Literature Review

General Comments:

A literature review is not a sequential list of articles. It is organized by concepts, themes, ideas. Below we give a brief discussion with examples, just to show how it is VERY different from an annotated bibliography. Actually the literature review for a proposal is DIFFERENT from the final literature review for the MS Thesis.

A literature review is often the LAST thing which is written in a thesis, even though it is usually the first or second chapter. The reason is that the literature review is CLOSELY related to the research that is completed, so it cannot be written until the full set of results from research is available. In a research proposal, there need not be any literature review; literature can be discussed in the process of explaining the proposed research. It is also possible to give a separate lit review -- it is a matter of style and choice. The Lit Review of the proposal has a different purpose from the Lit Review of the thesis. We will try to explain these issues by giving several examples below.

The final literature review for the thesis has somewhat different structure and objectives. This is covered HERE. An example of a literature review for a journal article is given HERE -- This is different from PROPOSAL review and also from THESIS review.

Writing the Lit Review for a PROPOSAL

How to write the INTRODUCTION of a research proposal has already been described. In the second section, a literature review is often done. In a research proposal we should review ONLY literature DIRECTLY relevant to the topic of research. There are THREE purposes for a lit review in a PROPOSAL:

  1. To describe the background information which is NECESSARY to understand the research which is planned. This includes covering methodology, data sets, techniques which are planned for used in the research -- articles which use methods which are basis for our research should be covered carefully.

  2. To clarify/demonstrate that there exists a GAP in the literature, something which is not known or studied or discussed in the previous literature.

  3. To establish the IMPORTANCE of the research being carried out, either from the theoretical or applied point of view.

Any item which is not directly relevant to the proposed research, and which does not fulfil at least one of the three objectives above, SHOULD NOT BE IN THE PROPOSAL.

FIRST AND MOST COMMON MISTAKE: Writing an ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY in place of a literature review. For example

Wasif (1999) says bla bla bla about poverty.

Barton & Cramer (2003) say x y z about poverty in Pakistan.

Rao and Thieu (2007) write about the determinants of Poverty in Nigeria that these are ....

A research proposal SHOULD NEVER contain a list of articles with one paragraph describing each article. EVERY SENTENCE in the research proposal MUST SERVE A PURPOSE. Students just want to fill up space -- they think that the more they write the better. THIS IS NOT TRUE. For example, a recent proposal starts the literature review as follows:

i. According to Chowdhury and Khandker (1995b), the micro-lending as practiced by Grameen Bank (GB) has been fertile in eradicating poverty among the lower income communities, as observed worldwide. The study shows that it takes 5 years for raising income level above the poverty line in case of GB participants and 8 years for economic graduation [Graduation, in Grameen’s terminology, means that borrowers stop taking loans because they have accumulated enough resources for self-finance.]. So Micro-credit programs are gradually changing the lives of people and bringing the society out of poverty gradually.

ii -- another article

iii -- another article

iv. Hashemi (1997) focused on female empowerment. He conducted survey in Bangladesh and used statistical techniques to assess the impact of micro-credit programs on the status of women. The study found sufficient evidence that participation in the microfinance programs produced statistically significant impact on women empowerment.

This is a list of articles, which is an ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY. This is NOT a literature review.

Item iv: Hashemi reference can be CITED ONLY IF the author of the proposal plans to do research on Female Empowerment. Otherwise it is irrelevant, and CANNOT BE PUT in the research proposal.

Item i - Chowdhury & Khankder --, the second sentence is relevant only if author of proposal plans to look at HOW LONG it takes for microfinance to be effective. The last sentence can be used to establish the IMPORTANCE of microfinance and so is potentially relevant. However, we need to organize the LIT REVIEW DIFFERENTLY;

Now TOPIC is: IMPORTANCE OF MICROFINANCE IN CHANGING LIVES: A SAMPLE of how the proposal could be revised to make the lit review better is:

Under this heading we mention that, Chowdury and Khandker (1995) show that in Bangladesh it takes 5 to 8 years to repay loans, and thus GRADUALLY microfinance programs are changing lives of poeople. Mckernan (1996) also have the same finding for Sri Lanka and Nepal. However, Duflo(2010) writes that evaluation of pre and post program status of the poor shows no significant difference in poverty levels, disputing the finding that microfinance alleviates poverty. THUS WE AIM TO ASSESS whether or not microfinance programs have been effective in alleviating poverty.

