Step One: Create and write your research question, example:
Should employees in Canada be given unlimited vacation time?
Step Two: Create your search, and focus on nouns (people, places or things) only. These will be your keywords or phrases - not who, why, where, when, how or what. (Check out the video on the left for more tips.)
Step Three: Identify synonyms for each keyword or phrase. Remember to put any phrases in quotes, e.g..
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Keyword 1
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Keyword 2
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Keyword 3 |
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employees
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vacation
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Canada |
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workers
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holidays
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Canadian |
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staff
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"time off"
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Ontario |
You can find more synonyms or keywords using the Visual Thesaurus (see below) or Thesaurus.com .
Try adding an asterisk * to the root of any word to pick up other variations of the word:
A literature review summarizes existing scholarly research on a topic from peer-reviewed articles, books, dissertations, and other sources. The reviewer searches for important research in a particular area of study, and then recaps their key findings in the article. It’s important to note that a literature review doesn’t simply describe what academic sources say on the topic.
Follow this FAQ Guide to learn about:
How a literature review is organized
Different types of literature reviews
Keeping track of your sources