Human security: how are poverty and conflict interconnected?
3500-words not including bibliography (60% of total mark)
Assessment 2: Literature Review has two parts: Part A: Review of the literature in your bibliography and Part B: Reflection and Research Plan.
Part A: Review of the literature in you bibliography in relation to your topic (approximately 2500 words) (70%)
For Part A, you will review the literature in the bibliography you created in Assessment 1. You must refer to at least 20 references in your review. In
your introduction describe your research topic or question. Synthesise and analyse your sources, identifying major themes, issues and trends in
scholarship.
Part B: Reflection and Research plan (approximately 1000 words) (30%)
In Part B of the assessment you have the opportunity to reflect on your research topic and what you have learned from the literature review. In relation
to your research question and on the basis of your literature review:
Discuss gaps or unanswered questions that you have identified in the literature
Describe the relevance or significance of your research topic and questions in relation to the gaps you have identified current literature
Describe and explain the next steps in your research (these will be hypothetical if you are not planning to complete a thesis or research project as
part of your studies)
Discuss ethical issues that have or may in future arise in your research. Will you need formal ethics approval? If not why not?
Key assessment criteria
• Are there sufficient references?
• Is there a clear, succinct introduction and conclusion?
• Are themes in the literature clearly identified and used to structure the review?
• Have the ideas/data/conclusions of the various authors been integrated and compared?
• What is the level of analysis and critical evaluation?
• Is style of the bibliography and the spelling and grammar correct?
• Are the reflections on the outcomes of the literature review considered and clearly articulated?
◦ 3.3 Writing a literature review
What is a Literature Review?
A literature Review is a systematic study of existing research and other published
information on a specific topic.
A literature review is a critical analysis of published sources, or literature, on a particular topic. It is an
assessment of the literature and provides a summary, classification, comparison and evaluation.
It will have an introduction, a body and a conclusion
and is not simply a description or summary of current research on a topic An annotated bibliography provides a foundation for a literature review but
the review moves beyond being a list or summary of individual articles or papers to being a comparative review of literature
What is the purpose of a
Literature Review?
The literature review enables you and your reader to get an overview of a research topic, who are the main writers are in the field,
their particular positions in relation to the topic, the main points that need to be addressed by further research.
Literature review are used when
planning a new research project to:
• Determine what has been written on a topic
• Provide an overview of key concepts in the topic
• Identify strengths and weaknesses in current research on the topic
• Critically examine support for different or alternative theories or arguments
• Highlight gaps, questions or issues that need further study
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Literature reviews can also be used to assist in the formulation or evaluation of policies or programs by:
• Updating basic knowledge
• Reviewing research assessing the effectiveness of specific applications or interventions
• Identifying best practice principles
◦ How do you write a Literature Review?
The following two videos are David Taylor from the Effective Writing Centre at the University of Maryland
in the USA presenting ‘How to Write a Literature Review’. Taylor explains in detail each of the steps in reviewing literature and provides an excellent
guide to structuring the review. you will find this very useful for writing your literature review for Assessment 2.
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Writing the Literature Review (Part One): Step-by-Step Tutorial for Graduate Students
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Writing the Literature Review (Part Two): Step-by-Step Tutorial for Graduate Students
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◦ What makes a good Literature Review?
Most importantly, a literature review is an evaluative piece of writing, rather than just a description.
This means that in a literature review you must weigh up arguments and critique ideas, rather than just providing a list of what different writers have
said. It is up to you to decide what the reader needs to know on the topic, but you should only include the main pieces of writing in this area; a
literature review does not need to include everything ever written on the topic. The most important thing is to show how the literature relates to your
own research topic.
(Adapted from the University of Adelaide resource ‘Writing a Literature Review’
The RMIT Study and Learning Centre Literature
Review Module illustrates how to integrate an argument from multiple sources into a single paragraph, how to integrate your own analysis in the
paragraph and provides examples of god and poor literature reviews. Complete the module and associated learning activity.
