A dissertation literature review is an explanation of what has been published on a topic by credited scholars and researchers.
In writing the dissertation literature review, your reason is to express to your reader what information and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be distinct by a guiding idea (e.g., your dissertation research objective, the problem or subject you are discussing or your contrary thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries.
Besides enlarging your knowledge about the topic, writing a Dissertation literature review lets you gain and demonstrate skills in two areas:
- Information seeking: the ability to scan the literature efficiently, using manual or computerized methods, to identify a set of useful articles and books
- Critical appraisal: the ability to apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies.
A Dissertation literature review must do these things:
- Be organized around and related directly to the dissertation or research question you are developing
- Synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known
- Identify areas of controversy in the literature
- Formulate questions that need further research