Media and Communication

These are some Communications and general databases that will help you find sources for your literature review. Remember, you will also need to look at databases that are more closely aligned to your research question. 

Title

Concise and descriptive, it should illustrate the research problem and the methodology involved.

Abstract

Readers look to abstracts to decide if a paper will be useful to them. Abstracts are  a short, (usually 200-500  word) summary of the paper, providing  the research question, methodology, and a generalized description of results and findings. Since an abstract summarizes the paper, they are generally written last, after the paper is finished. 

Introduction & Statement of Problem

What is going on in this paper? What is the issue/problem being investigated? Why is this topic worth researching? Explain what you hope to discover with your research. 

Literature Review

What current scholarship exists on your problem?  Conduct searches of library databases to discover what is currently known about your topic. Discuss the current status of scholarship, and the methodologies used. The literature review should contain peer-reviewed articles and scholarly books. 

Methodology

How are you conducting your research? Explain the tools you use to collect data, such as surveys, focus groups, samples, etc. You should provide your readers with enough detail so that they can replicate your study. 

Results/Findings

What did you discover? This is where you will display what your research found. Use graphs, charts, interview responses. This section is just a recitation of facts and findings

Discussion/Conclusion

Expand on your results. Why is what you found out interesting. What does it mean? How does your research impact your topic? How does it solve the problem? What are the implications of your study? What will be the next steps to take with research, based on your findings? 

Bibliography/References

Every research paper contains a bibliography of all the outside sources used in the paper. 

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Adapted from "Components of a Research Paper," Center for Innovation in Research and Teaching, Grand Canyon University, https://cirt.gcu.edu/research/developmentresources/tutorials/researchpaper 

The Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill has a great handout on how to write a literature review. 

A Literature Review is 

• The  section of an academic research paper, in which literature relevant to the argument is summarized and synthesized.
• most often a part of the introduction to an essay, research report, or thesis. Occasionally it will be a complete piece in and of itself.
•  literally: a "re" view or "look again" at what has already been written about the topic.

• a compilation of the research that has been published on a topic by recognized scholars and researchers.

• defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing or your argumentative thesis).
• background for the problem or put the problem into historical perspective and, at times, show how others handled similar problems in the past.

A Literature Review is not:

• A list of articles. It definitely isn’t the first 10 articles that show up in Google Scholar. 
• A summary of articles
•  An annotated bibliography A list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.
• A literary review A brief critical discussion about the merits and weaknesses of a literary work such as a play, novel or a book of poems
• A  book review is a brief critical discussion about the merits and weaknesses of a particular book. Book reviews of creative works are sometimes called literary reviews. Scholarly books are also reviewed by other scholars. Scholarly book reviews are often published in scholarly journals.

adapted from:  University Library, American University, Washington DC 

These are examples of literature reviews. Most of them follow a thematic approach, where they discuss how the literature deals with aspects of their topic. 

• How do People with Disability Use and Experience Virtual Worlds and ICT: A Literature Review (chart)
• Borrowing of Persian words into Arabic language and its influence on Arabic literature and language: A review paper (thematic)
• The role of grammar in the writing curriculum: A review of the literature (thematic)
• A literature review on the mediation of sociolinguistic style in television and cinematic fiction: Sustaining the ideology of authenticity (thematic)

• Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide