Project Management and Civil Infrastructure Systems

BASc Civil Engineering

Individual Project – PROJ 3004

Guidelines for Writing a Literature Review

What is a literature review?

A literature review is a select analysis of existing research which is relevant to your topic, showing
how it relates to your investigation. It explains and justifies how your investigation may help
answer some of the questions or gaps in this area of research.

Objectives of a Literature Review:

Students should try to accomplish the following four important objectives in preparing a literature
review:
 The review should provide a thorough overview of previous research on the topic.
 The review should contain references to important previous studies related to the research
question that are found in high quality sources such as scholarly books and journals.
 The review should be succinct and well-organized.
 The review should follow generally established stylistic guidelines. This conveys to
readers that the author is familiar with scholarly publication style, and that can add
legitimacy to the author’s work.
The Process of Writing a Literature Review

1. Conduct the literature search

Find out what has been written on your subject. The number of references depends on what the
literature review is for, and what stage you are at in your studies.

Generally speaking, a reasonable number of references in a literature review would be:

 Undergraduate review: 5-20 titles depending on level

 Masters thesis: 40+ titles
 Doctoral thesis: 50+ titles

Focus on academically authoritative texts like:

 Academic books
 Journals
 Research reports
 Government publications
 Conference proceedings
 Dissertations

2. Read the literature

Take notes as you read the literature. You are reading to find out how each piece of writing
approaches the subject of your research, what it has to say about it and how it relates to your own
research.

Method of taking notes:

A literature review should be organized according to each subtopic discussed about the larger
topic. One option for taking notes that seems particularly helpful in organizing literature reviews
is the synthesis matrix.
A synthesis matrix is a chart that allows a researcher to sort and categorize the different arguments
presented on an issue. Across the top of the chart are the spaces to record sources and along the
side of the chart are the spaces to record the main points of argument on the topic at hand. As you
examine your first source, you will work vertically in the column belonging to that source,
recording as much information as possible about each significant idea presented in the work.
Follow a similar pattern for your following sources. As you find information that relates to your
already identified main points, put it in the pertaining row. In your new sources, you will also
probably find new main ideas that you need to add to your list at the left.

CREATING YOUR SYNTHESIS MATRIX

There are various ways of structuring a matrix depending on the nature of your project. Here is
an example of 2 methods on how to construct a synthesis matrix.

EXAMPLE 1

The first example is a synthesis matrix (or table) organized by the key studies on your specific
topic. Identify six to twelve studies that are closely related to the focus of your study and that
you will use as the foundation for your proposed research. In the first column along the vertical
axis of the table, list the author and date of publication for each study. Then create columns to
identify:

the purpose or research questions the authors posed,

the method used in the study,

characteristics of the sample,

the major findings of the study,

the main ideas or themes distilled from the findings,

how the findings confirm those of other studies (similarities), and

how the findings differ from other studies or offer information not found in other sources
Here is an example:

Literature Review STUDY SUMMARIES

Author/title Purpose Framework Sample Design Variables/ Resul Controversies Limitations Implications
instruments ts , for practice,
disagreement research,
s with other theory
authors

EXAMPLE 2:

Effective literature reviews are often organized by themes or ideas. A type of a synthesis matrix
organizes the key studies by themes. Once you have identified the major themes or ideas, you may
wish to organize your studies as shown in the table below to conceptualize how the findings of
each of your sources relate to the major themes that you have identified in the literature and to help
you synthesize this information in your review of literature.

Topic : ___________________________________________________

Source #1 Source #2 Source #3 Source #4

Main Idea A

Main Idea B

Main Idea C

Main Idea D

As you read each source, make notes in the appropriate column about the information
discussed in the work, as shown in the following example:
 After your chart is a complete notice patterns of information. You may find that your
sources, at times, discuss very similar material, or that they sometimes deal with
completely different aspects of your topic.

3. Write the review

Having gathered the relevant details about the literature, you now need to write the review.

A literature review usually has four sections:

a) Introduction:

 Introduce your topic and briefly explain why this is a significant or important area
for study.
 Give a broad overview of the scope of the work you are reviewing.

b) Main Body:
  Examine past research in the area highlighting methodological and/ or theoretical
developments, areas of agreement, important studies and so forth.
 Keep the focus on your area of interest and identify gaps in the research that your
research/ investigation will attempt to fill.
 State clearly how your work builds on or responds to earlier work.
 Just as in any written assignment, use logical organization and clear transitions.

N.B. When referring to an article, use the last name of author or authors and date of publication in
the text. Example: Calvin and Brommel (1996) believe family communication …..Or

Communication serves two primary functions in families--cohesion and adaptability (Galvin and
Brommel, 1996).

c) Conclusion:

 The conclusion summarizes the key findings of the review in general terms. Notable
commonalities between works, whether favourable or not, may be included here.

 This section is the reviewer’s opportunity to justify a research proposal. i.e. clearly
explain the overall objectives of your research and its importance. The ideas of your
research should be clearly stated and supported according to the findings of the
review.

d) References:

 As well as accurate in-text citations, a literature review must contain complete and
correct citations for every source.

 Reference style may be APA or Chicago

N.B. Useful links:

Recommended system for reference in an academic report: UTT Library

Dr. Clint Sutherland, 2018