Note that the literature review is integrated BY TOPIC -- topic is IS MICROFINANCE IMPORTANT IN CHANGING LIVES?. All finding for, against, are discussed under this heading. This issue is relevant to the research BECAUSE it motivates us to find out. The GAP is also pointed out here -- there is a controversy in the literature about whether or not microfinance helps the poor. So we want to find out which side is right, since this is not know or established.

To re-emphasize: the literature review should accomplish the following goals:

  1. Explain WHY my research is important. What problems will be solved by my research? ANSWER we will learn about how much potential micro finance has to change lives of people and to lift people out of poverty. THIS IS A HIGHLY DISPUTED TOPIC and so lit review should cover both pros and cons, to show the controversy.

  2. Establish HOW it will contribute to the literature? There is a controversy about how helpful microfinance is in lifting people out of poverty, so we will try to gather evidence in favor of or against this to find out which party is correct.

  3. WHAT methodology is to be used. The methodology we plan to use in order to answer this question should be based on something already present in the literature. For example, if we plan to do surveys, then we should look at other research which has done survey in the past, and how they have done it. Then either we copy or we improve or we otherwise modify their methodology. The lit review should establish which methodology has been used in the past, and later on in the proposal we either adopt a methodology which has already been used, or explain how we plan to improve on existing methodology in the literature.

How can we organize a list of articles on Poverty in Pakistan, for which we created an annotated bibliography above? There are several ways, and lit review can be organized in several ways.

METHOD 1: Organize by findings. for example:

Most authors agree that poverty decreased in the 1980's and increased in the 90's. A graphical picture of poverty is as follows:

The following authors agree to this assessment. However, XYZ disagrees and argues that poverty remained stable in th 90's. Our research will explore the reasons for this difference and try to decide which party is right.

METHOD 2: Organize by criterion:

The following authors have used the income definition of poverty. On the basis of the Word Bank criterion of dollar-a-day, they have such and such findings.

Other authors use a caloric intake based measure. These are so and so, and they have such and such findings. On the whole the two sets of findings are in broad agreement in the 1980's where income-based poverty and calorie based poverty shows the same trends. However we find the situation different in 200's when, because food prices skyrocketed, income based measures show decreasing poverty, but calorie based authors find increasing poverty.

METHOD 3: Organize by methodology, data set, technique

Regression based poverty has been used by so and so getting such and such result based on HIES data sets

Survey data was used by so and so and such and such

New techniques like Foster-Greer-Thorbeck measure have been used by so and so. Our research we plan to reconcile the differences in the findings of these authors.

You can use more than one way to organize the readings in the annotated bibliography. How you organize the readings will depend on exactly what YOU propose to do in your research. For example, my student Taseer was doing her thesis on multidimensional poverty. This means looking at things like health, education, housing, access to water, etc. [instead of just income or calories]. So it would be useful to look at which of these dimensions have been considered as poverty indicators. One could write for example: HEALTH -- who has written on health before and how (or whether or not) they have correlated it with poverty. EDUCATION -- is there any literature on education and how it relates to poverty? Housing -- have any of the poverty studies taken into account the type of housing as a poverty indicator; FOOD -- here the calorie intake measures and how they correlate with poverty will be available.. So this is another way to organize the poverty readings.

The following example of a Lit Review is taken from Munazza Jabeen proposal:

THEME: The exchange rates returns and volatility is affected by several domestic macroeconomics variables.

There occurs a positive relationship of domestic money supply and exchange rate. The positive relationship is also supported by Morana (2009), but he finds also a negative relationship in one country of his sample. Calderon (2004) finds that higher money supply volatility leads to higher exchange rate volatility.

There exist a positive relationship between domestic output and exchange rates. According to Friedman’s (1953) perspective, exchange rate instability may be an indicator of macroeconomic instability concluded that there is a positive relationship between exchange rate volatility and macroeconomic volatility. Kendal (2004) further reported that depreciation of the currency leads to increase in real output.

There occurs a positive relationship of domestic inflation and exchange rate. Trovask (2008), Ito & Sato (2006), have concluded that exchange rate fluctuation and changes in inflation are interrelated. Conway, Drew, Ben haunt and Alasdair (1998) concluded that changes in exchange rate causes more changes in inflation rate. Sadeghi, Samson & Sherafat (2007) concluded that positive relationship between exchange rate fluctuations and inflation.

Note how each paragraph is organized around an IDEA, and cites all readings in favor of or against the IDEA. This is the principle of the literature review.