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Literature Review
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What is Literature Review?

A literature review is a structured survey of existing research on a given subject, designed to map what is already known, identify gaps, and establish context for new inquiry. It appears across virtually every academic discipline — from medicine and social science to education and business — because nearly every field requires writers to situate their arguments within an ongoing scholarly conversation. What makes the form academically demanding is that it requires critical synthesis rather than simple summary: writers must evaluate sources, trace patterns across findings, and build a coherent understanding of how a topic has developed over time.

The papers archived here reflect the breadth of subjects that a literature review can address. Some take a clinical or scientific orientation, examining topics such as kidney transplantation, stem cell treatment of leukemia, and maggot debridement therapy for necrotic tissue. Others focus on social and policy concerns, including teen pregnancy risk factors, fatherless homes and child development, affordable housing for low-income families, and special education referral processes for Haitian students. Still others address organizational and research methodology questions, such as pay-for-performance models, scenario planning, and international research methods. Across all these angles, the core task remains the same: synthesizing journal-based evidence to support a focused argument.

A strong literature review establishes a clearly scoped research question and organizes sources thematically or conceptually rather than listing them one by one. Evidence drawn from peer-reviewed journals carries the most weight, and writers should prioritize recent, field-specific studies. The most common pitfall is letting the review become purely descriptive — strong papers consistently evaluate the quality, limitations, and implications of the sources they discuss.

