Planning the review

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself when you are planning and drafting your Literature Review:

1. What has been done in your field of research? What principles of selection are you going to use?
2. How are you going to order your discussion? Chronological, thematic, conceptual, methodological or combination? What section headings will you use?
3. How do the various studies relate to each other? What precise contribution do they make to the field? What are their limitations?
4. How does your own research fit into what has already been done?

Adapted from Literature Review Guide, Gail Craswell, ANU.

Try to think of a title for your literature review. If you can think of a good one, this is more interesting for the examiner than simply 'Literature Review'.
If your review of the literature is segmented into several chapters, relating to and introducing your own research in each one, you will have to develop chapter titles anyway.

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