The Literature Review: Busting Some Common Myths
I am sometimes startled by the myths and misunderstandings that I find circulating about the literature review, so today’s blog is the first in a semi-regular series on busting these myths 💪 or, at the very least, unpicking them to get at some useful truths. To get us started, have a think about this claim, which pops up with annoying regularity: The literature review is all about other people’s work, so it won’t be original. True or false? 🤔 The sharp-eyed amongst you will already have noticed that there are two claims here -- bad practice for a true-or-false item, to be sure, but a good place to begin our discussion. Let’s take each claim in turn. The literature review is all about other people’s work. Is it? In one sense, this is true. The main purpose of a literature review is to analyse the body of previous work in a field to establish why a research question needs to be asked. So, yes -- a literature review in this narrow sense deals with other people’s resear...