Literature Reviews in Social Work

When writing a literature review, we go through the following process:

• Step 1 - Search for literature relevant to your research topic/question
• Step 2 - Outline the criteria used in the choice of material to be included in the review
  • How did you choose what materials (books, articles, or other) were included?
  • Did you decide by type of source? Time frame of publication? Or other criteria for inclusion and exclusion?
• Step 3 – Evaluate your sources
  • What is their argument? Evidence? Perspective? Contributions? Limitations?
• Step 4 - Determine the themes, debates, and gaps
  • Evaluate and summarize the research you have found, pointing out common themes, gaps in the literature, contradictory research findings
  • What are areas of further research?
• Clearly relating the synthesis and evaluation of material to the topic or issue outlined as  the purpose of the review
• Step 5 - Outline your structure
  • Are you writing chronologically? Or by theme? By method? Or something else?
• Step 6 - Write your literature review
• Step 7 - Craft your citations
  • Carefully cite all the research studies, quotations, and other material you used
  • Make sure to use quotation marks around the text.
  • If paraphrasing points made in an article in your own words, be sure to provide a citation

We want our literature reviews to be focused, critical, and engaging. Sometimes, it is helpful to review the following questions as a checklist to yourself. If you answer no, you might want to return to your literature review with this in mind.

Organization and Structure

• Have you organized your literature review? This could be by chronological order, theme, method, or theory.
• Does your literature review have organization and structure?
• Does it have focus, unity, and coherence?

Scope

• Is there a clear focus for your literature review?
• Are you citing key researchers, scholars, or thinkers related to this subject?
• Have you eliminated discussing sources that do not related to our research topic at all?

Writing

• Have you eliminated repetitive words and phrases?
• Have you changed verbose words when they are not needed?

Analysis

• Have you critically summarized and evaluated sources in your subject matter? 
• Have you addressed the quality of the research of each resource (book, article, etc.)?
• Have you summarized the argument, conclusions, and research design of the resource?
• Have you critically evaluated the research? This can include engagement with population(s), research design, scope of research, successful argumentation, contributions to the field, authoritative evidence, and ethics of the research. 
• Have you addressed the contributions of the resource to the field?

Citations

• Have you cited all your sources both within the literature review and at the end of the document?