My Literature Review: How Do I Know When I Am Done?
This is another question I often get, and it is a good one. Gone are the days when you could locate all of the studies in your field and go through them as an individual. You could probably spend the rest of your life searching and reading and never be done. So knowing when you have read enough studies is one of many decisions you need to make as the author of your review. So how do you make it? There are two things you need to consider when you are deciding if your literature review is done. As I have noted in a previous post , your literature review is an argument in which you make the case for why your research question needs to be asked. So have you made your case? Do you take the reader, step by step, through the patterns and trends you have discerned in the body of work on your topic, establishing how these patterns and trends add up to the need to ask your research question? Have you instanced each of these patterns and trends with findings from the studi...