Literature Review 1

LITERATURE REVIEW

After reading this short note on literature review, you are expected to:
a. review a maximum of five literature or studies (either peer reviewed articles or
theses/dissertations) relevant to your proposed research topic
b. write a summary and evaluation of the reviewed materials

A literature review helps in shaping your research proposal. Literally, you are going to
review or read previous researches done in the area of the topic you are interested in to
research about.
You were asked to submit several possible topics and specific questions under each
topic. And some of you were asked to work on one or few topics from the original ten in your list.
Those titles and questions that you submitted are not your final titles and research questions.
They are all subject to change as they will likely be affected by the result of your literature
review.
The questions that you listed shall be your guide in reviewing materials that are relevant
to your proposed research title/s. Those questions will also be my guide in assessing your
individual output.
What to look for. In doing a literature review, you should note the research questions,
the research design and method, the respondents, techniques in the analysis of data, the
answers to the research questions, and the limitations of the study. The limitations of the study
will guide you in identifying relevant questions that were not tackled or answered by the
previous researches. Or, as you will read the material, there are question you have in mind but
these have no answers from the material that you are reading.
These aspects that were not answered are called the research gaps. And the
significance of these gaps is for you to direct your proposed research to fill in the gaps or to
answer what were not answered by the previous researches. Similar researches with varied
design and tools may arrive at similar answers but there is a possibility that even with their
similarities, there are still gaps.
Therefore, a major task that you will do in the literature review is to identify the research
gaps and reformulate your research questions to answer those gaps. By doing this, your
research output will contribute to the more comprehensive understanding of the topic that was
similarly covered by previous researchers. It is possible though that the research gaps in the
area that you are interested in could have been cited by previous researchers or authors that
you had read but no researches had been done to fill in those gaps.
Take note also of the arguments or justifications used by the researchers in explaining
their findings or patterns of relationships between variables in their findings. Those variables
may be similar to what you are considering as the variables to be included in your research
proposal. This can be helpful later in Chapter 3 of your research when your will be presenting
and explaining your findings that are similar to what had been found out by earlier researchers.
The design, method, and techniques in the analysis of data may guide you in formulating
your research methodology. You can duplicate the methods used by previous researchers but
you have to focus on other areas that were not covered by them so that you have something
new that you contribute to the body of knowledge. You can also duplicate or refine the tools or
techniques used by the previous researchers. But if the earlier researchers indicated in their
recommendations that the methods they used were not helpful to them in answering the
research questions, such methods should not be duplicated.
 Literature Review 2

Sources of literature review. You start with academic papers: peer reviewed articles
that are published in journals or e-journals; thesis or dissertations published in the school’s
research journals, or journals of professional organizations; research outputs that were
presented in conferences of professional organizations – some of these have video recordings
that are uploaded in the websites or Facebook page of the professional organizations, if you are
lucky the transcript of the presentation is included.
These academic papers will introduce you to the analytical assessment of what had
been studied, like the implementation of government programs or projects, or the
implementation of or compliance with policies or laws. You will also be introduced to how
theories are put into practice or how relevant theories are used as bases in the formulation of
criteria against which the studied group/program/policy is assessed or evaluated.
If your research is focused on policy analysis, the other sources of your literature review
can be the laws, policies, policy statements governing the program or project that you will
be studying, documents of the government agency or private organization that is targeted
for your study. The documents can reveal the actual performance of the government agency or
private organization and the information you get from these can be used to justify the need for
your proposed study to help in addressing some problems revealed in those documents. The
laws or policies provide the context within which your target government office, agency, or unit
is expected to operate. These laws or policies, therefore, will be your bases in formulating
standards or criteria for evaluating the performance of an office, agency, or organization.
Books or ebooks in political science, public administration or management, sociology,
and anthropology can also be useful sources because authors present the gist of previous
researches to illustrate the essence of some theories that may be relevant to your proposed
research. You can read the original works that were cited by the authors by looking at the links
that were cited by the authors. Some of these can be freely downloaded; others require
subscription. Go for the freebie, the free trial, but don’t shell out any centavo to access a title the
abstract of which appears to be useful but when you look at the content there’s actually nothing
that can be related to your proposal.
Blogs and wiki should not be your primary sources. Their use though in research is they
will serve as your initial platform in looking for related literature. If there is any article that
appears to be of relevance to your material, don’t use that material but rather go over the listed
sources used by the author. Those listed sources should be what you will try to follow, try to
access them, evaluate the integrity of these sources, and it will be these that you will be citing
as your sources. Do not be easily mislead by the listed materials. Some of them if you have the
patience to download, if accessible, and read, you will find out that there are instances when
some of the copied statements by the wiki author or blogger may not mean as they are
presented if you read these copied or paraphrased statements within the context of the entire
original paper. Hence, it is always safe to go to the original work if it can be accessed. This is
the beauty of research writing, you will learn to evaluate your sources and trace the sources of
what had been cited because your aim in doing the research is to reveal the truth about a
particular issue.

REQUIRED ACTIVITY
FORMAT
Decide which of your remaining topics you will prioritize. It is possible that in your
search for related materials,The youfollowing
might haveshall be the format
difficulties so youforcan
your
optindividual output. File name of your
for an alternative
topic which is in yourindividual
list in theoutput
matrix.shall be your
Guided by thefamily name.
specific questions you wrote under the
topic prioritized by your group, you do your literature review.
Title ofyet
I will not comment the
onAcademic
your entriesPaper:
in the submitted matrix. I will use the entries to
assess your output for this activity
Author/s:

Publication (name of journal and or link):

Research questions:

Research Design and Methods Used:

This is an individual work. As written in the learning objectives, each member of the
group must have five (5) reviewed materials. The individual output must be saved as a file
bearing the name of the student and to be uploaded in your Canvas group homepage which
shall be the repository of all your contributions to your group. Upload the same file as a file
upload in the Assignment Section. This is for my evaluation of your individual output.
The materials you will review must be academic papers as specified in the discussion.
Each reviewed academic paper must follow the given format. Remember, you are doing a
review not a narrative of the entire literature review for your proposal.
The reason why you are asked to start doing a review of academic papers is because in
chapter 3 of your research paper (that will be next term), you must be able to establish any link
between your findings and the findings of previous researches – either your findings confirm or
contradict in some ways the findings of previous researches.
No books, policies, performance evaluation reports, or laws to be reviewed yet. Just
focus on academic papers.
Your output in this activity will be helpful in finalizing your research title and statement of
the problem. The subproblems you will write later will be reflective of the gaps that you
discovered in your literature review. With 5 reviewed academic papers, the group is assured to
have a pool of resources that can be useful in writing the research proposal.
The moment you are done with your individual output, upload you output in your Canvas
group’s homepage. And since you are doing this for your group, the moment you read from the
individual output of a group member that s/he reviewed the same material/s, take the initiative of
reviewing another material. Just remind yourself that what you are doing is not only for yourself
but for the group that you had chosen.
DO NOT PROCRASTINATE. Do not depend on one person. This is the reason why I am
starting with an individual output for the literature review just to make certain that each one in
the group will contribute something.
In working for your group research proposal and for you to be successful in your group
work, you should immediately cleanse yourself of the vices of self-importance and self-
entitlement. Do not make yourself the psychological stressor of your group.