The Literature Review: 2. Why Do a Literature Review?

• Class assignment
• Thesis for a master's degree
• Foundation for a doctoral dissertation

Hart (1998) identifies the following purposes, which are not ranked in order of importance, since no one purpose is seen as being of greater significance than another:

1. distinguishing what has been done from what needs to be done;
2. discovering important variables relevant to the topic;
3. synthesizing and gaining a new perspective;
4. identifying relationships between ideas and practice;
5. establishing the context of the topic or problem;
6. rationalizing the significance of the problem;
7. enhancing and acquiring the subject vocabulary;
8. understanding the structure of the subject;
9. relating ideas and theory to applications;
10. identifying the main methodologies and research techniques that have been used;
11. placing the research in a historical context to show familiarlity with state-of-the-art developments.

   (Hart, 1998, p. 27)

1. Problem formulation

• What is the topic being examined?
• What are the component issues?

2. Literature search

• To identify materials relevant to the topic

3. Data evaluation

• To identify which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic

4. Analysis and interpretation

• Discussion of the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature