Steve Tippins walks through writing a dissertation's literature review chapter. Avoid the "string of pearls" style of just listing citations; instead integrate sources and show how they connect. The chapter typically runs 30 to 50 pages, moving from broad historical context to the specific gap your research fills.
Welcome back to our series of videos on completing your dissertation. Today we thought we'd talk about chapter two. This is typically called your lit review, or technically your literature review. This is where you give the background of the literature, showing the reader you understand where your topic came from and where you develop your gap in the literature, which gives you the basis for doing your study. So, diving right in, where do we start? Well, where we start in every single chapter with an introduction, a little background on what you're doing, maybe a little talk about the topic again or the questions you're going to be asking. Then we fall into a section which I'm going to call Literature Review Process. How did I find my literature? This is a topic, not a topic, but a section that's come into dissertations probably more popularly in the last 10 years, where you explain, hey, where did I find my literature? What databases did I search? What key terms did I use? Just to let the reader know that you did a fairly exhaustive search of what's going on now. Next, your theoretical or conceptual framework. Yes, you developed this or presented it in chapter one, but this is where you really go deep into it. So if you're using something like, oh, critical race theory, you talk about its origins, where it developed, and how it's being used now, maybe four or five pages, but you really get to go deeper into things. Next, the real meat of your chapter two, the literature review of your topic, showing the reader you really understand it. So if you're going to use a variable or series of variables, you want to provide support for those variables, using literature to back them up. So if age is an important variable, then you want to see that age was important and. And other people have used it and developed it, or potentially that there is a disagreement on whether age or any other variable is important because that can give you more of a foundation or reason for doing that study. The idea here is to go from broad to narrow. Let's go even historically to now. But start with the breadth of the topic and narrow it down as close as you can to your field and your area and your specific questions and showing where it hasn't been done. Giving that gap in the literature. Now, one thing to be careful of, something that many people call a string of pearls, meaning don't just start with literature and cite Jones and then cite Smith and then cite Robinson and then smite, cite Rabinski and then go to the next chapter. We want to see that you understand where Jones and Smith and Rubinski and others fit and how they agree and how they disagree so that you are synthesizing this literature so that the reader knows, oh, they really understand what they're doing. Finish this up with a summary. Tie it all together. Summaries in chapter two can be longer than other chapters because you're summarizing a whole bunch of literature. Some schools say your literature review should be 30 to 50 pages. Longest one I ever saw was 280 pages. A little bit too long. Shortest one I ever saw was 8 pages. A little bit too short. Somewhere you have to let your committee know that you are really understanding the topic and have covered the breadth. Now, if you're looking for more information other topics, go to our website beyondphdcoaching.com and if you're interested, sign up for our free mini course on helping you complete your dissertation faster. And as always, good Good luck.
