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What is the purpose of a literature review?
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WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A LITERATURE REVIEW?
There are different purposes for writing a literature review. The most common are as:
· a stand-alone literature review article or assignment and hence a project in itself, giving an overview of the literature on a particular topic
· part of a research proposal – this could be a proposal for an undergraduate or postgraduate dissertation or research project, or an application for a grant. It should include a section summarizing the key issues and existing findings on a
given topic, in order to demonstrate how the proposed research will contribute to the field of study
· part of a research report – it may be an early chapter in an undergraduate or post-
graduate dissertation or research project, providing the context to which an empirical study has contributed.
For the purposes of a student project, dissertation or thesis, it normally takes the form of a literature review chapter, although many students are required to submit a research proposal for assessment at an early stage in their studies. In a typical student dissertation, as shown in Box 3. 1, a literature review is preceded by the introductory chapter and followed by a methodology chapter in which the empirical research design is explained and justified. In the social sciences, it might normally comprise 20–25% of the available words. Yet references to the academic literature should not be confined to the literature review chapter: they will help to introduce the topic in the introductory chapter, illustrate methodological issues in the methods chapter and form a basis for comparison and discussion in the latter chapters. There are several useful step-by-step guides for students seeking to write a successful literature review (see, for example, Booth et al., 2012; Caulfield and Hill, 2014; Denney and Tewksbury, 2013; Galvan and Galvan, 2017; Machi and McEvoy, 2016; Northey and Tepperman, 2015; Ridley, 2012).
WHAT DOES A LITERATURE REVIEW LOOK LIKE?
It is always helpful to find models to follow when undertaking an unfamiliar task. Other literature reviews in your topic area or discipline may reveal the sorts of theme you might explore in your own research, or show you ways of organizing your review. Numerous criminological examples are available online, or can be found by browsing libraries for bodies of literature such as those outlined in Box 3. 2.
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Two types of literature review are introduced in this section: the narrative review and the systematic review.
Narrative reviews
A ‘traditional’ literature review is increasingly known as a ‘narrative’ literature review, particularly among those who seek to distinguish it from the systematic review, of which more shortly. Narrative literature reviews are well suited to broad fields of study, being comprehensive in nature and covering a wide range of issues. They enable the researcher to contribute to the body of knowledge by bringing together disparate contributions to an emerging field, or updating an established field with new research findings and theoretical perspectives.
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In preparing this type of literature review, criminological researchers need to be careful to go beyond providing a series of descriptions of past studies, offering an overarching critical perspective of the field. The researcher must identify categories for structuring the discussion, allowing the literature to be broken down into sec- tions. Examples include a thematic or chronological approach, outlined in more detail later in the chapter.
Box 3. 3 reproduces part of the table of contents of a thematic narrative review on police corruption, carried out by Newburn (1999) as a stand-alone report for the UK Home Office. The table of contents (p. vii) offers an overview of the key themes identified in the literature: definitions of police corruption (Chapter 2), its causes (Chapter 3) and control strategies (Chapter 4). These, in turn, are divided into sub- themes to sort and categorize the literature still further. The stated purpose of this report was ‘to identify key issues in police integrity and corruption, with a specific emphasis on the causes of corruption and the efficacy of different prevention strate- gies’ (Newburn, 1999: 2), providing a comprehensive overview of the topic at a time when, as the report states, a series of recent scandals had put the matter in the political spotlight.
BOX 3. 3 WHAT DOES A NARRATIVE REVIEW ON POLICE CORRUPTION LOOK LIKE?
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