The Critical literature review 1 © 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. www.wiley.com/college/sekaran

Instructional Goals 1. To clarify the purpose of a critical literature review and explain that the purpose of a critical literature review depends on the type of research. 2.To explain how to approach a critical literature review so that students are able to perform a critical literature review and to document the literature review. 3. To encourage students to develop bibliographies by accessing available on-line data bases. 4.To require students to write a good literature review in the areas of their research interests and to make them aware that most class term papers could use this type of introduction to enhance their value. 5.To discuss the ethical issues of documenting the literature review.

Critical Literature Review A literature review is “the selection of available documents (both published and unpublished) on the topic, which contain information, ideas, data and evidence written from a particular standpoint to fulfill certain aims or express certain views on the nature of the topic and how it is to be investigated, and the effective evaluation of these documents in relation to the research being proposed” (Hart, 1998, p. 13).

Evaluating the literature Titles Abstract Table of contents/first chapter book Number of citations

Documenting the Literature Review Literature review introduces Subject study Highlights the problem Summarizes work done so far