Overview on various types of literature review

Narrative or Traditional literature reviews

A narrative or traditional literature review is a thorough, critical, and objective examination of a specific topic’s current state of knowledge. It is an essential part of the research process because they help establish a theoretical framework and the focus or context for your research. It allows you to recognize patterns and trends in the literature in order to identify gaps or inconsistencies in a body of knowledge. This should lead you to a research question that is sufficiently focused on justifying your research.

Four common types of narrative reviews:

1.General literature review
It provides a review of the most significant and essential aspects of the current knowledge of the topic. This general literature review serves as the introduction to a thesis or dissertation and must be defined by the research objective, underlying hypothesis or problem, or argumentative thesis of the reviewer.

2. Theoretical literature review
It inspects the way in which theory shapes or frames research

3. Methodological literature review
A review of the methodological literature in which the research methods and design are described. These methodological reviews outline the strength and weaknesses of the methods suggested for the future.

Scoping Reviews

True to their name, scoping reviews are an ideal tool to determine the scope or coverage of a body of literature on a given topic and give a clear indication of the volume of literature and studies available as well as an overview (broad or detailed) of its focus.

purposes for conducting a scoping review:

• To discover the types of available evidence in a given field
• To clarify key concepts/ definitions in the literature
• To examine how research is conducted on a certain topic or field
• To identify key characteristics or factors related to a concept
• As a precursor to a systematic review
• To identify and analyze knowledge gaps

Systematic Quantitative Literature Review

It is a smart and effective way to conduct literature reviews, especially for researchers and others exploring new disciplines. It bridges the gap between traditional narrative review and meta-analysis methods.

Narrative methods, which are common in research theses, rely on the author’s expertise and experience, making them difficult for novices to produce and publish. In contrast, searching the literature systematically using online databases and other sources to find all relevant papers that meet specific criteria (systematically identifying the literature), entering information about each paper into a personal database, and then compiling tables that summarise the current state of the literature, including identifying research gaps (quantifying the literature). The results are reliable, quantifiable, and repeatable. This method can also be used to determine whether or not there are suitable datasets for meta-analysis.

Cochrane Reviews

Cochrane Reviews are systematic reviews of primary research in human health care and health policy that are widely regarded as the gold standard in evidence-based medicine. They look into the consequences of interventions for prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. They also evaluate the accuracy of a diagnostic test for a specific patient group and setting.

Each systematic review addresses a specific question: Can antibiotics help alleviate the symptoms of a sore throat? All the current primary research on a topic that meets specific criteria is searched for, collated, and then assessed using stringent guidelines to establish whether or not there is conclusive evidence about a specific treatment. The reviews are updated regularly, ensuring that treatment decisions can be based on the most up-to-date and reliable evidence.

A dissertation literature review contributes 40 % of the weight. Hence, more effort should be taken to collect exhaustive, up-to-date literature published from various countries. It is always essential to choose literature work that is perfectly suitable for your research field. If you have difficulty in research data collection, you can contact Tutors India literature review service.