1. What do we mean by a literature
review?
Bruce Hargrave
Military Education Group
2. Fact or Fiction?
• We will have a look at three famous
quotations.
• Your task is to identify which one(s) are
true.
• In other words, you must identify Fact
from Fiction.
7. We’re the air
force. We drop
bombs, kill
people and break
their stuff.
Gen Charles ‘Chuck’ Horner
8. The British
write the best
doctrine in the
world.
Fortunately,
they never
read it.
Field Marshall Erwin
Rommel
9. The Nature of Truth
• Verifiable facts
– If three people are witnesses to a car crash,
will their statements agree on all the facts?
• Scientific experiment
– An experiment repeated under the same
conditions, will give the same results.
• Published works
– If I go to the reference you have given, in the
same resource, I will find the same thing.
10. In other words…
• If you can give me a reference, from the
literature, to one of the quotes (Churchill,
Rommel and Horner)…
• Am I more likely to believe it?
• And does it become a fact?
11. To review the literature on a subject…
• First, we need to find it.
• Then, we need to read it.
• Then, we need to interpret it.
– Do we think it’s reliable?
– How do we know?
– Does it still hold true today?
– Is it still relevant?
• We need to subject it to critical analysis
– More on this later with Kevin.
12. For a literature review of a military
subject…
• Do we only need to consult military
sources?
• How widely should we research the
literature?
• How can we make sure we don’t miss vital
information sources?
• How do we know when it’s complete?
13. A literature review:
• Puts your research focus in the context of
the wider community in your field.
– That community may be academic.
– It may be military.
– It may be both.
• Reports your critical review of the relevant
literature.
• Identifies a gap within that literature that
your research will attempt to address.
14. By doing a literature review, you also:
• Establish your credibility as someone who
has something important to say on the
subject.
15. When to stop
• ‘Build an argument, not a library.’
– Rudestam and Newton (1992).
• Writing your essay is part of the research
process.
• Not something that happens after you
have finished reading the literature.
Editor's Notes
Your ADT gave the Churchill quote in his editorial to a recent JAPCC Journal. Just because a senior officer says something, that doesn’t make it true either!
There is a lot of ‘literature’ out there. Sometimes, finding it is not the actual problem!
Is someone’s Blog as reliable as source as a peer reviewed Journal?
How old is the literature? Are lessons learned in Afghanistan in the 19th Century still as relevant as those learnt in the 21st Century? Are lessons learned in Libya relevant to Syria, or Ukraine?
Critical review and analysis are something best done by someone who knows something about the subject. Is this you? If not, should you be doing it?
Military concepts and ideas do not exist in a vacuum. For instance, a network enabled capability (NEC) may be something that a multinational company already uses (in some form or another). Mission command may be something that’s practised in a large civilian organisation – a hospital perhaps?
Research into the swarming of locusts, and how they avoid collisions with each other, may be relevant to sense and avoid in RPAS. Cross-disciplinary ideas are often a sources of scientific or technological breakthrough. But how do the two disciplines find out about each other in the first place?
How do we know when it’s complete? Or is it ever complete? We will look at this again later in this discussion (slide 15).
Rudestam K. & Newton R. (1992) Surviving your dissertation. London:Sage.