All journal articles and
academic volumes have a literature review that introduces the reader to the topic and research presented in the publication. This may be quite short in
a journal article (perhaps only a couple of sentences) but in a monograph (single authored volume) the literature review may be a whole chapter, usually
the first or second chapter. In a themed, multiple authored volume or themed edition of a journal, there is commonly a review of the papers in relation
to current literature in the first chapter of the volume or first paper in the journal .
Choose two of the references you have included in your
bibliography,
In each of those you have selected:
• Has the author/s made an overall interpretation of the literature on their topic?
• How current (relative to the date of the article or book) is the literature that is discussed?
• Does the literature review provide theoretical of empirical justification for the importance of the research presented in the article or book?
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◦ 3.4 Writing an Abstract
What is an Abstract?
An Abstract is simply a brief summary of the aims, methods and findings of a research project,
along with general conclusions drawn from the project.
’Simple’ though they may be in purpose and content, Abstracts are deceptively difficult to write!
The importance of a good Abstract shouldn’t be underestimated. A good Abstract will enthuse and interest potential readers of your essay, report,
thesis, book or journal. A poor abstract won’t! An abstract should provide the reader with a concrete and stand-alone understanding of what you have
done in the research.
In a world of information overload, Abstracts are increasingly important. It takes practice to write them well.
What is the
purpose of an Abstract?
Abstracts are short summaries of your research that are required for submission of your thesis or research report, submission of
articles to journals, in applications for research grants and proposals for conference papers. Abstracts are also required in professional research
reports. In this context they mare commonly referred to as executive summaries. Executive summaries are usually more detailed than academic abstracts
although they may be of similar length and structure to an informative abstract (see below).
Abstracts should always include keywords of your research,
as it will allow researchers to find your research through bibliographic databases or thesis databases such as Google Scholar and Australian Open Access
Group (see Module 1)
How do you write and Abstract?
Abstracts are commonly 150 – 200 words although in some disciplines and contexts they may be longer
and more detailed.
The following two resources are both useful guides for writing Abstracts. As you will see, they discuss different types of abstracts
– descriptive abstracts that are more generally for humanities and social sciences and informative abstracts, more often for science.
University
of Adelaide guide: Writing an Abstract
University of Melbourne guide: Writing an Abstract
It is essential that you review and edit Abstracts several
times to make sure that all that you have included all you need with clarity and economy of words.
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◦ In the following videocast, Benjamin Noble (Higher School of Economics, Moscow) describes typical mistakes made by students when writing
abstracts. It is quite long at around 12 minutes but well worth it! See how Benjamin slowly pulls a draft abstract apart – pointing out and remedying
the common errors that people make in vocabulary, organisation and academic conventions or formalities. So persevere with watching the video and see how
he transforms the draft abstract into one that is tight clear and focused (Apologies – the sound quality is not great!)
Writing an abstract – common
mistakes
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href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynUiPhi8qEc” target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled
in your browser.</div></div>
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◦ Your bibliography will contain journal articles that have Abstracts. Review at least three of these. Are they descriptive or informative
abstracts? Do they each include the following:
1. Reason for writing
2. Problem
3. Methodology
4. Results
5. Implications
Based on the learning resources
in this section, how would you rate each of these abstracts? Do they spark your interest in the research? With the guidance of Benjamin Noble in the
above video, can you see ways in which each could be improved?
(Note: we will practice writing Abstracts in Workshop 2)
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3.5 Module 3: Review
You have now reached the point where you can complete your second assessment task, the Literature Review.
In the task you are
required to refer to at least 20 references. That means referring to the research presented in twenty of the sources you have in your bibliography. You
may use references that were not included in the annotated bibliography in Assessment task 1. It may be useful annotate more of the references in your
bibliography as a first step in organising the information to be included in the review and the structure of the review. Remember you are only picking
out the essence of each source but you must include sufficient information to be able to compare and contrast viewpoints or arguments. This is quite
challenging. It is not sufficient to discuss a particular aspect of the topic and then simply list relevant sources in text references. You need to
discuss each one.
Start by selecting all the references that you consider important literature in your topic area and annotate all of them if you have
not already done so. Following this you will need to consider how to approach the review, which common threads of ideas or arguments you will refer to
and in what order. Use all the learning resources above.
