How to write your dissertation literature review
In 5 straightforward steps
So, you’ve got to write your dissertation literature review.
You might have made a start already, finding relevant books and journal articles, reading through them, taking a few notes.
However, have you hit a brick wall now? Do you have a mental block? Are you going around in circles?
If so, you are not alone!
Everyone who has ever written a dissertation – me included – has been in the exact same place as you.
How do you move forward? How do you write a fabulous literature review?
Keep reading because I’m going to walk you through this 5 step process for doing just that …
Step 1. Make sure your topic is set up for an efficient literature review.
Step 2. Identify a list of questions you want the literature to answer.
Step 3. Develop a record keeping system for everything you read.
Step 4. Build out your literature review structure.
Step 5. Don’t write it up properly – yet.
(1) Make sure your topic is set up for an efficient literature review
Getting your dissertation topic, title, or question right is the most important thing in ensuring you don’t get stuck.
Every social sciences dissertation topic, title or question needs to have three key things in it.
People. A group of people who have at least one thing in common.
Issue or Interest. An issue that these people are experiencing or an interest that they have.
Context. A place or space, virtual or real, in which this is all playing out.
Having all three ensures that your topic, title or question is specific enough. If you’re missing one or more of these things, you’re going to get stuck really quickly.
If your dissertation supervisor or thesis advisor told you that your topic was too broad and needed to be narrowed down – and if you haven’t done that – you’re going to run into difficulties. This is because the range of literature that is potentially relevant to your topic is going to be huge - because your topic is huge! You will get overwhelmed really quickly. Whilst you can make a start on a literature review, you’re not going to get very far with it.
For example, if you are doing your dissertation on domestic abuse, you’re going to be in the stuck and overwhelmed camp. After you’ve looked at some of the general literature on domestic abuse, you’re going to be like, “Right, what now?”, because you only have an issue, you don’t have people or a context.
However. If you’re doing your dissertation on Experiences of domestic abuse among queer young people in the West Midlands region of the UK, you are really well set up for your literature review. This is because you have people (queer young people), and a context (the West Midlands region of the UK) as well as an issue (domestic abuse). You will be in a great position to start developing some questions to ask of the literature, which brings me onto Step 2.
(2) Identify a list of questions you want the literature to answer
Now you have a specific, targeted topic or title with people, an issue or interest and a context.
What you need to do next is identify some questions to approach the literature with.
You can use the headings: people, issue / interest and context.
Let’s stick with our example question: Experiences of domestic abuse among queer young people in the West Midlands region of the UK.
Our people are queer young people. What questions should we be asking the literature? We want to know more about queer young people. How many young people identify as queer? What experiences of life have queer young people had? When we think about the domains of family, education, religion, what’s been going on there? What are their strengths and needs, their challenges and opportunities? When we get to know the literature around our people really well, that will help us when we come to think about their experiences of the issue that they’re facing.
Next we look at our issue – domestic abuse. What questions do we want to ask about that? What is domestic abuse? What does it look like? Who is affected by it? However, we don’t want to look at domestic abuse in isolation, we want to look at it mindful of queer young people. What does the literature say about queer people’s experiences of domestic abuse? Are queer people under or overrepresented in the domestic abuse statistics? Are they more or less likely to experience domestic abuse? Are they more or less likely to report it? Here we can link back to what we’ve found out earlier in relation to queer young people’s experiences of life in general. When we look at the literature about the experiences of queer young people in general, what implications does that have for their experiences of domestic abuse? What does the literature say about this?
Lastly, we look at our context, and we ensure that our people and issue are threads that run through these questions too. What does the literature say about the West Midlands region of the UK? What research has been done about domestic abuse in this area? About queer young people in this area? What are the unique features of this region that might impact upon queer young people’s experiences of domestic abuse? What are the economic, social and cultural characteristics of this region?
At this point, you are armed with an array of questions you can use as you explore the literature. Create a document that has all of these questions within it. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just a plain old Word document will do.
(3) Develop a record keeping system for everything you read
It is easy to get lost when you start your literature review.
