Review a minimum of 8-10 articles from peer-reviewed social work journals – (this may include both qualitative and quantitative articles)
Use the most current literature and research articles. If possible, use articles published during the last ten years. However, if an article is significantly important in your topic area, you can cite it regardless of publication year.
Below are the headings you can use for the literature review paper with descriptions of what they should contain. The page length is flexible, but a good rule of thumb is a minimum of 5 and maximum of 10 pages, not including title and references (double spaced).
(Title page)
Introduction and problem statement
Basically, you can use a condensed version of your problem statement paper – just enough to introduce the reader to the problem, and tell why it’s actually a problem that needs to be addressed.
Past research
From your review, describe what has been done in the past to address/understand the problem.
Conflicting findings (if any)
Point out conflicting information, if any, from the literature – did different articles report divergent findings? – likely not, but sometimes this happens.
Identified gaps in literature
What has yet to be understood from the articles you reviewed? Usually you can look at the end of an article in the “Future Research” section where the authors will summarize what is still needed (if you’ve found very recent articles, then this advice will be on the cutting edge, so to speak).
Purpose of the study
Imagine that you were going to carry out your study in order to answer your research question you’ve developed in this course – write a couple paragraphs justifying the purpose of your study. How will it be significant – that is, how, if you were to carry it out, will it contribute novel findings to the profession? Possibly discuss how your research will build upon prior work and how it will differ from prior research. In other words, how would your research fill a gap in the literature that you discussed above?
Research question
Finally, state your research question, and in a couple sentences justify to the reader how your above literature review sufficiently supports the importance of your question.
Conclusion
Very brief, just to remind the reader what they’ve just read.
(References)
** And make sure to follow APA style. **
use this ,ink for one of the refrences
Chapter 3: Conducting a literature review