Current knowledge:
Chapter 2 should contain your literature review. This should clearly identify where the gaps in knowledge concerning your research topic are relating these to your research objectives. Discussion of the literature should be in a critical mode which you can use to point to following Chapters in which the weaknesses in the literature identified are addressed by your research.
In other words, the literature review should be a bridge between the objectives of the research and the analysis to come. It should include your considered view of the quality of argument presented by a range of authors on the subject matter of your research. An essential stage in any research work is to review the literature and the purpose of this is to:
a. know if the work has already been done
b. identify the experts in the field
c. select appropriate research methods
d. understand where problems can lie
e. appreciate the debate in the area and where controversies lie
f. help in generating hypotheses to be tested in the research.
A good review should demonstrate familiarity with the topic, show the path of prior research and how it is linked to the current project. It should also reveal your ability to integrate and summarise the literature in a manner that is directly relevant to your own research topic.
To do this effectively the review should be written in a critical and reflective style. One should not simply accept something because it is written, judgement should be passed on it - showing where it is good or where it is poor.
Being critical does not mean simply to pick holes in an argument – praise should be given to good research method, sensible data collection and clear and relevant analysis of the data – whether qualitative or quantitative in nature.
An example of a good style in literature review would be:
In 1984 Bongaarts et al. published their seminal work on the factors influencing total fertility. This has been greeted with great critical acclaim by demographers such as Smith 1995 and Davies and Ray 1987. However, sociologists, among them Karena (1989), and anthropologists such as Michalson (1987) and Stark (1990), questioned the cultural ethnocentricity of the work. They point out that the ideas of Bongaarts et al were rooted in a specific culture at a particular time period and as such generalisations to other cultures and times was not reliable. Bongaarts (1998) has now updated his work and linked fertility with a human development index, which relates the model of fertility to economic and cultural development and has, to an extent, satisfied the earlier critics.
Analysis:
Chapters 3, 4 etc. should contain the substantive analysis of the research questions identified in Chapter 1 and point to the critique in the literature review where appropriate. This enables the focus of the ‘argument’ to be maintained throughout.
Conclusions:
The Conclusions Chapter clearly needs to be relevant to the ‘evidence’ cited in the substantive analysis. It should clearly show which of the research objectives have been achieved and which remain ‘unanswered’. The conclusions should contain a discussion of the ‘limits’ of the research in terms of: the research method and specific research instruments used, the theoretical framework used, the data analysed an
