literature review sample

literature review sample

The Importance of Literature Review in Research

1. Introduction

Overall, the literature review is the groundwork for the research. It helps you to find out what it is that you are doing, why you are doing it, and how you will achieve this.

During research, there may be researches from other organizations on similar work that has already been done. Without literature reviews that can easily be analyzed, and if there is a significant result, it can be compared with the research that has been carried out. This is why in most research reports/term papers, the literature review is the first major part of the document. It is important to never underestimate the potential of the literature review. Without someone’s words to provide a theory or point, there would be much research that has not been achieved today. This is why it is important to reference back to the work that has been previously done.

A literature review is also important in that it helps you to figure out what research you are looking to achieve and what methodology will help you to achieve this. Failing to do a literature review first is one of the main reasons that a piece of research may fail. It is because the researcher has jumped straight into the research without prioritizing what they are trying to achieve.

The literature review is an important part of any research because it gives the researcher a clearer understanding of the subject he is researching. The literature review is done to enable the researcher to situate the research in a context. It shows what work has already been done, the points of view in the field, and also the methodologies that are currently being used. By carrying out a literature review, a researcher is able to extract the main points from other researchers’ work and then relate it to their own. In this way, the review is seen as a fundamental step in the research process.

2. Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review may be an end in itself or a preface to a research study, which serves to review the exposition, acquaint you with the current state of information, to demonstrate the idea that your study will contribute to that body of information and to your field as a whole, and to spot your study within the greater whole. This could be a delicate and appreciated way to do research as it requires the researcher to be thoughtful concerning and articulate what has been done in a locality and to distinguish again or address a problem that has been inappropriately or incompletely addressed. This is truly essential for themes and areas in which there is a great deal of research intersecting and an example of quite how things should be done. An unmethodical piece of research done without an idea of the history may devote much effort into an employment problem whose solution has already been inexpensively and satisfactorily discerned. And why research a problem that, even though it was deemed intriguing, was inherently laterally the way rendered obsolete? Impeccable replacement is only too frequent in technology and medicine. One other consideration of importance when conducting the literature review is that the review be thorough and complete. This could produce an almost insurmountable challenge. The mass of published research in some areas is so tremendous that it is physically impossible for one to have checked every last bit of it. An appropriate target would be to achieve a level of dusting off the topic which has returned no new information of significance in recent papers. At worst, the researcher must be careful to avoid the undertaking of a review which is partial or biased as the consequences of this can be disastrous.

3. Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

Step two is relatively vague and in some cases may be considered an ongoing measure throughout the review. A more definitive step is to set the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the studies that will define the native form of evidence to be covered by the review. This may be the nature of the participants in a study to a certain drug or prophylactic treatment, the type of study and data, an age or time-specific study, or any other factor in which you do not wish to cause a shift in the review question but merely to focus on a specific area of interest. An example of this is a review on medical versus surgical treatment of distal radial fractures in elderly patients.

The pragmatic step two is to locate the studies and the best form of evidence that can answer the question. Should there be no or very little current evidence, it is still worth doing the review and employing a discussion-based format that uses the project to update the review should new evidence arise in the future. An example of this is a review on fracture complications in anatomical plating of distal fibular fractures where we had conducted a systematic and thorough search including the general use of ankle plating and the use of alternative methods for the fixation of lateral malleolar fractures.

Step one is a vital safeguard against bias and potential alteration of the review question in the light of inconclusive or unwanted results from the evidence.

The boundaries and exclusivity of a review must be established in an initial protocol. This will confirm the methodology and exclusion criteria in a clear question or series of questions that the review aims to answer. For example, we recently reviewed the timing of thromboprophylaxis following lower limb trauma. The questions were: In adult patients post-injury, is low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) superior to aspirin in the prevention of DVT? And which is the best timing to start pharmacological prophylaxis in adult patients with lower limb fractures?

A clinical review adapts a native form of evidence by analyzing it in its latest context. An article that reviews the results of two or more previous studies is an example of a clinical review and these may be found in journals such as the Cochrane Library. Deciding that a review is needed is the first methodological step and a crucial one in that it is important to differentiate between an audit or research project and a review. The content of a medical student project that is a literature-based review may be indistinguishable from an audit or research project and it is important that the project is directly comparing itself to the previous work, testing a hypothesis, or answering a specific question in order to classify it as a review. This is with a view to head off from the information found at appropriate websites that teach the process of research or audit, but it would seem reasonable to suggest that most doctors understand instead to be able to appraise scientific study.

4. Benefits of a Literature Review

A good literature review can be beneficial by providing a novel approach or a new point of view. It can identify potential ways of interpreting a matter by revealing a gap, and may influence the direction of future research. A review builds a case for a proposed study, specifically detailing why this study is the correct time to the matter, and citing prior work which has led to the current understanding. This last purpose is often the most valuable, but given the nature of a literature review, need an element of the speculative. A literature review can assist a researcher with the mechanics of managing complex information, not just for a research project, but a life’s work. For example, a PhD student will need to discover and organise a vast amount of information, in order to write a dissertation. A literature review is not just a chronological catalogue of all your sources, but an evaluation which identifies patterns, critiques the strengths and weaknesses of methods, models, or theories, and suggests further research. This organisational strategy in its own right can be enlightening. For example, seeing the amount of research which has been done in a certain area can be a way of realising it is of little importance to the field. Evaluating the gap whether there needs to be more empirical research on a certain topic as Koviak (1976) suggests, is the difference between whether a study is needed and wanted. Finally, an often overlooked benefit of a literature review, is the generation of objectives, or questions which need to be answered by the present research. This goes hand in hand with the identification of a research area. An example being Mair and Chaffin’s (1983) identification of the need of a theory of expert error in the field of human factors.

5. Conclusion

Before closing this chapter, it has to be noted that despite an in-depth study of available literature in this area of research, it is somewhat disappointing that it was not possible to find very relevant material for complex methodologies of VRM and especially VRM for Java-based systems and applets. This has certainly affected the development and implementation of VRM in that domain. However, it can be said that this is a positive dimension for future research on this topic and more specifically it indicates that there is ample scope for this work to extend and attempt to develop more strategic methodologies in Virtual Reality Modeling.

The current chapter reviews the whole study, where in the first section approaches have been discussed and the relative advantage of each approach has been highlighted. Then, till the end of the chapter, the focus has been on methodological inadequacies and absence of sufficient VRM methodologies for Java-based systems and especially applets. With suggested approaches as future work, it is easily comprehensible that literature review provided the foundation for the next chapters of this thesis. Hence, it can be said that literature review certainly has a significant and major impact on the rest of the thesis.