiaz Ahmad

It is indeed thought and supportive work for the futurist researcher and students

Franklin Zon

Very educative and good time to get guide. Thank you

Dozie

Great work, very insightful. Thank you.

KAWU ALHASSAN

Thanks for this wonderful presentation. My question is that do I put all the variables into a single conceptual framework or each hypothesis will have it own conceptual framework?

CYRUS ODUAH

Thank you very much, very helpful

Michael Sanya Oluyede

This is very educative and precise . Thank you very much for dropping this kind of write up .

Karla Buchanan

Pheeww, so damn helpful, thank you for this informative piece.

Enang Lazarus

I’m doing a research project topic ; stool analysis for parasitic worm (enteric) worm, how do I structure it, thanks.

Biswadeb Dasgupta

comprehensive explanation. Help us by pasting the URL of some good “literature review” for better understanding.

Vik

great piece. thanks for the awesome explanation. it is really worth sharing. I have a little question, if anyone can help me out, which of the options in the body of literature can be best fit if you are writing an architectural thesis that deals with design?

S Dlamini

I am doing a research on nanofluids how can l structure it?

PATRICK MACKARNESS

Beautifully clear.nThank you!

Lucid! Thankyou!

Abraham

Brilliant work, well understood, many thanks

Nour

I like how this was so clear with simple language 😊😊 thank you so much 😊 for these information 😊

Lindiey

Insightful. I was struggling to come up with a sensible literature review but this has been really helpful. Thank you!

NAGARAJU K

You have given thought-provoking information about the review of the literature.

Vakaloloma

Thank you. It has made my own research better and to impart your work to students I teach

Alphonse NSHIMIYIMANA

I learnt a lot from this teaching. It’s a great piece.

Resa

I am doing research on EFL teacher motivation for his/her job. How Can I structure it? Is there any detailed template, additional to this?

Gerald Gormanous

You are so cool! I do not think I’ve read through something like this before. So nice to find somebody with some genuine thoughts on this issue. Seriously.. thank you for starting this up. This site is one thing that is required on the internet, someone with a little originality!

kan

I’m asked to do conceptual, theoretical and empirical literature, and i just don’t know how to structure it

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Literature Review Guide: Examples of Literature Reviews

  • What is a Literature Review?
  • How to start?
  • Search strategies and Databases
  • Examples of Literature Reviews
  • How to organise the review
  • Library summary
  • Emerald Infographic

All good quality journal articles will include a small Literature Review after the Introduction paragraph.  It may not be called a Literature Review but gives you an idea of how one is created in miniature.

Sample Literature Reviews as part of a articles or Theses

  • Sample Literature Review on Critical Thinking (Gwendolyn Reece, American University Library)
  • Hackett, G and Melia, D . The hotel as the holiday/stay destination:trends and innovations. Presented at TRIC Conference, Belfast, Ireland- June 2012 and EuroCHRIE Conference

Links to sample Literature Reviews from other libraries

  • Sample literature reviews from University of West Florida

Standalone Literature Reviews

  • Attitudes towards the Disability in Ireland
  • Martin, A., O'Connor-Fenelon, M. and Lyons, R. (2010). Non-verbal communication between nurses and people with an intellectual disability: A review of the literature. Journal of Intellectual Diabilities, 14(4), 303-314.

Irish Theses

  • Phillips, Martin (2015) European airline performance: a data envelopment analysis with extrapolations based on model outputs. Master of Business Studies thesis, Dublin City University.
  • The customers’ perception of servicescape’s influence on their behaviours, in the food retail industry : Dublin Business School 2015
  • Coughlan, Ray (2015) What was the role of leadership in the transformation of a failing Irish Insurance business. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.
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Writing Research Papers

  • Writing a Literature Review

When writing a research paper on a specific topic, you will often need to include an overview of any prior research that has been conducted on that topic.  For example, if your research paper is describing an experiment on fear conditioning, then you will probably need to provide an overview of prior research on fear conditioning.  That overview is typically known as a literature review.  

Please note that a full-length literature review article may be suitable for fulfilling the requirements for the Psychology B.S. Degree Research Paper .  For further details, please check with your faculty advisor.

Different Types of Literature Reviews

Literature reviews come in many forms.  They can be part of a research paper, for example as part of the Introduction section.  They can be one chapter of a doctoral dissertation.  Literature reviews can also “stand alone” as separate articles by themselves.  For instance, some journals such as Annual Review of Psychology , Psychological Bulletin , and others typically publish full-length review articles.  Similarly, in courses at UCSD, you may be asked to write a research paper that is itself a literature review (such as, with an instructor’s permission, in fulfillment of the B.S. Degree Research Paper requirement). Alternatively, you may be expected to include a literature review as part of a larger research paper (such as part of an Honors Thesis). 

Literature reviews can be written using a variety of different styles.  These may differ in the way prior research is reviewed as well as the way in which the literature review is organized.  Examples of stylistic variations in literature reviews include: 

  • Summarization of prior work vs. critical evaluation. In some cases, prior research is simply described and summarized; in other cases, the writer compares, contrasts, and may even critique prior research (for example, discusses their strengths and weaknesses).
  • Chronological vs. categorical and other types of organization. In some cases, the literature review begins with the oldest research and advances until it concludes with the latest research.  In other cases, research is discussed by category (such as in groupings of closely related studies) without regard for chronological order.  In yet other cases, research is discussed in terms of opposing views (such as when different research studies or researchers disagree with one another).

Overall, all literature reviews, whether they are written as a part of a larger work or as separate articles unto themselves, have a common feature: they do not present new research; rather, they provide an overview of prior research on a specific topic . 

How to Write a Literature Review

When writing a literature review, it can be helpful to rely on the following steps.  Please note that these procedures are not necessarily only for writing a literature review that becomes part of a larger article; they can also be used for writing a full-length article that is itself a literature review (although such reviews are typically more detailed and exhaustive; for more information please refer to the Further Resources section of this page).

Steps for Writing a Literature Review

1. Identify and define the topic that you will be reviewing.

The topic, which is commonly a research question (or problem) of some kind, needs to be identified and defined as clearly as possible.  You need to have an idea of what you will be reviewing in order to effectively search for references and to write a coherent summary of the research on it.  At this stage it can be helpful to write down a description of the research question, area, or topic that you will be reviewing, as well as to identify any keywords that you will be using to search for relevant research.

2. Conduct a literature search.

Use a range of keywords to search databases such as PsycINFO and any others that may contain relevant articles.  You should focus on peer-reviewed, scholarly articles.  Published books may also be helpful, but keep in mind that peer-reviewed articles are widely considered to be the “gold standard” of scientific research.  Read through titles and abstracts, select and obtain articles (that is, download, copy, or print them out), and save your searches as needed.  For more information about this step, please see the Using Databases and Finding Scholarly References section of this website.

3. Read through the research that you have found and take notes.

Absorb as much information as you can.  Read through the articles and books that you have found, and as you do, take notes.  The notes should include anything that will be helpful in advancing your own thinking about the topic and in helping you write the literature review (such as key points, ideas, or even page numbers that index key information).  Some references may turn out to be more helpful than others; you may notice patterns or striking contrasts between different sources ; and some sources may refer to yet other sources of potential interest.  This is often the most time-consuming part of the review process.  However, it is also where you get to learn about the topic in great detail.  For more details about taking notes, please see the “Reading Sources and Taking Notes” section of the Finding Scholarly References page of this website.

4. Organize your notes and thoughts; create an outline.

At this stage, you are close to writing the review itself.  However, it is often helpful to first reflect on all the reading that you have done.  What patterns stand out?  Do the different sources converge on a consensus?  Or not?  What unresolved questions still remain?  You should look over your notes (it may also be helpful to reorganize them), and as you do, to think about how you will present this research in your literature review.  Are you going to summarize or critically evaluate?  Are you going to use a chronological or other type of organizational structure?  It can also be helpful to create an outline of how your literature review will be structured.

5. Write the literature review itself and edit and revise as needed.

The final stage involves writing.  When writing, keep in mind that literature reviews are generally characterized by a summary style in which prior research is described sufficiently to explain critical findings but does not include a high level of detail (if readers want to learn about all the specific details of a study, then they can look up the references that you cite and read the original articles themselves).  However, the degree of emphasis that is given to individual studies may vary (more or less detail may be warranted depending on how critical or unique a given study was).   After you have written a first draft, you should read it carefully and then edit and revise as needed.  You may need to repeat this process more than once.  It may be helpful to have another person read through your draft(s) and provide feedback.

6. Incorporate the literature review into your research paper draft.

After the literature review is complete, you should incorporate it into your research paper (if you are writing the review as one component of a larger paper).  Depending on the stage at which your paper is at, this may involve merging your literature review into a partially complete Introduction section, writing the rest of the paper around the literature review, or other processes.

Further Tips for Writing a Literature Review

Full-length literature reviews

  • Many full-length literature review articles use a three-part structure: Introduction (where the topic is identified and any trends or major problems in the literature are introduced), Body (where the studies that comprise the literature on that topic are discussed), and Discussion or Conclusion (where major patterns and points are discussed and the general state of what is known about the topic is summarized)

Literature reviews as part of a larger paper

  • An “express method” of writing a literature review for a research paper is as follows: first, write a one paragraph description of each article that you read. Second, choose how you will order all the paragraphs and combine them in one document.  Third, add transitions between the paragraphs, as well as an introductory and concluding paragraph. 1
  • A literature review that is part of a larger research paper typically does not have to be exhaustive. Rather, it should contain most or all of the significant studies about a research topic but not tangential or loosely related ones. 2   Generally, literature reviews should be sufficient for the reader to understand the major issues and key findings about a research topic.  You may however need to confer with your instructor or editor to determine how comprehensive you need to be.

