 |
Chapter contents. What is a literature review?
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER CONTENTS
· Introduction 68
· What Is a Literature Review? 68
· What Is the Purpose of a Literature Review? 71
· What Does a Literature Review Look Like? 72
¡ Narrative reviews 73
¡ Systematic reviews and meta-analysis 75
¡ Can the two approaches influence each other? 78
· How Do I Go About Doing a Literature Review? 80
¡ Searching the literature 80
¡ Limiting or expanding your search 81
¡ Reading and note-taking 82
¡ Annotated bibliographies 83
¡ Writing the literature review 83
· Summary and Review 87
· Study Questions and Activities for Students 87
· Suggestions for Futher Reading 88
· References 89
GLOSSARY TERMS
literature review
narrative literature review systematic review positivism
inductive
deductive research question grounded theory inductive research research design
UNDERTAKING A CRIMINOLOGICAL LITERATURE REVIEW
AlIson WakefIeld
INTRODUCTION
A literature review is an evaluative overview of the state of academic knowledge on a research topic. It is often the first stage in a research project because the researcher needs to establish the nature and extent of what is already known in order to justify and contextualize any empirical work, although there is likely to be a continuing engagement with the research literature right through the research process.
|
|
|
The chapter is a detailed guide to doing a criminological literature review. It begins with a definition and explanation, and then goes on to describe the two main types of literature review and how they are applied within criminology. The steps in doing a literature review are then outlined, with guidance on each and criminological examples provided. Breaking the task down in this way should reassure any inexpe- rienced researcher that an apparently daunting task is actually quite straightforward and, with the right choice of topic, can be a fascinating and illuminating undertaking, generating valuable new ideas and knowledge.
WHAT IS A LITERATURE REVIEW?
A literature review provides a survey and discussion of the main published work in a given topic or field. According to Denney and Tewksbury (2013: 218):
Learning how to effectively write a literature review is a critical tool for success for an academic, and perhaps even professional career. Being able to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic not only demonstrates having a good grasp on available information for a topic, but it also assists in the learning process.
A literature review is a key element of an empirical research project which conveys to the reader that you have:
· read widely around the chosen topic
· gained a good command of the issues
· acknowledged the work of others
· set the study in the context of the existing body of literature, highlighting any gaps in the research.
The process of doing your literature review enables you to identify relevant questions to ask, themes to include and methodologies to follow within your study. It also informs the development of your conceptual or theoretical framework and, when presented as a chapter in a student project, dissertation or thesis, should frame the empirical research findings. A literature review is much more than an annotated
bibliography or set of descriptive summaries of previous work. It provides a critical, evaluative synthesis of the research literature on a given topic set out according to a number of organizing themes. Different models can be used, most notably the narrative literature review and the systematic review. Unlike an academic essay providing a general discussion on a particular subject, the literature review provides a synthesis of others’ findings, arguments and ideas in your field of study. It should address the question ‘how well does the extant literature address my research ques- tion and sub-questions? ’, and in doing so it will respond to a number of different considerations, some of which are summarized in Figure 3. 1.
Two types of literature normally feature in such a review: theoretical literature and substantive literature. Theoretical literature is employed by the criminologist for the purpose of devising a theoretical framework to anchor the research within the disci- pline, give direction to the study and make explicit the ontological and epistemological assumptions that the researcher brings to the research. These latter concepts relate to how one sees the nature of society, institutions and relationships (ontology), and whether these can be assessed objectively or are socially constructed; and how human actors may go about making sense of the social world (epistemol- ogy), including the question as to whether its existence can be proven, or whether it can only be described and interpreted. Different perspectives, such as positivism and interpretivism, support more objective or more subjective views of the world and its interpretation, and thus favour different methods of research. In devising your theo- retical framework, it is also important to note how the various criminological (and other) theories falling into these or other schools of thought operate at different levels of analysis. They may be divided into the following categories and used sepa- rately or in combination:
|
|
|
· micro theories – concerned with types of people, individual agency and interper- sonal interactions, such as biological or rational choice perspectives
· meso theories – relating to communities, social movements or organizations, and to collective agency and organizational processes, such as ecological or subcultural perspectives
· macro theories – regarding social institutions, cultural systems and societies, such as critical criminology or feminist perspectives (adapted from Einstadter and Henry, 2006: 319).
Certain perspectives span more than one category, such as labelling or control theo- ries (which, arguably, bridge the micro and meso levels), while others integrate theories either at the same level of analysis or across levels, such as cultural criminol- ogy’s fusion of a number of perspectives, including labelling, subcultural theories and postmodernism. Criminological research might also look beyond criminology to engage with social, political or cultural theories, in order to consider crime and criminal justice topics in a broader context of political economy, social stratification, social capital or cultural change, for example.
What are the key sources?
What are the key theories, concepts and ideas?
What are the major issues and debates about the topic?
What are the political standpoints?
Literature search and review on your topic
What are the epistemological and ontological grounds
for the discipline?
What are the main questions and problems that have been addressed to date?
What are the origins and definitions of the topic?
How is knowledge on the topic structured and organized?
How have approaches to these questions increased our understanding and knowledge?
FIgure 3. 1 Some of the questions the literature review can answer
Source: Adapted from Hart (1998: 14)
Two main routes to theorizing are open to you. Research may be theory- generating or inductive, where theories are derived from the data collected, in which case the literature review will normally critically discuss previous theo- retical and empirical works to highlight the lack of knowledge that is used to justify the study. Alternatively, it may be theory-testing or deductive, with the literature review outlining the concepts and propositions of theory to be tested (Fawcett, 1999; see also Harding, 2013 and May, 2011). The importance of theory to the research process cannot be overstated: May (2011: 27) stresses ‘the constant relationship that exists between social research and social theory’, with each influencing the other. He further points out that ‘data are not collected, but produced’ and ‘facts do not exist independently of the medium through which they are interpreted, whether that is an explicit theoretical model, a set of assumptions, or interests that have led to the data being collected in the first instance’ (2011: 26). In deciding your theoretical perspective, you will need to reflect carefully on your values, beliefs and assumptions to establish which theory will best represent these in your research.
|
|
|
The substantive literature is the general literature on the specific topic you are
studying, including theory and research in similar or related areas. Most of this lit- erature is published in academic books and peer-reviewed journals, but there is also what is known as ‘grey literature’ – information sources that are not controlled by commercial publishers. These include reports published directly by the organizations producing them, such as government agencies, as well as conference papers, student theses and newspaper articles.
In an ideal world, you would complete the literature review prior to the planning of the research, in order to establish whether the study is needed, to differentiate your work from past studies and add to the body of knowledge, and to build on the concepts, theories and methodologies that have already been created. Such a review may establish that the research question can be answered from the existing body of knowledge and that a research synthesis by means of systematic review, rather than an empirical study, would be the most appropriate strategy. For these reasons, the literature review is typically perceived as one of the first stages in the research pro- cess. But, in practice, the criminological researcher has to be alert to new research as it is published, and the completion of empirical research and comparison of findings with the extant literature may lead you into further avenues of reading. This is par- ticularly the case when adopting a grounded theory methodology (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), an inductive research approach that operates more or less in a reverse direction to traditional research by starting with data collection, and, as data emerge, making constant comparisons between data and theory and accessing literature only as it becomes relevant.
 |
|
|
|
