A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Literature Review for Doctoral Research

This book is designed to instruct the novice researcher through the process of writing a literature review. This step-by-step approach brings clarity to an abstract concept by providing a concrete list of steps to follow from commencement to culmination of writing a literature review of the current scholarly sources. This book begins by defining a literature review and the purposes for conducting a review of the scholarly literature. The steps for writing a literature review are delineated followed by best approaches for locating scholarly sources to include in a literature review. The differences between paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing are clearly defined. The novice researcher will learn how to organize the wealth of information collected and write an outline to guide thought processes. Additionally, how to choose a theoretical framework to guide the research process will be clearly communicated. Following the theoretical framework, the novice researcher will learn to write the related literature section for their proposed research.