Benefits of Literature Reviews

By summarizing prior research on a topic, literature reviews have multiple benefits.  These include:

  • Literature reviews help readers understand what is known about a topic without having to find and read through multiple sources.
  • Literature reviews help “set the stage” for later reading about new research on a given topic (such as if they are placed in the Introduction of a larger research paper). In other words, they provide helpful background and context.
  • Literature reviews can also help the writer learn about a given topic while in the process of preparing the review itself. In the act of research and writing the literature review, the writer gains expertise on the topic .

Downloadable Resources

  • How to Write APA Style Research Papers (a comprehensive guide) [ PDF ]
  • Tips for Writing APA Style Research Papers (a brief summary) [ PDF ]
  • Example APA Style Research Paper (for B.S. Degree – literature review) [ PDF ]

Further Resources

How-To Videos     

  • Writing Research Paper Videos
  • UCSD Library Psychology Research Guide: Literature Reviews

External Resources

  • Developing and Writing a Literature Review from N Carolina A&T State University
  • Example of a Short Literature Review from York College CUNY
  • How to Write a Review of Literature from UW-Madison
  • Writing a Literature Review from UC Santa Cruz  
  • Pautasso, M. (2013). Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLoS Computational Biology, 9 (7), e1003149. doi : 1371/journal.pcbi.1003149

1 Ashton, W. Writing a short literature review . [PDF]     

2 carver, l. (2014).  writing the research paper [workshop]. , prepared by s. c. pan for ucsd psychology.

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  • Research Paper Structure
  • Formatting Research Papers
  • Using Databases and Finding References
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  • Evaluating References and Taking Notes
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  • Improving Scientific Writing
  • Academic Integrity and Avoiding Plagiarism
  • Writing Research Papers Videos

Duke University Libraries

Literature Reviews

  • Types of reviews
  • Getting started

Types of reviews and examples

Choosing a review type.

  • 1. Define your research question
  • 2. Plan your search
  • 3. Search the literature
  • 4. Organize your results
  • 5. Synthesize your findings
  • 6. Write the review
  • Thompson Writing Studio This link opens in a new window
  • Need to write a systematic review? This link opens in a new window

literature review example a level

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Overview of types of literature reviews

Made with  Visme Infographic Maker

  • Literature (narrative)
  • Scoping / Evidence map
  • Meta-analysis

Characteristics:

  • Provides examination of recent or current literature on a wide range of subjects
  • Varying levels of completeness / comprehensiveness, non-standardized methodology
  • May or may not include comprehensive searching, quality assessment or critical appraisal

Mitchell, L. E., & Zajchowski, C. A. (2022). The history of air quality in Utah: A narrative review.  Sustainability ,  14 (15), 9653.  doi.org/10.3390/su14159653

  • Assessment of what is already known about an issue
  • Similar to a systematic review but within a time-constrained setting
  • Typically employs methodological shortcuts, increasing risk of introducing bias, includes basic level of quality assessment
  • Best suited for issues needing quick decisions and solutions (i.e., policy recommendations)

Learn more about the method:

Khangura, S., Konnyu, K., Cushman, R., Grimshaw, J., & Moher, D. (2012). Evidence summaries: the evolution of a rapid review approach.  Systematic reviews, 1 (1), 1-9.  https://doi.org/10.1186/2046-4053-1-10

Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries. (2021). Rapid Review Protocol .

Quarmby, S., Santos, G., & Mathias, M. (2019). Air quality strategies and technologies: A rapid review of the international evidence.  Sustainability, 11 (10), 2757.  https://doi.org/10.3390/su11102757

  • Compiles evidence from multiple reviews into one document
  • Often defines a broader question than is typical of a traditional systematic review.

Choi, G. J., & Kang, H. (2022). The umbrella review: a useful strategy in the rain of evidence.  The Korean Journal of Pain ,  35 (2), 127–128.  https://doi.org/10.3344/kjp.2022.35.2.127

Aromataris, E., Fernandez, R., Godfrey, C. M., Holly, C., Khalil, H., & Tungpunkom, P. (2015). Summarizing systematic reviews: Methodological development, conduct and reporting of an umbrella review approach. International Journal of Evidence-Based Healthcare , 13(3), 132–140. https://doi.org/10.1097/XEB.0000000000000055

Rojas-Rueda, D., Morales-Zamora, E., Alsufyani, W. A., Herbst, C. H., Al Balawi, S. M., Alsukait, R., & Alomran, M. (2021). Environmental risk factors and health: An umbrella review of meta-analyses.  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Dealth ,  18 (2), 704.  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18020704

  • Main purpose is to map out and categorize existing literature, identify gaps in literature
  • Search comprehensiveness determined by time/scope constraints, could take longer than a systematic review
  • No formal quality assessment or critical appraisal

Learn more about the methods :

Arksey, H., & O'Malley, L. (2005) Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework.  International Journal of Social Research Methodology ,  8 (1), 19-32.  https://doi.org/10.1080/1364557032000119616

Levac, D., Colquhoun, H., & O’Brien, K. K. (2010). Scoping studies: Advancing the methodology. Implementation Science: IS, 5, 69. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-5-69

Miake-Lye, I. M., Hempel, S., Shanman, R., & Shekelle, P. G. (2016). What is an evidence map? A systematic review of published evidence maps and their definitions, methods, and products.  Systematic reviews, 5 (1), 1-21.  https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-016-0204-x

Example : 

Rahman, A., Sarkar, A., Yadav, O. P., Achari, G., & Slobodnik, J. (2021). Potential human health risks due to environmental exposure to nano-and microplastics and knowledge gaps: A scoping review.  Science of the Total Environment, 757 , 143872.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143872

  • Seeks to systematically search for, appraise, and synthesize research evidence
  • Adheres to strict guidelines, protocols, and frameworks
  • Time-intensive and often take months to a year or more to complete. 
  • The most commonly referred to type of evidence synthesis. Sometimes confused as a blanket term for other types of reviews.

Gascon, M., Triguero-Mas, M., Martínez, D., Dadvand, P., Forns, J., Plasència, A., & Nieuwenhuijsen, M. J. (2015). Mental health benefits of long-term exposure to residential green and blue spaces: a systematic review.  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ,  12 (4), 4354–4379.  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph120404354

  • Statistical technique for combining results of quantitative studies to provide more precise effect of results
  • Aims for exhaustive, comprehensive searching
  • Quality assessment may determine inclusion/exclusion criteria
  • May be conducted independently or as part of a systematic review

Berman, N. G., & Parker, R. A. (2002). Meta-analysis: Neither quick nor easy. BMC Medical Research Methodology , 2(1), 10. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-2-10

Hites R. A. (2004). Polybrominated diphenyl ethers in the environment and in people: a meta-analysis of concentrations.  Environmental Science & Technology ,  38 (4), 945–956.  https://doi.org/10.1021/es035082g

Flowchart of review types

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  • Volume 14, Issue 2
  • Tools for assessing quality of studies investigating health interventions using real-world data: a literature review and content analysis
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  • http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6546-0778 Li Jiu 1 ,
  • Michiel Hartog 1 ,
  • Junfeng Wang 1 ,
  • Rick A Vreman 1 ,
  • Olaf H Klungel 1 ,
  • http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8782-0698 Aukje K Mantel-Teeuwisse 1 ,
  • Wim G Goettsch 1 , 2
  • 1 Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Clinical Pharmacology, Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences , Utrecht University , Utrecht , Netherlands
  • 2 National Health Care Institute , Diemen , Netherlands
  • Correspondence to Dr Wim G Goettsch; w.g.goettsch{at}uu.nl ; Dr Junfeng Wang; j.wang5{at}uu.nl ; Dr Junfeng Wang; j.wang5{at}uu.nl

Objectives We aimed to identify existing appraisal tools for non-randomised studies of interventions (NRSIs) and to compare the criteria that the tools provide at the quality-item level.

Design Literature review through three approaches: systematic search of journal articles, snowballing search of reviews on appraisal tools and grey literature search on websites of health technology assessment (HTA) agencies.

Data sources Systematic search: Medline; Snowballing: starting from three articles (D’Andrea et al , Quigley et al and Faria et al ); Grey literature: websites of European HTA agencies listed by the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment. Appraisal tools were searched through April 2022.

Eligibility criteria for selecting studies We included a tool, if it addressed quality concerns of NRSIs and was published in English (unless from grey literature). A tool was excluded, if it was only for diagnostic, prognostic, qualitative or secondary studies.

Data extraction and synthesis Two independent researchers searched, screened and reviewed all included studies and tools, summarised quality items and scored whether and to what extent a quality item was described by a tool, for either methodological quality or reporting.

Results Forty-nine tools met inclusion criteria and were included for the content analysis. Concerns regarding the quality of NRSI were categorised into 4 domains and 26 items. The Research Triangle Institute Item Bank (RTI Item Bank) and STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) were the most comprehensive tools for methodological quality and reporting, respectively, as they addressed (n=20; 17) and sufficiently described (n=18; 13) the highest number of items. However, none of the tools covered all items.

Conclusion Most of the tools have their own strengths, but none of them could address all quality concerns relevant to NRSIs. Even the most comprehensive tools can be complemented by several items. We suggest decision-makers, researchers and tool developers consider the quality-item level heterogeneity, when selecting a tool or identifying a research gap.

OSF registration number OSF registration DOI ( https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KCSGX ).

  • Systematic Review
  • EPIDEMIOLOGY
  • HEALTH ECONOMICS

Data availability statement

All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See:  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ .

