Literature Reviews

If a literature review is part of your assignment, it is important to ask your instructor for clarification on the following:

• How many databases you are expected to use? Depending on your field and scope of your review, you may be expected to search multiple databases.
• What types of sources should be evaluated? Examples: peer-reviewed journal articles, books/chapters, grey literature, etc.
• How in-depth should you evaluate and explore your sources? In other words, is the literature review just a section of your overall assignment (less in-depth) OR is the literature review the entire assignment (more in-depth)?

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Here are some other questions to ask yourself before beginning your literature search:

• Is there a page limit or page requirement? About how many citations do you need?
• Consider whether your review will encompass all relevant material or if you’ll focus on more recent sources (e.g., the last five years).
• What is your focus—theoretical issues, methodological approaches, qualitative vs. quantitative?
• Do you need to set any limitations, such as age, gender, location, nationality, etc.?

Before you can begin searching for literature, you need to decide what types of resources you will be searching.

If you'd like to perform a search that looks across different media, start with the scholarly databases. This is a fantastic starting place as databases have collected and curated relevant resources all in one place for more efficient searching.

Not sure where to start when selecting a scholarly database to search? Here are some top databases: