It is often the case that composing a dissertation can seem more like solving a labyrinth, especially in the case of the literature review (Andrew, 2017). This section forms the core of your research and although its length is a cause of much debate, there is usually no strict word limit. Why does the length of your literature review matter so much, and what exactly is your professor expecting? Let’s break it down.
The Use of Literature Review
However, to generalize length, it is firstly imperative to define the purpose of a literature review in your dissertation. This isn’t just an opportunity to go through the motions; it is your opportunity to show that you understand the current literature in your area of study.
Establishing Context
As earlier discussed, the literature review is an important foundation for the research. The other part of the argumentation is the perfect demonstration of how your work relates to the existing scholarly conversation and what other scholars have done on the topic. The pros are that it is your chance to explain the shortcomings in the previous literature, the reasons for the selected research question, and the theoretical framework.
Participating in the Conversation of Scholars
In contrast to simply reviewing and summarising the prior research, a literature review enables you to be critical of prior research. One must go beyond quoting and paraphrasing what other authors have to say; one must offer analysis, evaluations, and suggestions that set the foundation for one own contribution to the body of knowledge.
How Long should a Literature Review be?
One of the most common questions students have is: Lit review question: how many words should a literature review be? As with any bell curve distribution, there is no perfect answer as to what it is, but having the best approximate value can give you a positive outlook.
General Word Count Guidelines
Literature review in many academic fields occupies between 1,500 to 5,000 words of a document or report. Some disciplines may require longer reviews, particularly in comprehensive dissertations. When you are using a dissertation writing service, sometimes you get advice depending on your specific situation and guidelines. Finally, the length should correspond to the problem under discussion and the amount of material that has been produced on the subject.
Balancing Length and Depth
Writing a good literature review requires achieving an appropriate balancing length and depth (BAW, 2022). However, it has more to do with the extent of your cover as well as your concentration on the technicalities of the work in question.
The biggest mistake to be made here is to employ length for length’s sake.
That said, it may be tempting to just continue writing to make the word count; however, that only weakens the argument. Your professor will be expecting to read a review that adds value, to include important ideas, rather than a compilation of research articles. Every single paragraph should fit your argumentation and in this way develop a study story.
Ensuring Depth of Analysis
On the other hand, when the literature is reviewed only in a few words there will be the tendency to lack sufficient knowledge of vital studies or even lack sufficient analysis on the materials. Thus, the evaluation of themes, methods, and outcomes should be presented with an eye toward your research. It shows that you can critically analyze and, therefore, place your work in an academic perspective to an extent of a certain depth.
What does your professor expect?
From the analysis of the guideline features, understand and meet your professor’s expectations, is very useful for managing the literature review effectively. Students are not interested in their plain plain summary, but they expect to see that you can analyze.
A synopsis of the relevant literature
Your professors, therefore, anticipate a review that examines all works available within your focus of study. This means using all the current and some of the past works that are from the foundation of the understanding today. A broad literature review indicates to the assessor that they, at least, have gone through the trouble of making themselves well acquainted with the field.
Interpretation of Sources
The following are the criteria that your professor will use to assess you, His/her critical engagement will also be assessed. You should analyze your findings rather than give a summary of the results from your study. Describe the merits of the various studies, and analyze their demerits relative to your line of inquiry. However, this kind of critical approach improves your literature review
Practical methods regarding the accurate length
In this section, you’ve learned why length is important and what your professor expects in formulating your literature review length Now let’s turn the discussion to some feasible tips as to how to achieve the right length for your literature review.
Create a Detailed Outline
Begin with a comprehensive schedule that will show you how your main themes and studies will interrelate. An outline helps you to realize in which segment of your literature review you are well provided and in which you may still lack resources. This makes it much easier to determine how much content you still need to create to meet your word count goal.
Focus on Relevance
While compiling articles for the review ensure that the one selected directly relates to your study question. Such an approach makes certain that every source is used to support an argument and makes the review brief and accurate. Precision wins the day here: it is more useful to provide a few excellent analytical sources than several quite peripheral ones.
Revise and Refine
Having written your literature review, you must spend some more time polishing your work. Try applying headings where possible that will mean that particular sections that do not necessarily require much information to be passed out will not necessitate the preparation of many pages. Make sure you keep it simple and that each paragraph leads on from the previous one. When done, it is not only beneficial in making your overall review clear but also easier to plan to hit your required word count.
Conclusion
Although the number of hundreds of words in your dissertation literature review may not be very large, it’s an important element influencing the way your study is viewed. In light of the above understanding of the purpose of the literature review, the overall expectations of length, and meeting your professor’s specific expectations, you can write a good literature review. Just to reiterate, it’s a balance between breadth and depth, allowing for the presentation of a good status quo picture while still establishing a good basis for one’s work.
References
Andrew. (2017, May 8). doctoral dissertation length variability [Online forum post]. The GradCafe Forums. https://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/92684-doctoral-dissertation-length-variability/
BAW (2022). How Academic Help Providers Save the Students’ Future? https://bestassignmentwriter.co.uk/blog/how-academic-help-providers-save-the-students-future/