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2023-075173

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STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY

This literature review identified 49 appraisal tools for non-randomised studies of interventions, through both the systematic approach (ie, database search) and the non-systematic approaches (ie, snowballing and grey literature search).

Our study compared sufficient descriptions of appraisal tools at quality-item levels, for either methodological quality or reporting.

We only searched health technology assessment agencies for grey literature, so some tools only mentioned by clinical guideline or regulatory organisations might have been overlooked.

Usefulness of categorising a quality item as ‘sufficient’ or ‘brief’ for each tool, based on whether an explanation was provided for the criteria, has not been tested by previous studies.

Introduction

Real-world data (RWD) generally refer to data collected during routine clinical practice, but their definitions could vary in settings. 1 According to Makady et al , one of the RWD definitions is data collected without interference with treatment assignment. 1 RWD that fit this definition are normally analysed in non-randomised studies of interventions (NRSIs), which estimate effectiveness of a health intervention without randomising intervention groups. 2 3

NRSIs provide evidence on clinical and cost-effectiveness of health interventions for decision-making, in clinical and health technology assessment (HTA) settings. 4–9 For example, NRSIs could inform clinicians on what diagnosis or treatment strategies to adopt. 4 5 Also, with NRSIs, HTA agencies could gain more certainty on validity of evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs), when deciding on which health intervention to reimburse and on which pricing strategy to adopt. 6 7 Also, HTA stakeholders could exploit NRSIs to evaluate highly innovative or complex interventions, for which RCTs may be considered infeasible or unethical. 8 9 Generally speaking, NRSIs have become increasingly useful, as they complement and sometimes replace RCTs, when RCTs are scarce or even infeasible to conduct. 2 10

However, the usefulness of NRSIs is often questioned due to quality concerns, in terms of risk of bias (RoB) and reporting. According to the Cochrane Handbook, NRSIs have higher RoB than RCTs and are vulnerable to various types of bias, such as confounding, selection and information bias. 11 Also, the Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) published a report in 2020, which stated that insufficient reporting on how an NRSI was generated was a major barrier for decision-makers to adopt NRSIs. 12

To address NRSI’s quality concerns and to build decision-makers’ confidence, NRSIs need to be rigorously appraised, and this rationalises the development and use of appraisal tools. According to systematic reviews of appraisal tools for NRSIs, tens of tools have been developed in the past five decades. 13–15 The growing number of tools has then brought a new challenge to users: how to select the best tool. To address this challenge, previous reviews have summarised quality items (ie, a group of criteria or signalling questions for methodological quality or reporting) and compared whether existing tools addressed these items. 13–15 Some example items include ‘measurement of outcomes’, ‘loss to follow-up bias’, ‘inclusion and exclusion criteria of target population’, ‘sampling strategies to correct selection bias’, etc. 13 In addition, these reviews provided some general recommendations on tool selection, such as referring to multiple tools for quality appraisal. 14 However, information is still lacking on to what extent the tools address each quality item and the heterogeneity of tools at the quality-item level. To take outcome measurement as an example, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Quality Criteria (ANDQ) checklist mentions that outcomes should be measured with ‘standard, valid and reliable data collection instruments, tests and procedures’ and ‘at an appropriate level of precision’. 16 In contrast, the Good ReseArch for Comparative Effectiveness (GRACE) checklist considers the ‘valid and reliable’ measurement as ‘objective rather than subject to clinical judgement’ 17 ; while the Risk Of Bias In Non-randomised Studies—of Interventions (ROBINS-I) checklist interprets the ‘standard’ way as ‘comparable across study groups’ and ‘valid and reliable’ as low detection bias without ‘systematic errors’ in outcome measurement. 18 In summary, the heterogeneity in level of detail with which a tool addresses a quality item and the heterogeneity in content and format of signalling questions can pose a challenge when tools are selected, or even merged.

Hence, our study aimed to summarise and compare signalling questions or criteria in the tools provided at the quality-item level, through a content analysis. This research was performed as part of the HTx project. 19 The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825162.

To ensure credibility of the review and the content analysis, we registered a study protocol in the OSF registry (registration DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KCSGX ) on 30 June 2022. The OSF registry is an online repository that accepts registration of all types of research projects, including reviews and content analyses. 20

Patient and public involvement

Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

In our study, appraisal tools refer to tools, guidelines, instruments or standards that provide guidance on how to report or assess any quality concern of NRSIs. NRSIs, according to the Cochrane Handbook, refer to any quantitative study estimating the effectiveness of an intervention without randomisation to allocate patients to intervention groups. 2 According to Makady et al , data collected in such NRSIs belong to the second category of RWD, that is, those collected without interference with treatment assignment, patient monitoring or follow-up, or selection of study population. 1

Search strategy

To identify appraisal tools for NRSIs from various potential sources, we adopted three approaches. A diagram illustrating how the three approaches complemented each other is shown in online supplemental appendix 1 .

Supplemental material

Database search.

In the first approach, we conducted a systematic review to identify articles on appraisal tools, through a database search using Medline. Since D’Andrea et al have already conducted a systematic review to identify appraisal tools for all types of non-randomised studies published before November 2019, 13 we updated their review by searching for articles published between November 2019 and April 2022, with their strings.

Snowballing

In the second approach, we searched for published reviews on appraisal tools for NRSIs. To identify all published reviews, we adopted a snowballing approach described by Wohlin. 21 Snowballing refers to using the citations of articles to identify additional articles, and it is considered a good extension of a database search. 21 To implement the snowballing approach, three researchers (LJ, MH and JW) first conducted a pilot search of articles using Google Scholar, reviewed full-text, judged eligibility through a group discussion, then identified three reviews (ie, those by D’Andrea et al , 13 Quigley et al 14 and Faria et al 15 ). Next, the three reviews were used as a starting set and were uploaded to the website Connected Papers, which provides an online tool for snowballing. 22 With each uploaded review, Connected Papers analysed approximately 50 000 articles and finally returned 40 articles with the highest level of similarity, based on factors such as overlapping citations. After judging eligibility of the returned articles, eligible articles were uploaded to the website Connected Papers for a second round of snowballing.

Grey literature

In the third approach, we searched for grey literature on the websites of European HTA agencies. Our rationale was that some appraisal tools may exist in the format of grey literature, such as agency reports and technical support documents. The list of European HTA agencies was derived from the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment. 23 On each agency website, two researchers (MH and LJ) independently searched for grey literature with four concepts, respectively, ‘quality’, ‘RoB’, ‘appraisal’ and ‘methodology’. For each concept, only the first 10 hits sorted by relevance, if optional, were included (ie, a maximum of 40 hits for each website).

Eligibility criteria for articles and grey literature to identify relevant tools

An article or grey literature document was included if it described one or more appraisal tools. It was excluded if it only described tools for RCTs or only described tools for diagnostic, prognostic, qualitative or secondary studies (eg, systematic reviews and cost-effectiveness analyses). We only included articles identified through the database search and snowballing if published in English, while included grey literature could be published in all languages, as many HTA agencies tend to only use languages of their nations. Relevant documents obtained through this approach were translated using Google Translate.

The process of identifying studies and appraisal tools

Two researchers (MH and LJ) independently scanned all titles and abstract of the identified hits, then reviewed the full-text with Rayyan 24 and Excel. After identifying the eligible studies, one researcher (MH) extracted the name of the tools and downloaded them by tracking study citations. A pilot search with Google was conducted to ensure we downloaded the most up-to-date version. Next, two researchers (MH and LJ) independently reviewed full-text and judged eligibility of the tools. An appraisal tool was included if it (1) was designed for non-randomised studies, (2) was used for assessing either methodological quality or reporting and (3) was developed or updated after 2002. A tool was excluded if it was designed for non-randomised studies of exposures which were not controlled by investigators (eg, diets). All discrepancies were solved through discussion among the three researchers (MH, LJ and JW).

One researcher (MH) extracted tool characteristics using a prespecified Excel form. The data items included publication year, tool format (eg, checklist or rating scale), targeted study design (eg, all NRSIs, cohort studies, etc), target interventions (eg, all or surgical interventions), originality (ie, whether a tool was developed based on an existing tool) and scope. The scope referred to whether the tools were designed for assessing methodological quality (eg, RoB and external validity) and/or for ensuring adequate reporting of research details that could be used for assessing methodological quality. 25

For the content analysis, we adopted both deductive and inductive coding techniques. 26 First, we derived a list of candidate quality items from the three reviews, the starting set for the snowballing. 13–15 Then, in a pilot coding process, we reviewed all identified appraisal tools and judged whether a candidate quality item was described. After the pilot coding, we summarised signalling questions or criteria that were not covered by the candidate items and coded them as new items. After updating the list of candidate items, three researchers (JW, LJ and MH) finalised the items in four group meetings. During the meetings, we merged items with overlapping content, split items containing too much content and renamed items so they could be self-explanatory.

To score whether and to what extent a quality item was described by a tool, we again reviewed all identified tools. If an item was described by a tool in one or several signalling questions, we judged whether the question(s) was related to methodological quality, reporting or both, independently of what original studies claimed to be. Additionally, we judged whether an item was described sufficiently or briefly. A description was scored as ‘brief’, if the corresponding signalling question(s) did not explain how to improve or assess methodological quality or specify elements needed for reporting. For example, ‘outcomes should be measured appropriately’ or ‘outcome measurement should be adequately described’ are ‘brief’ descriptions, if no additional explanations were provided. The scoring process was independently conducted by two researchers (LJ and MH) using NVivo V.12, and all discrepancies were solved through discussion between the two.

