Some guidelines for Literature Review

Please Note: this is the longest and possibly most difficult chapter of the report. Make sure your material is well organised by use of  numbered side-headings and  sub-headings. At the draft stage   it should be carefully edited to  remove any irrelevant material.

The review should:
• Be organised into 4 or 5 major ‘themes’ or topic  areas
• Clearly show how these themes are linked together and how they are directly relevant to the study
• Closely follow the research aims / research areas of the study
• Set a theoretical framework for the study
• Identify key texts / information sources relevant to the research topic
• Review and critically analyse what others have written about the topic in general
•  Describe and analyse any    research  that has been carried out on your particular topic (or similar work)
• Compare  and contrast the ideas and opinions of different authors
• Give your own opinions  / ideas wherever possible  (but note that these should be supported by evidence such as the work of others)

Some advice on selecting information sources
• Use as great a variety of sources as possible, i.e. books, journals, published documents, published research papers, reports, web sites, CD ROMs; and in certain cases newspaper and magazine articles, radio and TV programmes, and  film or video
• Generally try to use sources that are as up date as possible, except perhaps where a particular publication is regarded as a standard work in that field.
• There is no minimum or maximum number for listed references but in most development studies about 15 to 20 would be adequate providing they are carefully chosen and appropriate

TO AVOID PLAGIARISM  PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THE FOLLOWING POINTS

• All material (i.e. hypotheses, arguments, quotations, ideas, suggestions, opinions, data, statistics etc) that are not your own should be attributed to the correct author or source

• Always make it absolutely clear exactly which is your own work and which is the work of others

• Be consistent in your style of referencing (you are strongly advised to use the Harvard System)

• Every time you find a relevant piece of information record it, so that you can find it later and reference it correctly if required

• Always try to put other peoples work into your own words even though you are acknowledging it as someone else’s material. The only exception to this is when  you are using a direct quote.

• Material taken from Chinese sources cannot be regarded as a direct quote as it will  have been translated into  English

• If you are using ‘secondary sources’ you must say so

Remember that careful editing can be the key to a well written literature review. What you decide to leave out is often as important as what you put in!www.ukthesis.org#p#分页标题#e#