5.5. How Do I Write a Literature Review?

At what point do you stop reading and start writing your literature review? That’s a judgment call you have to make on your own. Although you can fill in material later, there is always the danger that you will start writing without really knowing what you are talking about or what you want to say. For example, if you don’t have a solid definition of your key concepts or a sense of how the literature has developed over time, it will be difficult to make coherent scholarly claims about your topic in your literature review.

At the same time, we would encourage you to start the process of writing as soon as you can, and to be comfortable with having that process stop and start as you move back and forth between writing and reading more. Writing is the best way of thinking through an intellectual problem, and as you write, you will begin to recognize what bits of information are missing in your take on the existing literature and on the research problem you hope to address. For one thing, you will figure out how much detail you need about each of the studies you are reading through for your literature review. For studies that are not highly relevant to your own research question, you may just need to mention them in passing, and with that knowledge, you can avoid spending unnecessary time pouring through those texts.

We’ll have more to say about writing a research proposal later, but at this point we want to mention that its first two sections—the introduction and literature review—will look much like they would for a stand-alone literature review. Furthermore, writing a research proposal—which is essentially a literature review plus a methods section—can be quite straightforward once you have a good sense of the literature and have identified a compelling research problem and research question.

The Introduction to Your Literature Review (or Research Proposal)

The introduction to your paper or proposal should define or identify the general topic, issue, or area of concern. Whether you’re writing a full-length empirical article, a research proposal, or a stand-alone literature review, you should start off by establishing why the topic of the paper is a social problem worth studying. This pulls the reader into the paper: who would want to read about something unimportant? This “so what?” introduction to the paper generally answers the following questions, although this list is far from exhaustive:

1. Why is this an important problem to study?
2. How many people are affected by the problem?
3. How does this problem affect other social issues or target populations relevant to sociology?
4. Why is your target population an important one to study?

A strong introduction should be filled with facts, theory, and arguments based on the literature you’ve found. Do not start with your personal reflections or experiences relating to the topic. In fact, you don’t want to mention yourself at all in the literature review, although it is fine to use first-person voice when describing what you plan to do (for a research proposal) or what you already did (for an empirical paper). And don’t go on for too long; spend no more than a few paragraphs on the paper’s introduction. In these paragraphs, you might present historical background, mention the results of a particularly important study (especially one central to your research question), and provide definitions of important terms.

At the end of the introduction, you might want to include a few sentences that walk the reader through the rest of the literature review. In a stand-alone literature review, you should highlight your main arguments from the body of the literature review—for instance, what research problems currently exist in the literature, and how scholars should go about resolving them (i.e., the research agenda you’re putting forward). In a proposed or completed study, the introduction should end with a statement (or restatement) of the research problem you seek to address, the research question that motivates your study, the methods used to answer that question, and the potential theoretical implications of the study’s findings.

The Thematic Sections of Your Literature Review

After the introduction comes the actual literature review. Generally speaking, do not organize your literature review by source—that is, one paragraph for source A, one paragraph for source B, and so on. This is the approach of an annotated bibliography, not a literature review. You might be adequately summarizing the literature you’ve found, but you would not be synthesizing it. You would not be telling your reader how to put all those findings together, what points of agreement or contention exist in the literature, or how each study builds on the work of others.

As we’ve emphasized, your literature review is an argument for your research problem and the research question and study that address it. Like any effective argument, your literature review must have some kind of structure. For example, it might begin by describing a phenomenon in a general way along with several studies that provide some detail, then describing two or more competing theories of the phenomenon, and finally presenting a hypothesis to test one or more of the theories. Or, it might describe one phenomenon, then describe another phenomenon that seems inconsistent with the first one, then propose a theory that resolves the inconsistency, and finally present a hypothesis to test that theory. In applied research, it might describe a phenomenon or theory, then describe how that phenomenon or theory applies to some important real-world situation, and finally suggest a way to test whether it does, in fact, apply to that situation.

When writing up your literature review, it is extremely important to start with an outline of the main points that you want to make, organized in the order that you want to make them. Use your notes on the reading you did to help you identify the important topics you need to cover, and—more important—what you personally have to say about those topics. The basic structure of your argument then should be apparent from the outline. Unfortunately, no formula exists that will work for everyone. We can, however, provide some general pointers on structuring your literature review.

