Writing Literature Reviews
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Abstract
a summary of the complete report] [An introduction in which related literature is reviewed follows the abstract; typically, there is no heading called “Introduction.”] Method Participants [or Subjects] Measures [or Instrumentation] Results and Discussion Longer articles will often contain additional headings and subheadings, such as Assumptions, Definitions, Experimental Treatments, Limitations, and so on. Scanning each of these sections will help prepare you to navigate the article when you begin to read it in detail from beginning to end. The last heading in a research article is usually “Discussion.” This section is where researchers often reiterate or summarize their research purposes, research methods, and major findings, usually in the first few paragraphs. Reading this section of a report will help you when you read the results section in detail, which can be difficult if it contains numerous statistics. 4 Step 2: Based on Your Prereading of the Articles, Group Them by Category If your articles are in digital format, create folders to group them into the categories of studies you will describe. With printed copies, sort them into stacks that correspond roughly to these categories. You may choose to organize them in any number of ways, but the most common practice is to first organize them by topic and subtopic and then in chronological order within each subtopic. In Example 4.2.1, we show a possible grouping of articles into categories and subcategories for a review of research literature on the psychological effects of meditation. Note that this article is a meta-analysis that interprets data across a large number of research studies, and its organization is quite different than an empirical research report. Part I: Managing the Literature Search