Literature Review: Meaning and Format by Andrew Oforma Eze

Literature Review

Literature review is one of the most challenging parts students face in their research works. Some usually do not know where to start. This is due to lack of background knowledge on what literature review entails. This part is suppose to be the most interesting part because it is information seeking section if one understands what literature review revolves around.

First and foremost, understand that literature is the general name for printed materials (such as booklets, textbooks, novel, magazines, journals, leaflets, brochures, etc.) that provide information about something. As stated in the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010), literature reviews are critical evaluations of material that has already been published.

Hence, it is an act of examining some available works in order to critically know what other researchers have said on the topic you are researching on. In other words, it simply means studying related works in the issue.

Accordingly, APA Manual noted that, by organizing, integrating, and evaluating previously published material, authors of literature reviews consider the progress of research towards clarifying a problem and;

 define and clarify the problem;
 summarize previous investigations to inform the reader of the state of research;
 identify relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature; and
 suggest the next step or steps in solving the problems

More so, according to Ezeh (2011: 49), review of literature is “a process that aims at reviewing the critical points of current knowledge including substance findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to an ongoing study”.

He further states that the “ultimate goal is to bring the reader up to date with current literature on a topic and forms the basis for another goal, such as future research that may be needed in the areas”.

The importance of literature review in research work cannot be overestimated. It exposes the knowledge of researchers on the topic which enables them to know what others have said and unable to say on the issue. According to Ezeh (2011:49), besides enlarging the knowledge base of the researcher about the topic, writing a literature review provides the researcher an opportunity to gain and demonstrate skills in two areas. The two areas as outlined by Ezeh are:

1. Information Seeking: The ability to scan the literature efficiently, using manual or computerized methods, to identify a set of useful articles and books.
2. Critical Appraisal: The ability to apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies.

Ezeh (2011:50), rightly contends that a good review of literature is expected to:

1. Be organized around themes that are related directly to the thesis or research questions of the study.

2. Synthesize information reviewed into a summary of what is and is not known.

3. Identify areas of controversy in the literature.
4. Formulate questions that need further research.

Things to be avoided in Literature Review
There are many errors, more often than not, students commit in the course of reviewing literature due to lack of needed guidelines on the issue. Ezeh (2011:50) painstakingly numerated some errors which we can summarize into seven as thus:

1. Unnecessary and wordy introduction

2. Poor organization of sub-themes

3. Generation of inappropriate sub-themes

4. Lack of paraphrasing skills

5. Poor citations or referencing

6. Plagiarism

7. Inability to link up the literature reviewed with the ongoing study.

Furthermore, according to Oluikpe (1982), other problems of research writer especially under literature review are:

1. How to choose the appropriate quotations for his text

2. How to make the quoted matter cohere with the subject matter

3. How to adapt the quoted matter to suit different textual situations.