Tool selection

As shown in figure 1 , we identified 1738 articles after removing duplicates and excluded 1645 articles after subsequently reviewing titles, abstracts and full-text. From the remaining 27 eligible studies, we identified 417 appraisal tools. After removing duplicates and reviewing full-texts, we included 49 tools which met our criteria. References of the included studies and appraisal tools are shown in online supplemental appendix 2 and 3 , respectively.

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Flow chart for the inclusion and exclusion of appraisal tools for non-randomised studies of interventions

Characteristics of appraisal tools

As shown in table 1 , 18 (37%) tools were published between 2002 and 2010, while 31 (63%) tools were published thereafter. Among these, 30 (61%), 6 (12%) and 5 (10%) tools were designed for addressing methodological quality, reporting and both, respectively, while 7 (14%) tools did not report intended use of the tools. About three quarters of the tools were designed for all types of NRSIs, while others were designed for one or several NRSI types, such as cohort (16%) and case–control studies (16%). Regarding sources, 44 (90%) tools were described in articles that developed a tool, in grey literature (eg, online checklist or report), or in both, while the other five tools were extended from existing tools, when researchers conducted systematic reviews on non-randomised studies. Finally, 9 (18%) tools were designed for specific interventions or diseases while all other tools were generic in nature.

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Characteristics of the 49 included appraisal tools for non-randomised studies of interventions

Quality domains and items

We identified 44 criteria to describe study quality from three previous reviews. 13–15 After merging criteria with similar content (eg, ‘Follow-up’ and ‘Loss to follow-up’) and incorporating items into those with wider meanings (eg, ‘Loss to follow-up bias’ into ‘Loss to follow-up’), we obtained a list of 18 items. After the pilot coding, we summarised criteria of appraisal tools not covered by the 18 items into another 8 items. According to the general order of conducting an NRSI (eg, study design and data analysis, etc.), these 26 items were categorised into four domains: Study design, Data quality, Data analysis and Results presentation. As shown in figure 2 and table 2 , all domains and most items were addressed by existing tools, but for each item, the number of tools with sufficient descriptions was relatively small. For three items in methodology and nine items in reporting, less than five tools addressed them, and none of the tools sufficiently described them.

The extent to which the appraisal tools addressed quality items on methodological quality or reporting.

Overview of the 4 domains and 26 quality items, with numbers and proportions of appraisal tools that addressed or sufficiently described them

Figure 2 illustrates whether and to what extent the identified tools addressed quality items in terms of methodological quality or reporting. The 26 columns represent the 26 quality items as shown in table 2 . The ranking of appraisal tools based on the number of items addressed or sufficiently described, either general or segmented by quality domains, is shown in online supplemental appendix 4–6 . Regarding methodological quality, Research Triangle Institute Item Bank (RTI Item Bank) 27 addressed (n=20) and sufficiently described (n=18) the highest number of items. In addition, the tools that ranked both top 10, based on number of items addressed or sufficiently described, included Methodology Index for Non-randomized Studies (MINORS), 28 , Faillie et al , 29 ROBINS-I, 18 ANDQ, 16 Comparative Effectiveness Research Collaborative Initiative Questionnaire (CER-CI) 30 and Joanna Briggs Institute’s Critical Appraisal Tool (JBI). 31 These tools addressed at least 10 items and sufficiently described at least 5 items. In the study-design domain, RTI Item Bank 27 sufficiently described the most items (n=7), while in the Data quality domain, RTI Item Bank 27 and MINOR 28 ranked the top two, which sufficiently described at least 5 of the 10 items. In the Data analysis domain, only Faillie et al 29 and Handu et al 32 sufficiently described all the three included items. In the Results presentation domain, the relevant two items sufficiently described by Faillie et al 29 and Handu et al , 32 and ANDQ. 16 Regarding reporting, STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) 33 addressed (n=17) and sufficiently described (n=14) the highest number of items. Also, the tools that ranked both top 10, based on the two criteria, included Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Non-randomized Designs (TREND), 34 the tool by Genaidy et al , 35 REporting of studies Conducted using Observational Routinely-collected Data (RECORD), 36 European Network of Centres for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacovigilance (ENCePP), 36 International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE), 37 the tool by Tseng et al 38 and Joint Task Force between the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology and the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPE-ISPOR). 39 These tools at least addressed and sufficiently described seven and three quality items, respectively. In all the four quality domains, STROBE 32 sufficiently described the (equally) most items, compared with other tools. Besides, in the Study design domain, ENCePP 36 and RECORD 40 sufficiently described at least 4 of the 11 items, while in the Data quality domain, TREND 34 and Genaidy et al 35 sufficiently described at least 4 of the 10 items. In the Data analysis and Results presentation domain, STROBE was the only tool that sufficiently described two of the thee items, while 7 and 12 other tools sufficiently described only one item, respectively.

Methodological quality

Among the four domains, the Study design domain was the most ignored domain by appraisal tools, as only 4 of the 11 relevant items were described with sufficient details by more than four tools. More specifically, no tool described methodological quality on Ethical approval or Study objective with sufficient detail. For example, the guidelines manual of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) stated that: “The study addresses an appropriate and clearly focused question”. 41 The tool did not explain the standard of appropriateness and clearness.

In addition, although one-third of tools discussed what a good study design was, only three tools defined the goodness. 42–44 For example, the NHS Wales Questions to Assist with the Critical Appraisal of a Cross-Sectional Study (NHS Wales) stated that the choice of study design should be appropriate to the research question and ensure the reliability of study results. 44 Outcome selection was also ignored by most tools, as only three tools (ie, RTI Item Bank, 27 MINORS 28 and the tool by Faillie et al 29 ) sufficiently described them. Similarly, only RTI Item Bank, 27 the tool by Genaidy et al 35 and NICE 41 sufficiently described the item Outcome definition. For example, Genaidy et al 35 stated that a definition was clear only if ‘definitions of all outcome variables were clearly described’, and was partially clear if not all variables were clearly described, but ‘sufficient information was provided for the reader to understand the intent’. 35 Other items that were rarely addressed or insufficiently described included Intervention definition and Data source. The respective tools with sufficient descriptions included SURE, 45 ROBINS-I, 18 MINORS, 28 CER-CI, 30 GRACE 17 and the tools described by Faillie et al . 29

The Data quality domain was ignored by most tools, as 4 of the 10 relevant items were sufficiently addressed by less than three tools. In particular, the item Intervention measurement and Length of follow-up were sufficiently addressed by none of the tools, JBI was the only tool stating that method of measuring interventions should be clearly reported, 31 while 19 tools addressing Intervention measurement only focused on methodological quality. Some other items that were rarely addressed or insufficiently addressed included Outcome blinding and Loss to follow-up. Regarding Outcome blinding, only three tools provided sufficient descriptions, that is, MINORS, TREND and ISPE. 28 34 37 . Similarly, only the tool by Genaidy et al , 35 TREND and STROBE sufficiently described Loss to follow-up. 32 35 36

We conducted a review of appraisal tools for NRSIs and assessed whether and how sufficiently these tools addressed quality concerns, in terms of methodological quality or reporting, in 4 quality domains and across 26 items. Our study identified 49 tools and showed that the RTI Item Bank and STROBE were most comprehensive, with the highest number of items addressed and sufficiently described, respectively, on methodological quality and reporting. However, none of the tools addressed concerns in all items, not even briefly. The items least addressed for methodological quality included Outcome selection, Outcome definition and Ethical approval, and for reporting included Intervention selection, Intervention measurement and Length of follow-up.

To our knowledge, this is the first study that compared level of sufficient descriptions of appraisal tools at quality-item levels. Previous reviews also compared appraisal tools but from different perspectives. D’Andrea et al identified 44 tools evaluating the comparative safety and effectiveness of medications, and only assessed whether or not these tools addressed methodological quality in eight domains. 13 In another review, Ma et al elaborated for what types of study design a tool was suited. 46 For example, for cohort studies, they encouraged using five tools, while discouraged the use of another two. However, they did not clarify why some tools were more suitable than the others. Quigley et al identified 48 tools for appraising quality of systematic reviews of non-randomised studies, listed the five most commonly used tools and assessed whether they addressed the 12 quality domains, such as ‘appropriate design’ and ‘appropriate statistical analysis’. 14 Although the tools were compared using different criteria, some results were consistent among all studies. For example, both D’Andrea et al 13 and our study found that intervention measurement, outcome measurement and confounding were frequently addressed by existing tools. Also, Ma et al 46 and Quigley et al 14 both recommended ROBINS-I, MINORS and JBI, and all these tools ranked top 10 for addressing and sufficiently describing methodological quality in our study. With detailed information on level of sufficient descriptions of appraisal tools at the quality-item level, we add value to previous reviews by listing quality concerns that such commonly recommended tools could not adequately address.

We also found some discrepancies in the tools identified or recommended. For example, of the 44 tools identified by D’Andrea et al , 13 27 were published between 2003 and 2019; while in our study, 47 were identified as published between 2003 and 2019. This discrepancy could be explained by additional tools identified through other reviews, tools from grey literature and differences in eligibility criteria (eg, exclusion of non-pharmacological interventions or assessing only one or a few specific types of bias). Another discrepancy was that some tools that ranked top in our study were less recommended by previous reviews, such as RTI Item Bank 27 and the tool by Faillie et al 29 for methodological quality and by Genaidy et al 35 for reporting. This might be explained by the novel criteria (ie, how sufficiently quality items were addressed) we used to evaluate these tools.

