Hey guys welcome to another episode of Grad Coach TV where we demystify the
ivory tower world of academia and show you how to work smart and earn the big marks. My name is Derek and in this video we're gonna be looking at how to write
a literature review - and most importantly how to do that in three pretty straightforward simple steps. Now this video is based on
our free dissertation 101 ebook, which you can download at the Grad Coach website. I'll put the link to that below this video. So without any delay let's
get right into it. Now, before we jump into how to write a literature review,
it's really important to step back and ask what is the function, what is the why of a literature review. If we understand the why then the how becomes a lot
simpler, and the what becomes a lot simpler. So let's talk about some of the most important functions of the literature review. So step one, or function number
one of the literature review is for you to demonstrate that you have a solid understanding of the literature, and the research the state of research around
your research questions. so your research is going to be on a certain topic and
the starting point for your discussion there is to show that whatever your research question is, whatever the the aim of your research is, you need to
demonstrate that you know what has already been done. Academic writing is
about standing on the shoulders of giants and so you need to show who were the giants, who were the people that have done this research before, what have they
said, what is the state of the argument. So that's really function number one and and arguably it's the most important function. So let's look at function
number two. Function number two, the second why of a literature review, is for
you, from that basis of literature to show that there is a gap. To show that
there is a need for your specific research. so if you're doing masters are you doing PhD research regardless of the level that you're at there's some
requirement for originality. Generally universities don't want you to research something that's been done a million times, because what's the purpose of that. So
what the literature review serves to do is for you to go and do the work and to
figure out where are the gaps in the literature, where are the gaps in the research, how can I take a unique angle and something that's not been done
before, hopefully not done to death but, how can I take a unique angle in terms of context or in terms of a specific specific country a specific
environment etc. So the second function of your literature review and of you just reviewing the literature the actual act of reviewing it, is for you to
establish that clear clear clear need for your research. Now, the third function
is not necessarily relevant to everyone, but for those of you who are planning to
build a theoretical model or conceptual model, conceptual framework the literature review is the basis of that. So what you would then be doing is
taking the various theories the various pieces of research that have been
undertaken in the past and building some sort of conceptual model that you would then go on to test and to validate. Perhaps not relevant to everyone but
that is an important function if you are doing any sort of quantitative validation testing etc. The fourth important function of the literature
review is for you to have a foundation or to build a foundation of methodology.
So what I mean by this is when you are reviewing all the literature in your
space that is relevant to your research question your research aims, what you're going to find naturally is you're going to get exposure to all the various
studies that have been done and you're going to see what methodologies they use. Did they use qualitative, did they use quantitative, if they used quantitative,
did they have well-validated, well tested question sets, did they publish
questionnaires etc. So the literature review gives you an opportunity to really dig into what's already been done and to build on that.
Very often if you're doing surveys, you can find through your literature review you can find good question sets, you can find
a good set of scales that have decent Cronbach's alphas and so forth. If this
language doesn't make any sense, don't stress we'll get to it in another video. The point is that a very important function of the literature review is for
you to get some inspiration, to get some insights and perhaps even some useful practical tools and takeaways to inform your methodology. So those are the four
important functions of the literature review and the first two are really what you
need to keep in mind. In other words, showing that you understand what you're talking about, showing that you're not just coming in and trying to reinvent