Structuring a Literature Review
Fourteen components across three parts, taken from a study-skills text the source cites. It is a coverage specification rather than a table of contents — and one thing you would expect to find in it is not there.
Three parts, fourteen components
The supplied teaching source treats the shape of a review as a settled question and states it in one sentence, then supplies component lists for each of the three parts.
The weighting tells you something before you read a single component. Nine of the fourteen sit in the body, which is where the review does its work; the introduction and conclusion together carry five. A draft in which the introduction runs for pages is out of proportion with the specification it is being written against.
The introduction: three components
Two of the three are scoping statements and the third is a methodological one. That third is the component most often left out, and it is the one an examiner is most likely to ask about.
THE INTRODUCTION'S THREE COMPONENTS
| Component | What it commits you to | What a reader does with it |
|---|---|---|
| The nature of the topic under discussion | Naming the topic of your research as a topic in a field, not as a problem in your organisation | Decides whether they are in the right chapter, and what field's standards to judge it by |
| The parameters of the topic — what it includes and excludes | Stating the boundary in advance, including the exclusions. The exclusions are the harder half | Judges whether an absence later in the chapter is a scoping decision or an oversight |
| The basis for your selection of the literature | Saying how you decided what to read: which sources, which period, which criteria | Judges whether the picture of the field is a fair one or an artefact of how you searched |
The third component is the review's method statement. The supplied source does not call it that, and gives no guidance on how much detail it requires.
The third component is worth defending properly, because a review is itself a piece of research and its selection rule is its sampling frame. Among the five examined works read for this library, one restricted its corpus to a single outlet and defended that decision with four distinct justifications, including a cited methodological recommendation. Another states plainly that its review method was "purely that of a literature review" and nothing more. Both are basis-for-selection statements; only one of them can be assessed.
The body: nine components
The nine are not a sequence and the source does not present them as one. They group naturally into four kinds of coverage, and reading them that way makes the list far easier to audit against a draft.
THE NINE BODY COMPONENTS, GROUPED
| Group | Component, as stated | What it establishes |
|---|---|---|
| Where the field came from | Historical background, including classic texts | That the field has a history and that you know which works everyone in it cites |
| Where the field disagrees | Current mainstream versus alternative viewpoints, including differing theoretical assumptions, differing political outlooks, and other conflicts | That there is more than one position, and what separates them at the level of assumptions rather than findings |
| Where the field disagrees | Possible approaches to the subject — empirical, philosophical, historical, postmodernist and others | That the topic can be approached from more than one direction, and that yours is a choice |
| Where the field disagrees | Definitions in use | That key terms are contested, and which definition your study adopts |
| Where the field is now | Current research studies | That your account of the field is current, and how current |
| Where the field is now | Current discoveries about the topic | What has recently been established, as distinct from what is being investigated |
| Where the field is now | Principal questions that are being asked | The live agenda — which is where your own question has to be placed |
| Where the field is now | Overall conclusions that are being drawn | What the field currently holds, taken as a whole |
| Optional | "If relevant it may also include methodologies and methods in use" | How the field goes about studying this, which is the ground your own method choice stands on |
Column one is a grouping added here. Column two reproduces the source's list in its own order and wording. The ninth component is the only one the source hedges.
Three of the nine deserve individual comment because they are routinely misread.
Three components that are harder than they look
Not a glossary
The component asks which definitions the field uses, in the plural. A review that supplies one definition per term has reported a settlement that may not exist. Where two bodies of work use the same word differently, that difference is often where the gap is.
A statement about your own position
Listing the approaches available makes your choice visible as a choice. It also connects the review to the philosophical framework the study sits in — which none of the five examined works read for this library actually declares, a tension worth knowing about.
Other people's questions, not yours
This component is about the field's live agenda. Your question comes afterwards and has to be placed against it. A review that reports only its own question has skipped the step that makes the question look necessary.
The optional ninth component is more useful than its hedge suggests. Cataloguing the methods in use is what lets you argue that your own design is appropriate rather than merely available, and it is the natural home for the review-to-instrument link — deriving what you will ask participants from what prior studies asked theirs.
The conclusion: two components, and one absence
The conclusion list is short and the two items are easy to conflate, because one of them is worded almost identically to a component in the body.
"Overall conclusions that are being drawn" — body
- The field's conclusions, reported
- Attributable to published works
- A statement about what others hold
- Belongs in the body because it is evidence
- Written in the third person throughout
"Your general conclusions that are being drawn" — conclusion
- Your conclusions, argued
- Attributable to you, drawn from the evidence above
- A statement about what the reviewed literature amounts to
- Belongs in the conclusion because it is inference
- The one place in the review where the position is openly yours
The first conclusion component — a summary of major agreements and disagreements — is where the review's evidence is compressed into a verdict. Agreements alone are not enough. A conclusion that reports only what the field agrees on has removed the disagreements that a gap would have to be built from.
Components are coverage, not headings
The most common way to misuse this list is to turn it into a table of contents — nine subsections in the body, one per component, each populated with whatever fits. The result covers everything and argues nothing.
The reason is the operating rule stated elsewhere in the same material: each paragraph or section of your review should deal with a different aspect of the literature. Aspects of the literature are themes in your field. The fourteen components are categories of content, and the two are not the same axis.
