(a) Individual items

• What is the (empirical) basis of this research?
• How does the research relate to other research writings on the topic?
• What theoretical framework is being used?
• What georaphical area does the research refer to?
• What social group(s) does the research refer to?
• When was the research carried out and is it likely still to be empirically valid?

(b)  In relation to the literature as a whole

• What is the range of research that has been conducted?
• What methods have generally been used and what methods have been neglected?
• What, in summary, does the existing research tell us?
• What, in summary, does the existing research not tell us?
• What contradictions are there in the literature - either recognised or unrecognised by authors cencerned?
• What are the deficiencies in the existing research, in substantive or methodological terms?

Types of Literature Review

Description

Inclusive

The inclusive approach to reviewing the literature seeks to identify everything that has been written on a particular topic. The compilation of such a bibliography may be a significant achievement in itself, independent of any research project with which it may connected. It becomes a resource to be drawn on in the future by others.

The inclusive/evaluative approach takes the inclusive approach a stage further by providing a commentary on the literature in terms of its coverage and its contribution to knowledge and understanding of the topic. One approach to this topic style of review involves a systematic, quantitative appraisal of the findings of a number of projects focused on the same topic. The technique, known as meta-analysis (Glass et al., 1981), is suitable for the sort of research where findings are directly comparable from one study to another - for example when the key findings are expressed in terms of correlation and regression coefficients.

The exploratory approach is more focused and seeks to discover existing research which might throw light on a specific research question or issue. Comprehensiveness is not as important as the focus on a particular question or issue. The skill in conducting such a review lies in keeping the question or issue in sight, while 'interrogating' the literature for ideas and insights which may help shape the research. The reviewer needs to be open to useful new ideas, but must not be side-tracked into areas which stray too far from the question or issue of interest.

An example of the instrumental approach is the brief review in Case Study. Here the focus of the research is a management issue and the literature is used as a source of suitable ideas on how the research might be tackled. The criterion for selection of literature is not to present a picture of the state of knowledge on the topic, but merely to identify a useful methodology for the project in hand.

Content analysis and hermeneutics are techniques which involve detailed analysis of the contents of a certain body of literature or other documentary source as texts. The text becomes a focus of research in its own right rather than being merely a report of research. The text might be, for example, novels, the speeches of politicians or the contents of advertising. Content analysis tends to be quantitative, involving, for example, counting the number of occurrences of certain phrases. Hermeneutics tends to be qualitative in nature, the term being borrowed from the traditional approach to analysis and interpretation of religious texts.