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Paper Undergraduate
Manage the Issue of Satellite
¶ … manage the issue of satellite communication security under the new paradigm of Post-911 issues, increased technological sophistication and the ever increasing importance of satellite communication within the…
Essay Doctorate
SWOT analysis for Pets Assisting With Students
The SWOT analysis is a comprehensive analysis and review of the organizational dynamic, inclusive of the internal and external environmental analysis. The internal analysis is a function of the internal strengths,…
Research Paper Doctorate
Financial rumors and their impact on stock prices
In the stock market, "Spreading rumours in a bid to drive down the price" constitutes a crime. (Jamieson, 2008a) Even though "traders caught circulating false rumours are liable to a range of sanctions including bans on…
Paper Doctorate
Special education inclusion challenges and classroom integration practices
In this paper, we are going to be looking at the challenges facing special needs students with integrating them into general classrooms. This will be accomplished by conducting a research study that will focus on a number of areas to include: specific classroom practices, the problem statement, rationale, hypothesis, personal beliefs, a literature review, data collection techniques, resources / equipment and possible solutions. Once this occurs, is when we can offer specific insights for dealing with these challenges.
Paper Undergraduate
Private clinics and healthcare privatization in China since 1980
China opened its door to the outside world and introduced economic reforms in 1980 with a shift from a controlled central economy to an open and market oriented economy. This project takes on the task of investigating the Chinese privatization of healthcare sector with special emphasis on private clinics and the role they play in overall healthcare industry. Driven by need of times this rapid evolution of private sector influenced the whole industry and gave birth to many problems occurring at both rural and urban areas.
Research Paper Doctorate
The hypothalamus and energy homeostasis in human physiology
Homeostasis: An Analysis of Energy Homeostasis in the Body
Thesis Undergraduate
Sustainable marketing strategies for competitive advantage in global markets
Creating Opportunities for Sustainable Marketing
Paper Masters
The relevance of gerontology nursing in modern healthcare practice
The Relevance and Current Implications of Gerontology Nursing: Literature-Based Evidence
Paper Undergraduate
Managed care's impact on independent psychology practice
¶ … managed care is used in modern medical practice as a variety of fiscal techniques used in a supposed dual role -- to reduce the cost of providing health benefits and to improve the quality of health care.
Essay Doctorate
Early identification of reading problems in middle-grade elementary students
Critique of Spence, Deborah L, et al, Identifying Children in Middle Childhood Who are at Risk for Reading Problems: New evidence and to analyze and access an appropriate tool for reading in elementary students using a response to intervention model, School Psychology Review 2010, Volume 39, No.2 , pp258-276 • The term paper assignment for this class requires you to select a scientific article published in a journal selected from a list of approved journals, and then critique the research methods used in that article using what you learned in this course. It is also OK in your critique to mention things about the methodology that were done right. Also, while I don't expect you to become an expert in the subject of your chosen article, I do expect you to look at the scientific literature on that subject—and one way to do that would be to read some of the studies the authors' of your chosen article cite—and incorporate information from that literature in your paper where appropriate. • The list of approved journals from which the article you critique may be selected is as follows: American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, International Journal of Aging & Human Development, Social Problem, Sociological Perspectives, Sociological Quarterly, of Sociology of Education. • If you want to use an article from a different journal than these, you will have to show me the article you select so that I can approve it. In that case please do NOT email me a copy of the article. Instead, print it out and show it to me before or after class or during office hours. The article must be from a scholarly scientific journal (not a magazine, etc.) and it must be a research article (not an opinion piece, etc.). I do not have to see or approve the article in advance if it is in one of the approved journals. • The article you select must be quantitative in nature, in other words it must present numbers and statistics. Also, make sure what you have selected is an actual research article (a good indicator of that is if the article has an abstract at the beginning of it). • To locate the articles published in those journals online, follow these steps. Go to Blackboard for the course, click on the USF Libraries tab, the select "All USF Libraries", then click on "E Journals by Title", then type in the name of one of the approved journals, then select a year for the journal, then select one of the electronic sources for articles in that journal (JSTOR, Ebcohost, etc.). The procedure may vary a little from what I have said here, so use common sense as you point and click through it. If you have any problems, one of the librarians on the first floor of the main USF library can help you, or call Academic Computing Help at 974-1222. • Once you pull up the pdf of the article you want to use, a good idea is to download it to your computer's desktop (or better yet a memory stick or other external storage device in case your computer crashes). Or you could just print it out, since you will have to attach a printed copy of the article to your term paper when you turn it in. • Your paper must be typed, and you must staple a copy of the article you critiqued to the back of it. In other words, your paper will go on top, with the article underneath it and stapled to it. Do NOT turn the paper in in a plastic binder or in any form other than stapled. Make sure both your name and your U number are on your typed paper. • The best tip I can give for doing the paper is just to take the basic points made in class and in the readings, and then see if the article violated any of those things or did them right. For example, in class we said you need to have a probability sample in order to test for statistical significance. So if the article you picked doesn't have a probability sample but they ran significance tests anyway, that would be a critique. As another example, in class we said that a research study should include all possible variables that could affect the outcome variable. So if you can think of explanatory variables the authors didn't include, that would be another critique. On the other hand, if your chosen article did these things right, then you could compliment the authors for that. In other words just make a list of the points about statistics we made in class and/or were mentioned in the book, and then take that list and see if your article did those things right. Remember also to take a look at some of the other studies on that topic and incorporate information from those into your paper where appropriate. • When you critique the methods the authors used, it would be a plus if you could also suggest alternatives that would have been better. For instance if the authors did an experiment and they try to generalize from that to the society in general, you could mention that we learned in class that experiments are typically weak on generalizability and you could suggest that the authors might have been better off using a survey (if the advantages of a survey would in fact outweight those of an experiment for that particular topic). • When you critique or praise methodology, be specific and say why the methods are good or incorrect. For example, don't just say "the authors shouldn't have use tests of statistical significance", instead give the reason (for example "the authors shouldn't have used tests of statistical significance because they have a nonprobability sample and we learned in class that you need to have a probability sample to properly do significance tests."). • For the format of the term paper as well as an example of how to do it, see the term paper example I have posted in the Course Documents section of Blackboard. The article my example paper critiques is also in the Course Documents section. The format you should use for your paper is to state the page, column, and paragraph number for each comment you want to make, and then briefly make the comment just like I did in my example. Notice in the example paper that I critiqued the methods when the authors were wrong, I complimented them when they did something well, and I discussed their study in light of what other studies on that topic show. I don't necessarily expect your paper to be as detailed as mine (after all I've been doing this for years) but at least it will give you an idea of how to do the assignment.