We discovered that, with information on how sufficiently a tool described a quality item, tool users might broaden their horizons on quality concerns of non-randomised studies to be considered. For example, if ROBINS-I 18 is used for assessing methodological quality, the quality concerns known to users will be RoB in eight domains (eg, confounding and selection bias). However, as shown in figure 2 , quality concerns in 16 items (eg, Intervention selection and Outcome definition) may not be sufficiently described in ROBINS-I but in other tools, such as RTI Item Bank, 27 the NICE checklist 41 and the tool by NHS Wales. 44 Similarly, if users check the ENCePP 36 and ISPE tools, 37 in addition to STROBE, for reporting quality concerns, they may more comprehensively understand concerns on Ethical approval, Outcome definition, Study objective and Data source. Tool users who may benefit from such information are not only researchers who conduct non-randomised studies and decision-makers who assess study quality, but also tool developers who may identify a research gap.

While the needs of tool users may vary, they could all be somewhat satisfied by our research. For example, it is important for researchers to ensure sufficient reporting of the strengths and weaknesses of an NRSI, as such information will be ultimately used for determining the eligibility of their studies for a decision-making. 32 47 For HTA agencies, NRSIs can be used to extrapolate long-term drug effectiveness and to identify drug-related costs, and a deep and consistent understanding of how to assess NRSI quality among the agencies is important for promoting the use of RWD. 48 For regulators, a comprehensive understanding of how to evaluate NRSI quality may promote a structured pattern of using RWD to support drug regulation. 49 While researchers focus more on reporting, and decision-makers (eg, HTA agencies) have emphasis on methodological quality, we suggest all users pay attention to the linkage between methodology and reporting for each quality item, as illustrated in our research, as it could help understand the necessity of investigating each item.

Another finding of our research was that whether and to what extent a quality concern was addressed by a tool partly depended on the tool purpose. For example, the GRACE checklist was designed as a ‘screening tool’ to exclude studies that did not meet basic quality requirements, 17 and ROBINS-I focused on RoB, rather than all methodological quality issues, such as appropriateness of study objectives or statistical analyses for patient matching. 18 Some tools, such as JBI Cohort, 31 were specific to a type of study design. While they addressed less than half of quality items defined in our research, they were proven robust in many studies. 14 Additionally, for several quality items we found some heterogeneity in content of signalling questions or criteria among the tools with sufficient description. For example, to assess methodological quality of sensitivity analysis, CER-CI 30 stated that key assumptions or definitions of outcomes should be tested, while the tool by Viswanathan et al 50 emphasised the importance of reducing uncertainty in individual judgements. Given the heterogeneity of tools, we suggest users following a two-step approach when selecting a tool. First, users may narrow down the scope of tools based on their own needs, for example, excluding tools for a different study design. This step could be achieved by referring to synthesised results and recommendations from existing reviews. 13 14 Second, users could use the overview we provide ( figure 2 ) to see which tool(s) could provide complementary insights the tool of their first choice is lacking.

Furthermore, we found that appraisal tools designed for specific interventions had potential to be transferred for general interventions. In our research, the tools described by Tseng et al 38 and Blagojevic et al 51 and ANDQ 16 were originally designed for a surgical intervention, knee osteoarthritis and for the field of diabetes, respectively. All these tools ranked top 15 in our study for addressing either methodological quality or reporting ( online supplemental file appendix 4–6 ), and many of their criteria could be generalisable. For example, Tseng et al 38 stated that interventions could be adequately described with specifically referenced articles ( online supplemental file appendix 7 ). 38 Though such tools could be transferred, they often used disease-or-intervention-specific concepts in their criteria, which might be adjusted before being applied more widely.

Moreover, we noticed that, some quality items were less frequently addressed, such as Study objective, Ethical approval or Sensitivity analysis, compared with other items. This might be explained by the fact that, some items were more related to a certain need of users than the others. For example, a tool addressing concerns on RoB may focus less on Study objective, which is relatively more difficult to be directly linked to a well-defined type of bias. Still, since these quality items are related to NRSI quality, and they are rarely sufficiently described, particular efforts investigating these quality items may be needed in future tool development. In contrast, while some quality items have been frequently addressed, such as Length of follow-up and Intervention measurement, they are not necessarily relevant to all types of user needs. For example, as shown in table 2 and online supplemental file appendix 7 , 14 tools highlighted that the follow-up should be sufficiently substantial for detecting an association between intervention and outcome, but none of these tools linked Length of follow-up to RoB. Therefore, we recommend tool developers to clarify not only the purpose of their tools but also the relevance of their signalling questions to any user needs (eg, RoB assessment). We also advise that in future research the relationships between quality items and user needs will be investigated in more detail.

Our study has a number of limitations. One limitation is that, some tools identified by our study were originally developed for purposes beyond assessing methodological quality of reporting of NRSIs, so our study could not cover all potentials of these tools. For example, the GRADE framework was mainly designed for addressing certainty of evidence, such as indirectness (ie, whether interventions were compared directly), and for making relevant clinical practice recommendations. While it mentions RoB (eg, publication bias), its main purpose is to illustrate how to grade quality of evidence, rather than to function as an exact quality appraisal tool. In other words, the GRADE allows users to use any additional tools to assess NRSI quality. 52 Also, the GRADE checklist was designed for both RCTs and NRSIs, so some criteria might be relatively brief, compared with specifically designed tools, such as RTI Item Bank. 27 Finally, GRADE can be used to estimate and score the quality of evidence for the full body of evidence and not only for individual primary studies. Therefore, tool users who assess NRSIs beyond methodological quality or reporting should consider criteria in addition to those mentioned in our study, for selecting a tool. Another limitation is that, some tools were predecessors of others, but we did not exclude them if they met the inclusion criteria. For example, the ROBINS-I tool was developed from the Cochrane Risk Of Bias Assessment Tool: for Non-Randomized Studies of Interventions (ACROBAT-NRSI), 53 and some of their signalling questions differed. Such information on tool linkage may also be considered for tool selection, if available from the tools. Another limitation is that we only searched HTA agencies for grey literature, and the returned hits on the snowballing approach depended on the starting-set articles, so some tools only mentioned by clinical guideline or regulatory organisations, or tools missed by the previous reviews might have been overlooked. Also, only one researcher (MH) traced versions of tools, by following reference lists of the identified studies and by visiting websites of the online tools. Consequently, the most up-to-date version of a tool might be missing, and the extent to which a quality item was described by a tool might be underestimated. As existing appraisal tools are improved continuously and new tools are being developed (eg, the HARmonized Protocol Template to Enhance Reproducibility (HARPER) and Authentic Transparent Relevant Accurate Track-Record (ATRAcTR)), 54 55 an online platform that automatically identifies appraisal tools and summarises tool information is promising. Such platforms have already been established for tools for assessing observational studies for exposures that were not controlled by investigators (eg, dietary patterns). 56 Another limitation is that we categorised criteria of a quality item as ‘sufficient’ or ‘brief’ for each tool, based on whether an explanation was provided for the criteria. Though consensus was reached among authors, and all tool criteria were independently reviewed by two researchers, tool users might question the feasibility of such categorisation when selecting a tool. Additionally, as we categorised quality items based on the order of conducting an NRSI (ie, from study design to results presentation), we did not provide specific suggestions on how to select tools based on bias categories. For example, motivational bias, which would occur when judgements are influenced by the desirability or undesirability of events or outcomes, may affect reporting and measurement of patient outcomes and adherence to healthcare interventions. 57 58 Although the items Conflict of interest and Outcome measurement are relevant to motivational bias, we did not investigate their relationships. Hence, we recommend for future research to bridge our quality items to all potential categories of bias, then test whether a tool selected based on such categorisation, together with recommendations from previous reviews, can really satisfy tool users. It is also worth noting that, the target audience of this review and content analysis could be decision-makers who assess the general quality of an NRSI, NRSI performers who may report quality of their studies, or developers of relevant appraisal tools. However, when users focus on a specific type of concern (eg, causal effect or data quality), some methodological guidance investigating the specific issue or tools beyond the healthcare field (eg, social science) really exist 59 60 and may be referred to by users. In addition, the tools for diagnosis studies, prognosis studies and secondary studies were beyond the scope of our study, and relevant users may refer to other studies, such as Quigley et al 14 , for further information. Moreover, some frameworks specifically designed for assessing data quality, for example, in terms of data structures and completeness, have been published, and some of their instructions may also be considered as criteria for assessing NRSI quality. 61–65 While evaluating these frameworks is beyond the scope of this study, we recommend tool developers to refer to these frameworks when they define relevant criteria or signalling questions in the future.

Most of the appraisal tools for NRSIs have their own strengths, but none of them could address all quality concerns relevant to these studies. Even the most comprehensive tools could be complemented with items from other tools. With information on how sufficiently a tool describes a quality item, tool users might broaden their horizons on quality concerns of non-randomised studies to be considered and might select a tool that more completely satisfies their needs. We suggest decision-makers, researchers and tool developers consider the quality-item level heterogeneity when selecting a tool or identifying a research gap.

Acknowledgments

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Supplementary materials

Supplementary data.

This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.

  • Data supplement 1

Contributors LJ designed the study protocol, identified appraisal tools, conducted the content analysis and wrote the manuscript; MH identified appraisal tools, collected data on appraisal tools and conducted the content analysis; JW designed the study protocol, solved the discrepancies on identification of appraisal tools and edited the manuscript; RAV designed the study protocol and edited the manuscript; OK provided assistance on coding of quality items and edited the manuscript; AM-T edited the manuscript; WG edited the manuscript, and was responsible for the overall content as the guarantor.

Funding This research was performed as part of the HTx project. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825162.

Competing interests None declared.

Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.