TWO WAYS TO ORGANISE THE SAME BODY
| Components as headings | Themes as headings | |
|---|---|---|
| Section names | "Historical background", "Definitions in use", "Current studies" | Named claims about the field, one per section |
| Where definitions appear | All together, in one section, detached from the arguments they matter to | Inside the theme where the contested definition changes the finding |
| Where disagreement appears | In the viewpoints section, then not again | In every theme where the field is unresolved |
| What the reader gets | A complete inventory of the field | An argument that arrives at a gap |
| Audit against the fourteen | Trivially passes; that is what it was built to do | Requires a deliberate check — which is the point of having a list |
Neither column is what the source prescribes; the source supplies the components and, separately, the paragraph rule. The right-hand column is what satisfying both at once looks like.
Use the fourteen the way you would use a coverage checklist on any deliverable: build the thing around its argument, then run the list over the draft and find what is missing. How the argument itself is built is treated on writing the literature review.
How later research students will describe your research
The source closes this material with a question rather than an instruction: "Your research could become one of the future contributions on the subject — how will later research students describe your research in their literature reviews?"
It is a rhetorical prompt, but it converts into a usable design test. Everything you have just done to five, ten or forty other works is what will be done to yours. Somebody will skim it, extract one claim, decide how much weight it carries, and put it in a paragraph with three other studies.
What makes a work easy to place in someone else's review
- A stated question or purpose, in one sentence, that a reader can quote
- An abstract that ranks the findings rather than listing them, so the main claim is obvious
- A named method, and enough instrument detail that the study could be repeated
- A stated population and setting, so the finding can be located rather than floated
- Limitations stated in a place a reader will find them, not buried in a conclusion paragraph
- A contribution claim no larger than the evidence, so a later reader can cite it without qualifying it
The inverse is instructive. Among the five works read for this library, one expresses its purpose only in prose with no stated question, which means no finding in it can cleanly be said to answer anything — and a later reviewer has to infer what the study was for. Another documents its quantitative instrument across thirty appendix pages while leaving its interview strand undocumented, so half of it is replicable and half is not.
Neither is a failure of the review chapter. Both are failures of the same kind the review chapter is supposed to teach you to notice. What a work says about its own limits and its own contribution is treated on stating limitations and contribution.
What to carry forward
- Three parts, fourteen components: three in the introduction, nine in the body, two in the conclusion. Nine of the fourteen sit in the body, and the proportions of your draft should reflect that.
- The basis for selecting the literature is the review's method statement. State it, including what you excluded and why.
- "Definitions in use" is plural on purpose. Contested terms are often where the gap turns out to be.
- The field's conclusions belong in the body; yours belong in the conclusion. The two components are worded almost identically and mean different things.
- The component list contains no gap statement, though the source elsewhere requires one. Add it to the conclusion rather than assuming the list is complete.
- Use the fourteen as an audit over a finished draft. Used as headings they produce a complete inventory and no argument.
Frequently asked questions
Should the nine body components become nine sections?
No. The source supplies them as coverage, and separately requires that each paragraph or section of the review deal with a different aspect of the literature — meaning a theme in your field, not a category of content. Organise the body by theme and then audit it against the nine to find what you have missed.
What is the difference between the body's "overall conclusions that are being drawn" and the conclusion's "your general conclusions"?
The first is the field's conclusions, reported and attributed to published works. The second is your inference about what the reviewed literature amounts to. The wording in the source is nearly identical, which makes the pair easy to collapse, but only the second is yours to argue.
Where does the gap statement go if it is not one of the fourteen components?
The component list does not name it, but the same source describes a critical review as ending with a statement of the research questions and their significance, and its example sequence requires the gap to be restated before the methods are justified. Put it at the end of the conclusion, after the summary of agreements and disagreements that it is drawn from.
How much detail does the basis for selecting the literature need?
The source does not say. In practice, enough that someone could judge whether your picture of the field is fair or an artefact of your search: which types of source, over what period, from which disciplines, and what you deliberately excluded. A review is itself a piece of research, and this statement is its sampling frame.
Does a short review still need all fourteen components?
The source gives no exemption for length, and the components it hedges is only one — methodologies and methods in use, which enter "if relevant". A one-page review section will compress most components into a clause each, but the scoping and selection statements are the ones you cannot drop without leaving the reader unable to judge what they are reading.
Why does the source ask how later students will describe my research?
It is a reflective prompt at the end of the structuring material, and it converts into a design test. The features that make a work easy to place in someone else's review — a stated question, a named method, a located population, honest limitations, a proportionate contribution claim — are the same features you have been looking for in everything you read.
References and source attribution
- Naoum, S. G. 2013, Dissertation Research & Writing for Construction Students, 3rd ed., Routledge.
- O'Leary, Z. 2017, The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project, 3rd ed., Sage Publications, London.
- Bryman, A. 2016, Social Research Methods, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- The supplied teaching source: master's-level teaching notes and accompanying slides on reviewing the literature. The three-part structure and its fourteen components are quoted from that material, which attributes the framing to a 2011 study-skills text for international postgraduate students cited via a university resource site.
- Five examined and published research works in project management and related fields, read structurally for this library and referred to as Exemplars A to E. Cited here only for observed selection statements, review placements and documentation practice.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- Audit my draft literature review against the fourteen components and tell me which are missing.
- Write a basis-for-selection statement for my review, including what I excluded.
- Are my definitions treated as contested or as settled?
- Where should my gap statement go if the component list does not name it?
- How would a later research student summarise my study in one sentence?