First, you will find that many literature reviews have a “funnel” structure, with a broad discussion of the past literature at the top, and then an in-depth discussion of specific articles at the bottom (White 2005). Articles that closely relate to the authors’ own study will be positioned closer to the end. This is a logical structure that naturally concludes the literature review with a statement of the research problem and any hypotheses.

Note that organizing your arguments in this way will affect how much you say about each source. In the intellectual performance that is a literature review, not all cited scholars have equal time on stage: you may devote an entire paragraph or more to discussing an author’s work, or you may mention it in a single sentence, or in a long list of references that back up a broader point. How long you spend in discussing a particular study depends on how critical it is to making the case for your research problem and the study that addresses it. For instance, when your own study will try to extend or challenge another study’s findings, you should discuss that previously published article in great detail—describing its methods and findings, flagging its shortcomings and limitations, and pointing out any questions it raises. In this case, you probably need to go well beyond the article’s abstract in describing the study’s research design, results, and implications. But if your goal is to acknowledge a section of the related literature that doesn’t bear so heavily on your study, then you should just mention those studies in passing. (Per the funnel structure, the former study will go near the bottom of your literature review, since it is closely related to your own; the latter studies would go near the top.) Only describe aspects of a study that are relevant to your literature review. For instance, if you are studying the effect of social media on grassroots activism, you might briefly mention a study that looks at how social media affects political attitudes more generally. But you probably wouldn’t need to say much, if anything, about that study’s research design, given that your focus is grassroots activism rather than political attitudes. Don’t insert extra details about a study just to take up space.

A second important piece of advice is to break up your literature review into sections. These sections (and possibly subsections) should be organized by themes—as opposed to chronologically or by author, for instance. You do not necessarily have to use explicit section headings—if you prefer, the sections can just be in the internal outline you’re using when writing things up—but you do want to think of your literature review in these modular terms. That way, you can put “like” bits of material—sources that examine the relationships between the same variables, for instance, or come to the same conclusions—together in a single section. (Indeed, you can think of these sections as “buckets” in which you throw in all the studies that have to deal with one particular aspect or question relating to the phenomenon you’re studying.) You can move the sections up or down depending on where they best fit, perhaps with the sections most directly relevant to your research question—that cover the exact same causal relationship, for instance—near the bottom. You may also want to begin each section with a new funnel argument, ending that section with another research problem that your survey of the literature in that particular area has identified.

The use of thematic sections places the focus of your literature review on patterns and trends in the literature, rather than on specific authors per se. That is what you want in your critical evaluation of the literature. Point out consistent findings and note exceptions and contradictions. Emphasize stronger studies over weaker ones, explaining how you evaluated them. For research that is closely related to your own study, take the time in your literature to describe their strengths and weaknesses—which may make the case for a research problem that your study can resolve empirically, theoretically, or methodologically.

Having a funnel structure to your literature review and breaking it down into thematic sections will help ensure that you are making a coherent argument on behalf of your research problem and proposed study. Here are some additional tips for writing the body of your literature review:

1. Use quotes sparingly. Paraphrase when you need to relate specific details from a source, condensing and rewording the text (one trick is to read the passage in the original source and then look away from the text, forcing yourself to sum it up in your own words). Quotations for definitions are acceptable, but reserve quotes for when someone says something so well you couldn’t possibly phrase it differently. Never use quotes for statistics.
2. Stay objective and acknowledge disagreements in the literature: In your literature review, you are constructing an argument for why your research question is interesting and worth addressing—not necessarily why your favorite answer to it is correct. Make sure that your discussion of past research is balanced. If you want to emphasize the generally accepted understanding of a phenomenon, then of course you should discuss various studies that have demonstrated it. However, if other studies have found contradictory findings, you should discuss them, too. Likewise, if you are proposing a new theory, then your literature review needs to cover not just the empirical research that supports your theory, but also any studies that failed to do so. It is acceptable to argue that the balance of the research supports the existence of a phenomenon or is consistent with a theory (and that is usually the best that researchers can hope for), but it is not acceptable to ignore contradictory evidence. In line with the objective stance you’re taking in this section, do not approach the writing of the literature review as you would a personal essay or reflective journal entry—keep the tone formal, avoiding informal language like contractions, idioms, rhetorical questions, or first-person voice (for a research proposal, though, using “I” or “we” is fine when discussing your methods).
3. Back up every claim you make. Your arguments in the literature review need to be based on specific empirical facts or established theories. Use citations liberally in your literature review, backing up any claim that isn’t patently obvious. Note any statements that lack evidence from the scientific literature on your topic; you may need to track down additional sources or at the very least qualify your statements (with words like “perhaps,” “may,” or “could”) so that you are not overstating your case.
4. But do make claims: you are the expert. These cautions aside, however, remember that literature reviews are written from the perspective of an expert on the field. After an exhaustive review of the important studies on a topic, you should feel like you are able to make strong claims about what is true—so make them! Do not use terms like “I believe” or “I think”; simply state what you know of the literature.