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Utilization of differentiated instruction in K-12 classrooms: a systematic literature review (2000–2022)

  • Review Article
  • Published: 15 February 2024

Cite this article

  • Linlin Hu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7833-6522 1 , 2  

Differentiated instruction (DI) is a beneficial approach to addressing students’ diverse learning needs, abilities, and interests to ensure that each student has the opportunity to make academic progress. To answer the question of how teachers utilize DI in K-12 classrooms, this systematic review was based on 61 empirical studies on DI published between 2000 and 2022. It examined the current status and trends of implementing DI in K-12 education and integrated various factors involved in the process of DI, including educational levels, subjects, student difference analysis, instructional methods, content, tools, assessment methods, and instructional effectiveness. The findings indicated that (1) DI was most commonly used in primary school mathematics and language classrooms, with the majority of studies having sample sizes exceeding 100 and lasting for more than 6 months; (2) The most frequently employed form of DI was ability grouping, often grouped based on academic achievement; (3) Information technology tools and resources can empower differentiated instruction; (4) Most studies utilized standardized tests, questionnaires, and scales as evaluation tools, with a focus on the impact of DI on students’ academic achievement and skills; and (5) The effectiveness of DI was controversial and influenced by multiple factors, such as may be associated with the instructional methods. In response to these findings, the study introduces a comprehensive DI model. This model, rooted in the perspective of instructional design, elucidates the interconnected factors of DI. It serves as a valuable reference for the future design and implementation of DI, offering a practical guide for educators aiming to create inclusive and effective learning environments.

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Disruptions to HIV services due to the COVID pandemic in the USA: a state-level stakeholder perspective

  • Rogério M. Pinto 1 ,
  • Evan Hall 1 ,
  • Vitalis Im 1 ,
  • Carol A. Lee 2 &
  • Sunggeun (Ethan) Park 1  

BMC Health Services Research volume  24 , Article number:  196 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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The United States envisions a 90% reduction in HIV infections by 2030. However, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the HIV continuum and disproportionately affected access to social and health services for people at the highest vulnerability. This study shows how stakeholders in the State of Michigan handled disruptions and their key recommendations. As a case study, this study adds to the literature about preparedness for future pandemics.

We interviewed 33 statewide Michigan HIV/AIDS Council members—practitioners, researchers, and community representatives, guiding service planning, improvement, and resource allocations, measuring group cohesiveness using a tested scale. We measured group cohesiveness as a proxy for how individual opinions reflected those of the Council as a group. We used qualitative questions to assess: (1) how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted HIV prevention; (2) how disruptions were handled; and (3) recommendation to help address disruptions now and in the future. Using thematic analysis, we coded the interviews.

We found a high degree of cohesiveness. Participants agreed that the pandemic disrupted HIV prevention services (e.g., HIV testing, PrEP education, referrals to primary care, etcetera) offered by community organizations, hospital clinics, and health departments across the state. In response, they developed online and curbside services to maintain HIV services, abate social isolation, and address structural issues like lack of food and public transportation. We organized results in four categories: (1) HIV service disruptions (e.g., “ Housing for women and children who are fleeing a legal situation ”); (2) Responses to disruptions (e.g., “S ome of them, we would say, hey, weather permitting, we’ll come out to your car ”); (3) Minoritized groups disproportionately affected (e.g., “ Especially in my community, to get people if there’s ever a vaccine, Black people are going to be the last people to take it ”); and (4) Recommendations (below).

Conclusions

The pandemic unsettled and further exacerbated every aspect of HIV service provision. The main recommendation was to overhaul communication systems between government and organizations offering HIV services to mitigate disruptions and improve the chances of achieving a 90% reduction.

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Introduction

The United States (U.S.) envisions a 90% reduction in HIV infections by the end of this decade [ 1 ]. However, the COVID-19 pandemic severely and unprecedently disrupted the lives and work of people across the globe [ 2 , 3 ], including their health, stress, and life satisfaction. More specifically, the pandemic disrupted the HIV Continuum of Prevention and Care (“HIV continuum”), which connects people living with HIV (PLWH) and high-vulnerability individuals to appropriate prevention and care services, including HIV testing, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and adherence to antiretroviral medications. A burgeoning literature started in early 2020 showing that, across the globe and particularly in the U.S., the pandemic disproportionately affected negatively those most vulnerable to HIV infections. These populations, including, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), men who have sex with men (MSM), people who inject/use drugs (PWID), and transgender and non-binary persons experienced a sudden disconnection from HIV continuum services [ 4 , 5 ]. The initial research was based on rapid atheoretical, data collection and anecdotal accounts of how community-based organizations (CBOs), hospital clinics, and health departments in different geographic locations addressed mounting gaps in services. Currently, we have data on the services that were most disrupted and on how health service providers addressed gaps [ 6 , 7 ].

We submit that the literature connecting the COVID-19 and HIV pandemic needs to expand to include local accounts of how stakeholders handled HIV services vis-à-vis COVID disruptions. The recent pandemic demonstrates how geographic location and geopolitics (e.g., shelter-in-place and shut down orders) influenced disruptions to the HIV services differently, highlighting the importance of documenting locally-based solutions and recommendations for addressing future outbreaks and disruptions. Therefore, following a community-engaged approach to research, we recruited the Michigan HIV/AIDS Council (MHAC)—a collective of practitioners, researchers, and community members across the state of Michigan, guiding the service planning, capacity improvement, and resource allocation decisions of the state for HIV resources and information. This paper explores (1) how the pandemic disrupted the HIV services with an emphasis on health inequities, (2) how HIV-serving organizations and individual providers handled the disruptions, and (3) recommendations made by the Council members.

Impact of COVID on organizations delivering HIV continuum services and their responses

Organizations that deliver HIV services had experienced pre-pandemic matters that challenged their capacities to respond to their clients. Matters affecting organizations are both at the service provider and structural levels, such as not being able to work in the office, shutdowns, staff layoffs, institutional low morale, and fears related to COVID [ 8 ]. Community-based organizations have faced budgetary shortfalls and thus a decrease in overall employment and ability to provide essential services. Research indicates that the pandemic has disrupted both the form and function of disaster preparedness– it affected one’s ability to see people in person, to offer food and services to people required to shelter-in-place, to find volunteers to supplement service provisions, and to allocate funds while maintaining fairness and equity in the distribution of resources across populations [ 9 ].

Organizations providing HIV services implemented existing and novel approaches to HIV service disruptions, including curbside service delivery, telehealth for HIV prevention and treatment service, including PrEP prescription and maintenance [ 10 ]. However, organizations across the U.S. responded to the pandemic disruptions differently. For instance, in March 2020, most Ryan White-funded clinics in South Carolina reported partial or complete interruptions to their clinic operations hours, HIV services coverage, telehealth use, and healthcare providers’ availability. Nevertheless, these clinics reported the continuation of core HIV services, such as medication filling and testing, but stopped face-to-face counseling and social support groups. Contrastingly, Ryan White-funded clinics in Alabama suspended walk-in HIV/STI testing and community outreach events. Still, all other services (e.g., legal services, support groups, nutritional services, transportation vouchers, medical items, pet food, and personal care items) were provided through curbside services [ 6 ].

HIV continuum disruptions and impact on key populations

The groups most affected by HIV had already been experiencing multiple personal and structural issues that the COVID pandemic further exacerbated. For example, MSM had faced challenges concerning food insecurity and housing stability before the pandemic [ 11 ]. Hepatitis C and HIV infection rates among PWID had been reduced during COVID, partly because of the increased availability of syringe service programs. However, given disruptions in services, it is still a bit too soon to know whether this reduction will be maintained now and, in the future [ 12 ]. Transgender and non-binary persons experienced job insecurity, unemployment, housing instability, and lack of health insurance prior to the pandemic [ 13 ]. There is little published research thus far on the impact of the COVID pandemic on these vulnerable populations at the intersection of HIV.

COVID-19 further aggravated these vulnerable populations’ prior conditions and ability to access HIV continuum services due to myriad changes in day-to-day domestic life, community life, or life outside of work, including childcare, caring for family members, own healthcare, food scarcity, among others [ 14 ]. As consequences, for example, research on MSM shows changes in sexual behavior, including an increase in the number of sexual partners, thus necessitating an increase in HIV prevention services during the pandemic [ 11 ]. Although there was a desired willingness among MSM to get tested for HIV and PrEP prescription/refills, access to prevention services was difficult for many [ 15 , 16 ]. Similar barriers to HIV care and treatment were concurrent. MSM youth showed decreased condom usage and increased alcohol and/or substance use [ 17 ]. Therefore, there was a need for HIV services to remain open during the pandemic. Due to added demands on healthcare systems, HIV prevention programs, such as syringe exchange, were strained and even suspended [ 12 ]. Other services that became difficult to access included HIV testing, safe-use injecting equipment, and scheduling appointments with doctors and HIV counselors [ 18 ]. Adherence to antiretroviral regimens for people who inject/use drugs decreased during the pandemic alongside and a lack of optimism that PrEP was a viable prevention tool [ 19 ]. It has also been documented that, during the pandemic, transgender and non-binary individuals had less medical attention compared to pre-pandemic levels. Although there was a need to know one’s HIV status, many described substantial confusion about how to access HIV testing and other prevention services [ 13 , 20 ].

