Literature Reviews
- A Research Process
- Objectives
- Steps in a Research Process
- Managing an Extended Research Process
- Research or Empirical Research Studies
- Literature Reviews
Literature Reviews, page 1 of 3
A "Review of the Literature" involves specific research that is, by its very nature, a secondary source. A scholar provides an evaluative overview of existing literature on a topic. Several of the library's online databases enable search capabilities for literature reviews.
One methodology to conduct a literature review is to use Boolean and adjacency operators. Let's look at a literature review search using EBSCO's Academic Search Premier.
We will do a search for literature reviews concerning politics and partnerships. Please note the search structure:
- the first word is the subject of the search, "politics"
- we want to limit our search to "partnerships" in politics. To limit searches, use the Boolean search operator "AND" (first red underlined word)
- as a result, we have "politics AND partnerships"
- we also want to limit this search to literature reviews, so we include "review" after a second Boolean "AND" search operator
- because we want to search for "literature reviews" and the synonym phrase "review of the literature", we will conduct the search using an adjacency operation. "w2" (third red underline) means "within 2 words." It will look for the words "review" and "literature" within two words of each other, no matter the order of the words.
- lastly, we will type in the word "literature"
Therefore, this search will be executed as:
- find all of the articles inclusive of the words "politics" and "partnerships." The retrieved articles must also include the words "review" and "literature" within two words of each other.
