Hello and help! - Keeping your literature review narrow

M

Hi! I'm an honours student but my biggest issue with my literature review is keeping the topic narrow. I'm finding it far too easy to waste time (in the sense of doing this thesis) on articles that are not strictly enough within my research area. Does this mean my research questions are not narrow enough to prevent this? Or is it just me being too distracted!?

Avatar for rewt

Could be a bit of both. It takes a certain writing skill to start at a high level and efficiently narrow down the topic without going off topic or being too brief. It is difficult to write a good literature review in your first ever draft, so I would consider writing a detailed lit review and then you can cut it down through the drafting process. Personally, I write the headers first then the first and last line for section section, then bullet points of each section (so I don't repeat myself and can slowly build concepts), then write the text. I can't tell you if it is to vague but looking for a good structure can help refine your research question.

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