Michigan HIV/AIDS council (MHAC) as collaborative governance

By April 2020, our team had published a paper about how MHAC stakeholders forecast major HIV services disruptions at the beginning of the pandemic. Our next step was to adhere to our community-engaged research approach and collect structured interviews and data to shed light on the issues affecting the HIV services [ 21 ]. We specifically chose to work with MHAC as it represents a collaborative governance effort that “brings multiple stakeholders together in common forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making” [ 22 , 23 ]. The goals of collaborative governance efforts, such as MHAC, are often two-fold: normative (e.g., promoting stakeholder involvement and boosting accountability) and outcome-directed (e.g., improving performance on important public policy issues) [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MIDHHS) organizes MHAC “to represent the diversity of those affected by HIV/AIDS in Michigan, maintain collaboration and coordination among prevention and care issues, and develop and sustain statewide comprehensive plans for HIV prevention and care” [ 23 , 27 ]. The MHAC is a deliberative, collaborative governance vehicle to facilitate two-way communications and collaboration channels between private and public stakeholders to improve Michigan’s capacity for services and planning, and to better allocate public resources to improve the HIV continuum. The Council recruits stakeholders representing seven distinctive geographic regions from across the state with various connections to the state’s HIV continuum, including people living with HIV, representatives from AIDS service organizations (e.g., community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations), representatives from local public health agencies, and community members at large. Members serve 3-year terms and commit about 120 h per year to attend meetings and participate in committees and workgroups.

Sampling, recruitment, and data collection

Recruitment and data collection for this study took place approximately between August and December of 2020. The first author introduced the procedures that would be involved in the study during MHAC meetings. After that, our team sent an invitation via email to the entire membership and followed up with individual emails. Two trained research assistants conducted recruitment and the interviews using a Zoom Conferencing System. Interviews lasted between 30 and 60 min. Qualitative interviews were transcribed using Zoom transcriptions; the text for each transcribed interview was “cleaned up” for grammatical errors, missing sentences, and words before data analysis. We also asked the participants to complete the quantitative surveys (about 20 min), including basic demographic characteristics, and roles within the MHAC. In addition, the survey captured the participants’ perspectives and experience with MHAC with validated measures of group cohesion and efficacy. We interviewed 79% of the Council’s membership.

Interview protocol

Semi-structured interview guide.

The guide was based on the topics that had transpired in MHAC meetings when the pandemic was declared and on feedback from our early publication on potential disruptions to HIV services in Michigan and elsewhere [ 21 ]. The protocol included questions and prompts aimed to uncover (1) how the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted the HIV services; (2) how identified disruptions had been handled; and (3) what actions participants might recommend to help address disruptions now and in the future. First, we asked participants to describe how they thought COVID had disrupted the HIV services. We prompted participants to discuss how COVID might have unearthed health inequities, particularly among people of color. Second, we asked participants to describe how they handled the identified disruptions. The third portion of the interview asked participants to briefly describe what actions they might recommend to help address disruptions now and in the future. Our prompts encouraged participants to discuss disruptions and responses related to the HIV continuum, such as HIV testing, PrEP, and primary care.

Group cohesiveness

We collected the survey data after the qualitative interview using paper and pencil method. We measured group cohesiveness, i.e., agreement on the purpose of MHAC’s mission, as a proxy for how individual opinions reflect those of the Council as a group. Adopted from Dobbins and Zaccaro [ 28 ], i.e., agreement on the purpose of MHAC’s mission, as a proxy for how individual opinions reflected those of the Council as a group. The cohesiveness scale stems from the leadership literature and has been adapted for myriad settings (e.g., business, health care, nursing, criminal justice, military, etc.). Group cohesiveness reflects individuals’ tendency to remain in a group or attachment to the group. Cohesiveness is influenced by group structure, leadership, and satisfaction with group. The measure includes eight statements to which participants provide their level of agreement (1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree), such as “The members of MHAC get along well together,” “I enjoy belonging to MHAC because I am friends with many members,” and “I feel that I am really a part of the MHAC.” We calculated descriptive statistics (the mean for each item of the scale) to assess how MHAC members’ opinions and recommendations cohered as a group. We found a high degree of cohesiveness among council members (5.73; SD = 0.57). The lowest mean for any of the seven items on the scale was 5.12 (0.99) (“The members of MHAC will readily defend each other from criticism by outsiders”), and the highest was 6.36 (1.19) (“I find that I generally do not get along with other MHAC members”– reversed).

Analytic approach and data interpretation

Minimizing bias and enhancing trustworthiness.

Before our analysis began, we de-identified all interviews to obscure the names of participants. Each transcript was assigned a new file title. To ensure a maximum degree of “trustworthiness” [ 29 ], we held a weekly debriefing to avoid bias and fatigue. We availed ourselves of our collaboration with MHAC and held member check meetings to add validity to the findings [ 30 ]. Rigor and validation were strengthened using Dedoose, a cross-platform app for storing qualitative data, searching and retrieving text, and linking emerging themes. Because two of the authors were also members of MHAC, this process was particularly important as a deterrent to analysis bias. Their knowledge of the Council’s history, culture, and procedures enhanced data interpretation.

Thematic analysis

We used thematic analysis as the key method for reading, interpreting, and coding textual data. Three coders independently read and developed initial codes using open coding based on three randomly selected interviews. The coders compared their first impressions and initial codes to establish reliability. After feedback from the first author, a coding scheme began to surface. The same procedure was then repeated using another three randomly-chosen interviews and the initial codes for guidance. From this process, a coding scheme was established, which was then used to code the remaining interviews. Though the data were generated from a semi-structured interview, coders were open to finding different ideas, opinions, and observations in the text. Nonetheless, the main goal of the data analysis was to catalog disruptions due to the pandemic, responses to disruptions, and key recommendations. Therefore, we followed a coding scheme closely based on the three protocol questions described above.

Saturation and selecting key findings

We began to see saturation, meaning no new insights were emerging from the data until we had analyzed half of the interviews. Nonetheless, we read all interview transcripts. The results we decided to report reflect the observations and general sensibility of the entire Council. After studying all 33 interviews, an independent research assistant selected ten excerpts marked by the coders and represented the themes of the interview protocol. We used this type of selection criteria for the quotes as another step toward rigor and a way to reduce bias. As a team, we selected what we considered to be the most representative excerpts to be included in this manuscript.

Sample description

Participants have been engaged with MHAC as voting members (sometimes for more than one term) and as volunteers (no-voting members) from less than one to more than 20 years (since its inception). Two of the authors (not interviewed for this study) were MHAC members when the pandemic was declared. The sample included 33 of 44 Michigan HIV/AIDS Council Members (response rate = 79%). The sample includes racially/ethnically diverse respondents— (52% White, 30% Black, 9% multiracial, 6% Latinx, and 3% Asian) with an average age of 42 (range: 19–62). Most participants were female (58%; male = 33%; Other = 9%) and 30% were living with HIV ( N = 10).

HIV services disruptions and how organizations and providers responded

Following the three areas explored in the interviews, we have provided excerpts from different participants. We used quotes that represented the ideas, opinions, and sensibilities of the majority of a council that oversees HIV service provisions in Michigan.

Participants agreed that the pandemic disrupted many services (e.g., HIV testing, PrEP education, referrals to primary care, etcetera) offered by community organizations, hospital clinics, and health departments across the state. Participants explained that the COVID-19 pandemic aggravated issues that pre-dated the pandemic and disproportionately affected minoritized groups. Participants collectively shared their inability to provide the main services that comprise the continuum of care and prevention, including but not limited to HIV testing, PrEP education and referrals to physicians who could prescribe PrEP, and day-to-day provider-client communication between providers and clients, which could help with adherence to HIV medication.

Participants highlighted how COVID affected service providers personally and hindered their ability to maintain the HIV services. One participant talked about competing responsibilities that echoed those of many others.

So, I have a two-year-old, and we were all stuck at home. My husband was also working at this time. So, we really had to maneuver around this. When my 18 [year-old] was stuck home from school… it was arguing with a grown child… about his schooling and stuff, and making sure that he was going to graduate on time, which he didn’t.

Even though service providers, and other stakeholders, had to face personal setbacks, they quickly found creative solutions for making HIV services available under difficult circumstances.

So, I actually created like a time frame for my daughter. What we did was during this time frame. So, when I would put my daughter to bed, this is when I was able to call clients…jot down my notes… everything a client needed at this time.

Participants identified several structural issues that disrupted HIV services—lack of public transportation, housing, food security, and funding insecurity around HIV services for hospitals and community-based health organizations. These issues, which pre-dated the pandemic, greatly affected providers’ ability to bill for rendered services. Similarly, uncertainty about where to send clients for HIV services affected referral-making and thus disrupted the HIV continuum. Being outside of their offices for many months, stakeholders lost connection with clients and colleagues with whom they usually collaborate (e.g., mutual referral-making) to provide HIV services.

You’re not going to come to the doctor, you have no way to get there. Those are issues which have historically been around for as long as I’ve been in this line of work…we have to fix the transportation issue; we have to fix the housing issue.
Housing for women and children who are fleeing a legal situation. So, because of COVID, these women had to be displaced, and they had to leave a safe environment and be put up into a hotel space.
The food bank service category and emergency funds category, and we had to increase those because, as we know, there were a lot of people that lost their jobs.
When this pandemic hit a lot of therapy organizations that, I was looking at, were in crisis mode of writing grants and writing letters to insurance companies as a way to stay afloat. Because a lot of insurances did not cover [pandemic-related services].
The hospital was pretty much hemorrhaging money; we weren’t able to provide any sort of care outside of code… and all those kinds of non-emergent things were put on hold, and that definitely put a little bit of a strain on the system.

Responses to HIV services disruptions

However difficult the impacts of COVID might have been at the personal and/or professional levels, participants identified multiple responses that touched organizations, service providers, and clients alike. These responses, which may have been challenging to service providers and organizations, were developed to abate myriad issues, including inclement weather, social isolation and feelings of loneliness, replacements for in-person services, and lack of public transportation.

