Doing a Literature Review- Jeffrey W. Knopf

Author: Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School; BA and MA from Harvard, Ph.D. from Stanford

Audience: Graduate students! Professor Knopf teaches a research methods course

Three bullet points: (Thanks Paul!)

• Literature review should be a synthesis of body of work/knowledge on topic (summarize and evaluate)

• Be sure to include or frame how your research will contribute to the body of knowledge on your subject

• Proceed systematically and thoroughly

Synthesis

• Summarize body of knowledge on topic; findings and claims made in prior research

• Evaluate research critically; present a conclusion about state of the knowledge and how “accurate and complete” it is. Consider what may be missing, incomplete, right/wrong

Questions a literature review answers

Knopf lists four tasks or sets of questions a literature review should address:

1. What has this study or work examined?

2. What has this study or work concluded?

3. Summarize the results into three categories: what the studies/works have in common, what they disagree about and what they overlook or ignore

4. Reach a judgment: what are the key findings that appear to be valid and where is more work needed?

Contribution to Knowledge

• Include how your topic will contribute or add to the body of knowledge researched in the review

• Author identifies two types of knowledge:- What we believe- How strongly we believe it

• Contribution can include new knowledge, contradict existing knowledge or affect the certainty or degree of confidence with which ones believes a set of knowledge

Sources- “Casting your net”Traditional books & academic journals expand to consider consider governmental agencies, NGOs, theses etc.

• Avoid too few and too many sources

UMI Dissertations- ProQuest- Go to Hollis- Under “Search & Find” choose “Dissertations & Theses”- Once there can also choose to “search all databases”- Select various works, examples:• Encyclopedias and Reference Works• Conference Papers & Proceedings• Government and Official Publications

Academic Press• Association of American University Presses member list:

http://www.aaupnet.org/aaup-members/membership-list

• Harvard University Press: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/

• Princeton University Press: http://press.princeton.edu/

• Yale University Press: http://yalepress.yale.edu/

• Cambridge University Press: http://www.cambridge.org/

• Oxford University Press: http://global.oup.com

Knopf’s seven tips for an effective review:

1. Read other literature reviews to get an idea of format, ideas you like and don’t like etc.

2. For each work you read be sure you understand the central premise and can explain it in a sentence or two

3. Written review should be selective- don’t include everything you read

4. Do not only summarize5. Impose order on your sources, categorize them in some way

(theories, methods, policies etc.)6. Review essays and articles are no substitute for your own reading7. Associate individual authors and points of view with one another

as they are variedly referred in both ways

FootnotesIn his footnotes, Knopf discusses a few resources for the

literature review:

- An Appendix to Finding Sources (Booth, Colomb, & Williams)

- Political Science Research methods, Ch. 5 (Johnson and Reynolds)

My own footnote:http://guides.library.harvard.edu/literaturereview