How To Conduct & Write a Literature Review

Identify your research question and frame the literature review for analysis. Survey, analyze, and synthesize literature to build a cohesive argument about what we know and do not know.

Explore three types of literature reviews: integrative, methodological, and historical, and learn how to choose the approach that matches your research question, focusing on findings, methods, or evolution over time.

Identify a topic that interests you to guide your literature review, narrow it through targeted scopes like adolescence with reading difficulties, and shape a focused research question.

Learn to treat your literature review as a research study by crafting focused questions that guide article selection, define inclusion criteria, and refine your dataset.

Identify mentor texts from recent journals to model your literature review’s structure, tone, and analysis. Select two journals and 2–4 mentor texts, clarifying each text’s purpose to guide your writing.

Identify the right database, refine your research question, and run a focused keyword search. Track your results and year ranges in a spreadsheet to guide a rigorous literature review.

Sort your initial data by reading abstracts and divide articles into relevant, irrelevant, and maybe piles to identify data holes, then assign numbers and take notes.

Sort and classify literature review data by building an analysis database and a practical spreadsheet. Extract key details: research questions, theoretical framework, design, participants, and findings for ready analysis.

Learn to write analytic memos for literature reviews that reflect on data collection, document questions and next steps, and support ongoing analysis with weekly reflections.

Develop pattern codes to start data analysis, refine broad categories into subcodes, and build a coding manual aligned with your research question. Practice pre coding with tasks to gain confidence.

Move from pattern coding to themes in qualitative data analysis by regrouping codes under central themes and elevating discussion to claims and findings.

Generate concise, evidence-backed claims from themes and patterns, pairing themes to form cohesive assertions about data, and outline each short claim before writing findings.

Outline your literature review with an introduction, background, methods, analysis, findings, and a conclusion that ties back to the original problem, then draft the headings and research questions.

Learn the best order for writing a literature review by starting with methods, building findings, refining analysis, and finalizing background, discussion, and introduction to avoid writer's block and excessive revisions.

Define how you bound by year and criteria, select databases, identify articles, and report inclusion and exclusion criteria and final counts in your methods.

Identify and organize your findings by outlining clear claims for each research question, then structure them into subsections with one sentence per claim. Ensure logical order and thorough answers.

Present findings by outlining claims, supporting evidence, and counter evidence with limitations, drawing on study data (e.g., 58 studies, 32 supporting a claim) to guide interpretation.

Learn to craft a literature review conclusion that highlights two to three key issues with subheadings, explains why the research matters, and points to future directions and limitations.

Write a well structured background section for your literature review in four to six pages, covering key terms, major concepts, debates, and how findings and conclusions shape the background.

Learn to craft the introduction of a literature review by setting the problem and value, and linking to research questions. Align with background and methods.