Primary Care Phyician

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON Psychology Writing Center 3937 15th track NE Box 351525

Ph 1: 206.685.8278 psywc@u.washington.edu http://depts.washington.edu/psywc/handouts.shtml

Writing a Psychology Literature Review
There ar twain important begines to a literature review in psychology. One approach is to choose an area of enquiry, read all the relevant studies, and imprint them in a meaningful way. An example of an organizing theme is a conflict or controversy in the area, where you might start-off discuss the studies that protrude one side, then discuss the studies that support the other side. Another approach is to choose an organizing theme or a point that you want to make, then select your studies accordingly. regardless of how you decide to organize your literature review, it will have two purposes: (1) to thoroughly describe work done on a specific area of research and (2) to evaluate this work. Both the descriptive and evaluative elements are important parts of the review. You cant do one or the other. If you just describe past research without evaluating it, you are merely summarizing information without digesting it. If you just discuss recent theories in an area without describing the work done to test those theories, then your arguments insufficiency supporting empirical evidence.



What to Evaluate Authors of literature reviews evaluate a body of literature by identifying relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature and by suggesting the next step needed to solve the research trouble (APA Manual 1994, p.5). A literature review may comparing studies in terms of assumptions about the research question, experimental method, selective information analysis, and any conclusions drawn. Literature Reviews versus Research Articles Literature reviews survey research done in a particular area. Although they also evaluate methods and results, their main emphasis is on knitting to channelher theories and results from a number of studies to describe the big picture of a...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



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