You will be reading a lot of stuff, so you need to make sure you keep track of everything and get it into a format you can use when you come to write up your literature review.
You might develop an Excel spreadsheet or a PDF document where you can record key details about each item. There will be four things you need to record …
Referencing details of each item – author, year, title etc.
Description. What does the author say? What arguments are being made? What theoretical position does this item take? What theory and previous research does it draw upon?
Interpretation. How is this item relevant for your dissertation? Which of your literature review questions does it answer? Does this raise any new points to consider?
Evaluation. Make a judgement about the value of the item for your dissertation. What does it contribute to your knowledge of one or more areas of your dissertation? How convincing is it in providing an answer to one or more of your literature review questions? Does it answer this question / these questions to a great extent, to some extent, not at all?
If you do all of these things for every item you read, you are going to be in a position to write a fabulous literature review!
(4) Build out your literature review structure
When you have reviewed around 10 items of literature, it’s time to start mapping out your structure.
Your basic structure can start off as simply as: people, issue / interest, context.
Using the example, you might have the following headings …
Queer Young People
Domestic Abuse
The West Midlands Region of the UK.
Then within those headings, you can add subheadings. For example, under Domestic Abuse, you might have …
i. The nature and scale of domestic abuse,
ii. The demographics of domestic abuse.
iii. Domestic abuse within queer communities,
iv. Tackling domestic abuse.
As you go through, you might decide that one of the subheadings is particularly important, so it needs to become a main heading. For example, you might come across something called queer theory in reading about queer young people and think, “Ooh, that needs to be a heading that stands on its own, because it’s massively important! I’m going to have that as my second heading before I introduce the stuff on domestic abuse”.
Most literature reviews will have between three and five main headings. You shouldn’t have less than three. You shouldn’t have more than five. The main thing here is to bring the literature together into a logical order.
The analogy I always use when I’m explaining how to structure a literature review is to treat it like you’re serving up a three to five course meal. You don’t slap it all on the table at once. You serve up the dishes one at a time. You take your time to enjoy your first course and consider the flavours and textures within it before you move onto your main course. You do the same for that and then the dessert.
You don’t pour it all into a big bucket then grab a spoon and try to pick your way through it. If you do, those nuances, those flavours, those textures, become lost in the mush. Unfortunately that is what too many students do when it comes to their literature review. They throw it all into the bucket. The person reading it finds it difficult to digest, literally! They come across a bit of the main course, then a bit of the starter, then another bit of the main course and a bit of the starter again and it’s a complete mess! Take one thing at a time. People, issue or interest and then context.
Take each item that you’ve read, and figure out where it sits in that structure. It might be relevant under more than one heading - and that’s absolutely fine - but make sure that everything you’ve read can be located somewhere in that outline.
(5) Don’t write it up properly, yet
When you have your items of literature located under your main headings, it can be very tempting to start writing up, in full sentences and paragraphs, crafting the perfect piece of academic writing.
Please don’t do this because it is a waste of your time right now!
This is because as you go on to do your methodology chapter, design your study, collect and analyse your data, things will change. They really will.
Literature that seemed super important at the start might not seem so important at the end.
You may find that you need to add to your literature review and go find more stuff because when you’re doing your data collection, you come across something that’s super important, that you would never have thought was relevant to your topic when you first set out.
Rather than writing up your literature review in perfect academic language and wasting two hours trying to get one sentence right, write in bullet-points for now, use keywords and terms.
For example, rather than writing out an entire paragraph about heternormativity in domestic abuse support services, just write this bulletpoint under the relevant heading: heternormativity in domestic abuse support services (Smith, 2020; Taylor, 2015). That’s enough. You know what that means, you’ve read a couple of papers about it, you’ve referenced those papers, you’ve got notes on them, you can write it up later.
Next steps!
That is my five-step process for getting your literature review underway!
I hope you’ve found this blogpost helpful, if you would like more dissertation advice and tips on topics like this, become a Degree Doctor insider and sign up for my email subscriber list. Click on the button below to sign up now!
If you’re ready to turbocharge your literature review by ensuring it’s critical rather than descriptive, check out my YouTube video below!