We tried on different occasions to use Zoom and Google Meets to bring folks together, so they have some human contact with somebody else other than themselves.
Some of them, if they just can’t find a sitter for the kids, we would say, hey, weather permitting, we’ll come out to your car… we are just trying really hard to be accommodating.
Pretty much all clients now are either texting or calling me on my cell phone. I have to be careful because clients now call me… for example, five o’clock on a Saturday.
Telehealth… we were just having a conversation this morning about the issues that we’re having with that because we’re finding that throughout the entire company, only 5% of patients are actually doing the actual face or the visual communication.
When necessary, we arrange for folks to have an Uber for them to, you know, get to their medical appointments.
We’ve had to get creative with screening ahead of time on the phone. And then, of course, checking their temperature and asking them questions before [clients] come in the door.
We would send a consent via email. We have to actually send out a consent asking if you want to continue with our program. We would send them copies of their consents, and they would just respond back like yes or no, and then we would proceed accordingly.

Key recommendations to abate disruptions

Respondents’ recommendations to address future disruptions and disparities followed a common thread of responses centered around the issue of communication. For example, participants contended that health departments were not clear on which services were being offered or the format for those services being provided, whether it be virtually or in person. Most organizations continued to provide HIV testing and other services; however, communication that such services were available during the pandemic was lacking. Participants noted that communication regarding services, such as mental health, specifically directed to LGBTQ + and people of color was not clear. Hence, the main recommendation offered by participants is to overhaul all means of communication between funding agencies (e.g., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state and local health departments) and HIV stakeholders, especially community agencies offering HIV services across the state.

Some [places], although they did offer HIV testing previously… now, this is complicated because on their website they provide the information that they do. But when you actually call them, they say that they actually don’t do it.
HIV prevention side in the state. Sometimes, communication just could have been better. I mean, especially within our health department… especially working from home and not in the building, communication could have been better about what was going on.
I felt like the health department was offering testing, but they didn’t…there wasn’t any messaging. Like there could have been some messaging on the radio; every slot was cheap. There could have been some billboards or could have been some type of mass communication telling people where they could go and get tested.
Just educating what resources and services are still available, you know, during the shutdown. And then, how to access things that clients possibly need like mental health resources because mental health is a big thing right now… just making sure that resources are reliable and inclusive, specifically for LGBTQ and people of color.

Minoritized groups disproportionately affected

As participants described structural issues that pre-dated the pandemic, and the disruptions to services, they also highlighted minoritized groups disproportionately affected by the pandemic. In light of the main recommendation, i.e., better communication, made by participants, it is important to emphasize these populations as they might need targeted forms of communication in case of future emergencies.

A lot of the people that were working were not here legally. They were undocumented, and they were very nervous to talk to us. So, we had to give them that reassurance that [they could still receive services].
Especially in my community, to get people if there’s ever a vaccine, Black people are going to be the last people to take it.
It was; it still does continue to be a bit of an issue… because of living situations amongst Arabic and Hispanic populations. [COVID] is spreading quite quickly because there’s just so many people living in one residence.
Now, the Amish population that’s a little different. They, once they figured out that the health department was going to call them, they just completely stopped getting tested. So, they’re really only getting tested if they have an employer that’s making them.

The literature suggests that COVID brought to light previous fragile structural conditions of healthcare [ 31 ], such as those identified by this study’s participants. The HIV field, from research to community action, has a rich history of adapting to political and social challenges since the beginning of the global and U.S. epidemic in the 1980s. Organizations and providers offering HIV services have been creative in addressing HIV stigma, limited funding streams, and political challenges. Nonetheless, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Sars-CoV-2 as the global “COVID-19 pandemic” in 2020, these same organizations and their service providers continued to help their clients again in the face of structural issues and political inaction [ 32 ].

The data from this study come from diverse HIV services stakeholders representing several regions across Michigan. MHACs format and processes engender involvement and accountability [ 24 , 25 , 26 ], challenged by personal and professional disruptions, many of which pre-dated the epidemic, particularly among MHAC members living with HIV. Having found a high degree of cohesiveness among study participants indicates that the qualitative data we collected reflect the opinions/sensibilities of the Council as a body that oversees HIV service provisions in Michigan. While the pandemic disrupted all HIV services (e.g., HIV testing, PrEP education, referrals to primary care, among others), the participants identified issues pre-dating the pandemic, such as poverty, housing insecurity, lack of transportation, and others. The extant literature helps to explain this study’s participants’ preoccupations with specific populations as it is known that, for the duration of the pandemic, politics enabled governments to put at risk various vulnerable groups—Black, indigenous, people of color, refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants. Furthermore, our findings show that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the disruption of HIV services were experienced differently and uniquely by each group. This indicates the need for a culturally-informed approach to recommendations like increased communication and guidelines in future emergencies.

The early months of the pandemic in 2020 were marked by shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders across the country, and then more relaxed regulations that differed across the country. By following state and local mandates, organizations offering HIV services differed in how quickly and how thoroughly they could keep their doors open and/or provide services in creative ways. Across Michigan, curbside services were widely used so that clients could safely remain in their vehicles. Like other locales, Michigan providers offered counseling, services, and support services via telephone and/or video conferencing as they developed creative ways to keep up with paperwork using email and other virtual means.

Our data show that the pandemic has been a long period of disruptions, setbacks, and triumphs. For those who did not have a car, the cold weather in Michigan posed a barrier to providing outside services during the extended winter months. Having been longer than several other states, Michigan’s stay-at-home order began on March 24, 2020, and ended on June 5, 2020. Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Health Department Director Elizabeth Hertel began to move away from initial mandates in early 2021 and encouraged people, along with service providers, to get vaccinated. Governor Whitmer vetoed legislation attempting to prevent her administration from using the public threat alert system to send out notifications regarding new mask rules. Michigan ended all restrictions on masking and gathering requirements towards the end of June 2021 [ 33 ].

This study is limited in that not all MHAC members were able to provide interviews. Although the majority of the Council participated, there might be areas of the state that were not fully represented in the sample. We also did not focus on how the pandemic affected services specifically to groups of individuals with different types and degrees of vulnerabilities– e.g., MSM, transgender people, and others. However, our research conducted through the Michigan HIV/AIDS Council is the first of its kind. Many states are required to have similar planning bodies to bring the community and lived perspectives at the state level to plan and execute the ending of HIV. Our approach to collecting local responses to the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions through interviews with MHAC members provides novel suggestions to how local responses can translate to state and national outcomes to said disruptions around HIV, especially communications. Furthermore, our data serve as a guide to historically document local responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by HIV service providers. This will catalog disruption responses in an expedited manner to propel research and innovation in light of new pandemics and world emergencies. Our study is not without impact of bias as researchers’ bias and participants’ social desirability bias are often present in qualitative research.

Implications and recommendations

As we hoped to understand the impact of COVID-19 on HIV services, we sought information from collaborative governance comprised of multiple stakeholders [ 22 ] to develop a statewide plan for HIV prevention and care [ 23 ]. This study’s participants suggested that better communication from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, particularly its HIV units, might have been helpful to those providers offering HIV services. Confusion about shelter-in-place and shut down orders and HIV service discontinuity across the state were key issues identified by participants. Therefore, their recommendation is to overhaul all means of communication between funding agencies (e.g., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state and local health departments) and HIV stakeholders, especially community agencies offering HIV services across the state. In a personal communication with Dawn Lukomski, Section Manager, Division of HIV and STI Programs (DHSP), she explained that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services communicated broad information to the medical providers via press releases, press conferences, and the department’s website [ 27 ]. The Division of HIV/STI Programs communicated to HIV Prevention and Care agencies via webinars, monthly check-ins with funded agencies, our website ( www.michigan.gov/hivsti ), newsletters, and email (Personal Communication).

Our findings reflect a burgeoning literature showing that COVID-19 diminished community-based organizations’ ability to sustain the continuity of HIV services, sometimes making it uncertain that HIV infections in the U.S. will decrease by 90% within the current decade. Respondents contended that communication that clarifies specific orders and procedures that administrators and providers should follow in emergencies like the pandemic might abate the disruptions that threaten the continuity of HIV services at the dawn of a pandemic, now and in the future.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Leon Golson for his help us get access to research participants and his valuable input in all phases of this project.

Internal Pilot Funding from the University of Michigan School of Social Work.

Evan Hall were funded by Student Opportunities for AIDS/HIV Research (SOAR) Program, National Institute of Mental Health and the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, (1R25MH126703-01), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Carol Lee was funded by a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) T-32 (T32AA007477) Postdoctoral Research Training Fellowship at the Addiction Center at the University of Michigan.

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Rogério M. Pinto, Evan Hall, Vitalis Im & Sunggeun (Ethan) Park

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Contributions

Pinto, Principal Research Investigator, conceptualized the study, established research question, data analysis, and wrote final draft of the manuscript; Hall wrote background to manuscript, and coded interviews; Im coded of interviews and assembled methods section; Lee coded interviews, reviewed manuscript, supervised interviews; Park help to conceptualized paper, project formation, and reviewed final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Rogério M. Pinto .

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This research involved human participants, and it was therefore performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval for this study was waived by the Research and Ethics Compliance Committee at the University of Michigan decided that no IRB approval was needed [HUM00183927– Ame00111901]. The study was exempt because we used only collection of information by surveys and interviews with adult participants who are members of a public council, Michigan HIV/AIDS Council, and the materials were used for improving council procedures and educational purposes only. Informed consent was obtained for all participants prior to any interview.

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Pinto, R.M., Hall, E., Im, V. et al. Disruptions to HIV services due to the COVID pandemic in the USA: a state-level stakeholder perspective. BMC Health Serv Res 24 , 196 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-10609-9

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