dissertation review sample

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.
The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Another way of organising your content is according to theme; or sub-themes, if your review focuses on one overarching topic. This method of organisation still allows you to present an overview of any polemical debates within these sub-themes. A thematic review can easily shift between chronological periods within each sub-section too.
As you’re identifying your sources, ensure you a keep a list as it’s very easy to lose focus given the wide scope of the Internet. Reference tools such as Mendeley allow you to store your sources online and via a desktop app, and are a great way to keep your bibliography organised. The citation tools attached to these programmes will also allow you to simply export citations in a format of your choice when required later. They will save you countless hours trying to figure out how to use Harvard or APA referencing correctly.

The first goal of this thesis was to develop a clinical prediction rule (CPR) that would identify neck pain patients that would be likely to benefit from thoracic spine thrust manipulation (TSTM). The second goal of this thesis was to compare the treatment effect of TSTM in all patients who received TSTM, regardless of clinical presentation, against those patients who met the CPR criteria. This dissertation project has already produced a landmark peer-reviewed article that was recently published in Physical Therapy 3 .
Development of a Clinical Prediction Rule to Identify Patients with Neck Pain Likely to Benefit from Thoracic Spine Manipulation and a Range of Motion Exercise.
JA Cleland.
PhD thesis.
2006. Nova Southeastern University: Fort Lauderdale, FL E-mail: [email protected]

To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• AND to find sources that contain more than one keyword (e.g. social media AND body image AND generation Z
• OR to find sources that contain one of a range of synonyms (e.g. generation Z OR teenagers OR adolescents)
• NOT to exclude results containing certain terms (e.g. apple NOT fruit)

Conversely, if the literature review reveals vast amounts of literature, the initial question needs to be framed more narrowly. (For example, if your topic had been “distance learning in higher education”, you would almost certainly end up with a vast amount of citations.)
There are essentially four main stages of writing a literature review:

References:

http://www.oxbridgeessays.com/blog/write-dissertation-literature-review-depth-guide/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2565605/
http://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/
http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/archived/research/guides/methods/literature2.htm
http://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/