Doing a Literature Review

Doing a Literature Review: ReleIDg the Social Science Research Imagination (SAGE Study Skills Series)
Author: Christopher Hart ID: 0761959742

Review

`This book can provide an excellent framework for bolstering what is often an experiential process – doing a literature review. It is best seen alongside the supervisor, as a guide, through the multidimensional sea of academic literature’ – British Educational Research Journal

`I have been waiting for this book for five years. It sets out a number of important dimensions involved in the process of literature review and by clear signposting, diagrams, and examples will help the student to carry out her or his review more systematically. Learning how to carry out a literature review has always entailed the experiential. While this is a the best way of learning, it is only so providing that learning actually takes place during the experience (or by reflection afterwards). This book makes explicit those dimensions which could remain implicit or even missed by the student as they wade through all those books, papers, articles, and print-outs’ – Kevin Maguire, Nottingham Trent University

About the Author

Chris Hart is Senior Lecturer in Management and Organizational Studies at the University of Central England, Birmingham.

Series: SAGE Study Skills SeriesHardcover: 230 pagesPublisher: SAGE Publications Ltd (March 1, 1999)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 0761959742ISBN-13: 978-0761959748 Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.6 x 10 inches Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds Best Sellers Rank: #3,584,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2419 in Books > Medical Books > Research #3417 in Books > Education & Teaching > Studying & Workbooks > Study Skills #4667 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Research

When I purchased this book, I was looking for a potential text for a short-course on writing the disseration I’m teaching. I really expected the standard "here’s how to search through the library and databases." This is simply much more that that. It’s less about how to do the review itself and more about how to think about your topic. In fact, Hart raises the questions I should have been asking myself–if only I had known–and my advisor wasn’t. How much better my work would have been if I’d had an understanding of how to analyze a text from various perspectives. Many texts offer advice on how to write but few talk about how to think about your question and how to fit it within the context of work in your discipline. Hart does this.

Hart, Chris. 1998. Doing a literature review. ReleIDg the social science imagination. London: Sage Publications.
Chris Hart’s guide to doing a literature review presents a comprehensive perspective on the literature review as a research tool. While it is addressed to scholars in the social sciences, this book is useful in most areas of design research. Hart discusses the role of literature in research. He explains how reviewing earlier work releases the imagination rather than constraining it. He shows how to classify and read research literature, how to analyze arguments, and how to organize and express ideas. He also teaches the reader useful ways to map and analyze the ideas that each body of literature reveals. Finally, he demonstrates in careful, clear stages how to develop and write the literature review. At each point, Hart develops a serious, well-reasoned explanation that helps the scholar to understand why each step is important and how to do it well.
Book review published in Design Research News, Volume 6, Number 5, May 2001 ISSN 1473-3862.

I have read several books on doing literature reviews. Except for this one, they were all about the quantitative style of review called meta-analysis.
This is a well-written and informative text, though it is a little too wordy for me to rate it excellent. It is the only book I could find that describes exactly how to produce the lit review section of a thesis. This is something that even books on dissertation writing tend to leave to your imagination.
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