Learning Outcome: After completion of this lesson students will - a) be able to define literature review b) identify the purposes behind carrying out literature review c) be able to review literature for their own researching activity

1. Literature
Review in
Legal
Research
Preeti Kana Sikder
Assistant Professor
Department of Law & Justice
Jahangirnagar University

2. Overview
• What is Literature Review?
• Purpose of Literature Review
• Forms of Literature Review
• Sources to Consult / What is meant by Literature?
• Criteria for evaluation of literature review
• How to search for Relevant Literature?
• How to Review the Literature?
• Writing a Literature Review

3. What is Literature Review?
• A Literature Review may form an essential part of
the research process or may constitute a research
project in itself.
• In the context of a research paper or thesis, the
literature review is a critical synthesis of previous
research.
• It usually has an organisational pattern and
combines both summary and synthesis.
• It is not a list of seemingly unrelated sources
containing author’s bio and summaries of sources

4. What is Literature Review?
“A critical evaluation and
appraisal of works,
including research, theory
and argument, in a given
subject field on a particular
topic.”
_ Chris Hart, Doing a
Literature Search (2001)
“It is an interpretation and
synthesis of published
work.”
_ Merriam (1988)

5. Purpose of Literature Review
• Literature reviews help researchers limit the scope of their
inquiry.
• It generates and refines research problems and questions
and/or hypotheses.
• It describes strength and weaknesses of designs, methods
of inquiry and instruments used in earlier works and
suggests selection of methodology for the research
• It establishes rationale for the research
• It demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity in the area

6. Purpose of Literature Review
• Literature review helps compare a researcher’s
own work with others
• It provides background information by –
 determining what is known about a subject, concept or a
problem
 determining gaps, consistencies and inconsistencies about
such subject, concept or problem
 discovering unanswered questions about that subject,
concept or problem

7. Forms of Literature Review
• Integrative literature review: The researchers summarise
broad themes in the literature. This model is popular in
dissertation proposal and dissertation.
• Theoretical review: The researcher focuses on extant theory
that relates to the problem under study,. This form appears in
journal articles in which the author integrates the theory into the
introduction to the study.
• Metrological review: the researcher focuses on methods and
definition. These reviews may provide not only a summary of
studies but also an actual critique of the strengths and
weaknesses of the method sections.

8. What types of literature are available
for review?
Early Stage
Materials
Journal Articles
Summaries and
Books

9. Is there any source missing?
• Peer reviewed journal
articles (including
electronic journals)
• Books
• Webpages
• Theses and dissertations
• Newspapers
• Conference Proceedings
• Research Reports
• Government Websites
• Documentaries

10. Remember the difference…
A good literature review
• Is a synthesis of available
research
• Is a critical evaluation
• Has appropriate breadth and
depth
• Has clarity and conciseness
• Uses rigorous and consistent
methods
A poor literature review
• Is an annotated bibliography
• Is confined to description
• Is narrow and shallow
• Is confusing and longwinded
• Is constructed in an arbitrary
way

11. Criteria for Evaluation of Literature Review
• Relevance: whether the literature reviewed is relevant to
the study’s topic
• Recent: whether the literature reviewed was generated
within last 5-10 years
• Quality: whether the included literature focuses primarily on
journal articles and other high quality publications
• Reference: whether citations were done correctly
• Comprehensiveness

12. Steps in Literature Review

13. How to search for relevant literature?
• Researcher has to identify the key terms or ideas
from his objectives/research questions.
• Looking for literature:
 Search in database
 Use multiple key terms (not too many)
 Consider the ‘most recent’ results first and work backwards
 Read through abstracts to identify if an article would be
appropriate for consideration
 Look for possible sources in reference list

14. Analysis Tasks of Literature Review
Summarise
Recap the most
important information of
the source
Synthesise
Bring together the
materials from different
sources and create an
integrated whole
Critique
Establish own
perspective and identify
the gap among the
existing literature
Compare
Posit own arguments to
distinguish between
different flows of thoughts

15. Paraphrasing
Writing in your own word what you understood from
someone’s writing; with correct referencing

16. Tips for Paraphrasing
• Take notes and come back to articles.
• You can also paraphrase as you go.
• Do NOT just take notes – WRITE AS YOU READ.
• CITE AS YOU GO
• You can maintain separate sections for each authors
• You can also create sections that deal with similar ideas
and place the information within those sections

17. Literature Review Matrix

18. Sources used for this lecture
• Doing a literature review: Meaning, Importance, Criteria
and Techniques, Paraphrasing by Mohammad Nure Alam
Siddique, Associate Professor, Institute of Education and
Research, University of Dhaka
• Research design for Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed
Method Research, 2nd Edition, by John D. Creswell