What is a Literature Review?
A literature review is:
- A critical summary of the research on your topic
- Used to identify gaps and weaknesses in prior studies, in order to justify new research on the topic
- Recent
- Includes primary research
- Thorough and complete
Why is literature review important?
Your literature review should:
- Show that your proposed research has not been done before
- Justify the need for your research (based on gaps in the published works on topic)
- Serve as a basis for experimental design
- Guide your thoughts on results to expect