This article reviews the key types of literature review. In general, there are many types of literature review. The choice of a specific type depends on your research approach and design. The following types of literature review are the most popular in business or social science researches:
Argumentative literature review: The purpose of argumentative review is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Argumentative Literature Reviews either support or refute an argument. As the name implies, examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply imbedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. It should be noted that a potential for bias is a major shortcoming associated with argumentative literature review.
Narrative literature review: A narrative or traditional literature review is a comprehensive, critical and objective analysis of the current knowledge on a topic. It also referred to as traditional literature review, critiques literature and summarizes the body of a literature. Narrative review also draws conclusions about the topic and identifies gaps or inconsistencies in a body of knowledge. Researchers need to have a sufficiently focused research question to conduct a narrative literature review. Essentially, a narrative literature review summarizes and synthesizes the body of work on a topic.
Integrative literature review reviews: Integrative literature review is a distinctive form of research that generates new knowledge about the topic reviewed. It critiques, and synthesizes secondary data about research topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. This is particularly suitable for researchers who does not involve primary data collection and data analysis.
Scoping literature review: It is an exploratory research projects that systematically map the literature on a topic by identifying key concepts, theories and sources of evidence that inform practice in the field. Scoping literature review is used to identify the scope or coverage of a body of literature on a given topic. Unlike systematic literature review is conducted to find answer to more specific research question; scoping literature review is conducted to explore more general research question.
Systematic literature review: Systematic reviews are a type of literature review of research which require equivalent standards of rigour as primary research. It is comprehensive and details the timeframe within which the literature was selected. Systematic literature review can be divided into two categories: meta-analysis and meta-synthesis.
In terms of meta-analysis, researcher takes findings from several studies on the same subject and analyze these using standardized statistical procedures. In meta-analysis patterns and relationships are detected and conclusions are drawn. Meta-analysis is associated with deductive research approach.
On the other hand, meta-synthesis is based on non-statistical techniques. This technique integrates, evaluates and interprets findings of multiple qualitative research studies. Meta-synthesis literature review is conducted usually when following inductive research approach.
Theoretical literature review Theoretical literature review help establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.
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