Reference no: EM133954163

Question: In virtually every circumstance, you are not the first scholar to investigate this topic - and even if you are looking at the topic in a unique way, others have likely conducted research in your general area. As such, the literature review offers a thorough rendering of what others have said/found about your topic. In essence, the review of the literature provides the narrative of your topic - it tells the story. The literature review not only offers an overview of the current empirical status of your topic, but it is also an excellent opportunity for the researcher to uncover gaps in the extant literature, or to generate new ideas. Many of my own studies are birthed by conducting a review of the literature within a given area. Get expert-level assignment help in any subject.

For purposes of this project, students are strongly encouraged to find 8-10 professional sources (e.g., published articles/books/book chapters). The articles should be scholarly, peer-reviewed, research articles that are published in a refereed journal. The sources should be selected based on their relevance to your study: either on methodological or theoretical/conceptual grounds. When conducting the review of the literature, be sure to properly, and frequently, cite your sources throughout (APA or ASA format is required), refraining from the overuse of direct quotes - i.e., paraphrase these works by putting it in your own words.

It is imperative that your literature review flows, or transitions, smoothly. In other words, please refrain from issuing a blow-by-blow account of the studies that you have selected - -- that is what an annotated bibliography does. Toward this end, you should incorporate the use of transitional sentences and paragraphs (start with an opening paragraph that introduces the literature review), that offer a nice segue as you move between topics. As you are concluding your literature review, you should offer a summary of the current state of the extant literature in your area. Here, you should articulate some of the gaps in the literature or limitations of previous work - and hopefully how your particular study will explicitly address some of these limitations. In other words, this is the transitional period of the proposal, in which you move from previous studies to your own study. Either at the end of your literature review, or the very beginning of the data and methods section, you should include your hypothesis(es) - an explicit statement statement about the relationship between your independent and dependent variable(s). This can be done in a few (2-3) sentences. The literature review will generally inform your hypothesis.