In the last paragraph or so of the literature review section, you should briefly sum up the gaps in the literature you have identified and then state (or restate) your case on behalf of why your research question and study will solve that research problem. (If you wish, you can put this concluding argument in a stand-alone section called “Statement of the Problem,” “Problem Statement,” or “Research Problem.”) If you are writing a stand-alone literature review that doesn’t support your own proposed or completed study, this section can end with multiple recommendations for further research wherever you have identified gaps in the current literature. Be as specific as possible about the implications of your review of the literature—don’t just say that more research is needed or that the topic is understudied, but rather point out how exactly the research problem could be addressed.

What happens if you run into writer’s block? Type out whatever you want to say, regardless of how good it is. Even if you have a detailed outline to work from, the words are not going to fall into place perfectly the first time you start writing. You should consider turning off the editing and critiquing part of your brain for a little while and allow your thoughts to flow. Don’t worry about putting the correct internal citation when you first write. Just get the information out. Only after you’ve reached a natural stopping point might you go back and edit your draft for grammar, formatting, organization, flow, and more. Divorcing the writing and editing process can go a long way to addressing writer’s block—as can picking a topic about which you have something to say.

Signposting: Making Your Arguments Clearer

To clarify the structure of your argument, you should engage in signposting throughout your literature review and research proposal (we also discuss signposting in the context of research presentations in Appendix A: Presenting, Writing, and Publishing). When you signpost, you highlight words or phrases to identify the organization and structure of your argument. The most basic form of signposting is using a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph. A topic sentence introduces the argument you plan to make in that paragraph. For example, you might start a paragraph stating, “There is strong disagreement in the literature as to whether educational attainment improves cognitive ability, or whether people with higher cognitive ability are more likely to go to school.” Within that paragraph, your reader would likely assume you will present evidence for both arguments. The concluding sentence of your paragraph can return to the topic sentence, perhaps synthesizing the various arguments presented to make a specific conclusion.

Signposting also involves using headings and subheadings. Creating different sections—each with a heading that describes the theme or argument of that section—will help your reader understand the structure of your literature review. Headings can also help if the reader gets lost and needs to reorient themselves within the document. It’s like walking a small child around, telling them: “First we’ll do this, then we’ll do that, and when we’re done, we’ll know this!”

Another way to use signposting is to open each paragraph with a sentence that links the topic of the paragraph with the one before it. (Alternatively, one could end each paragraph with a sentence that links it with the next paragraph.) For example, imagine we wanted to link a paragraph about barriers to accessing health care with one about the relationship between the patient and physician. We could use a transition sentence like this: “Even if patients overcome these barriers to accessing care, the physician-patient relationship can create new barriers to positive health outcomes.” A transition sentence like this builds a connection between two distinct topics. Transition sentences are also useful within paragraphs. They tell the reader how to consider one piece of information in light of previous information. Even simple transitions like “however,” “similarly,” and “nevertheless” demonstrate critical thinking and make your arguments clearer.

Many novice researchers have difficulty with incorporating transitions into their writing. Let’s look at an example. Instead of beginning a sentence or paragraph by launching into a description of a study, such as “Williams (2004) found that . . . ,” it is better to start by indicating something about why you are describing this particular study. Here are some simple examples:

• Another example of this phenomenon comes from the work of Williams (2004).
• Williams (2004) offers one explanation of this phenomenon.
• An alternative perspective has been provided by Williams (2004).