Conducting a Literature Review

Critical Reading

Tips on Critical Reading

The first step towards critical reading is to keep your purpose in mind when you read. Don't let the arguments in the book distract you from your reading agenda. Before beginning to read, take a few moments to think about what it is you are expecting from the article or chapter.

Previewing or prereading can help you focus your thoughts. Skim the headings and the abstract of the piece, perhaps look at the first line of each paragraph and the conclusion.

• Do you need to read everything with equal attention?
• Can you see where the arguments are headed?
• Preread before you copy - you may not need to copy every page

Critical Reading of Web Based Material

Most information that appears on the internet has not been peer reviewed, unlike many journal articles and most scholarly books. Therefore it is very important that you read these writings critically and objectively. There are many excellent resources and lots of knowledge on the internet, you just need to be a little careful.

When you are looking at material online, keep a critical focus. You might want to ask some questions like these:

• Who are the authors of this piece? What do you know about them?
• What is the perspective of the writer? (Think about the contexts of gender and culture)
• Why does the site exist?
• How old is the material?
• Are the arguments logical?
• Is there reliable evidence to support the author's contentions?
• Is the material correctly and fully referenced or linked to other online information?

Asking Questions

You should have some specific questions in mind as you read. These may be quite general ("Have there been any specific studies on the role of women in electoral lobbying?") or more specific, ("Are these results comparable with the Japanese study using the same questionnaire?"). These sorts of questions will help you concentrate and deal with the material in an active manner. If you are looking for specific information, you don't need to summarise the whole article or book.

Keeping a list of questions in mind will sharpen your analytical skills and help you keep an objective outlook on your material. Here are some sample questions aimed at eliciting a criticism of experimental methodology:

• What were the authors trying to discover?
• Why is this piece of research important?
• What was measured?
• What information do you have on the sample?
• How was the data collected?
• What were the results?
• What do the authors conclude and to what do they attribute their findings?
• Can you accept the findings as true?
• How can you apply these findings to your own work?

When results are conflicting, you might find it useful to ask the following questions:

• How similar were the programs used?
• Were different measurement instruments used?
• How were the programs evaluated?

These questions will form the basis of your written review. Asking them as you read will tend to slow your reading process down, because you will be thinking as you go. However, doing your critical work early will make the process of writing a critical review much easier. If you take comprehensive notes in your own words as you read and think you will have done the really hard work before you start to write.

Taking Notes

Your note taking should reflect your reading questions. Summaries have their uses, but they aren't the building blocks of a good literature review. Taking notes and making critical comments is more useful.

Keep in mind that although taking notes is time consuming, much of it will be directly usable later. For this reason, it is useful to take notes using your computer, rather than in longhand. This can also contribute to a sense of the progress of your thesis, rather than thinking of the reading as being somehow separate from the writing.

• When you take notes, you may like to try splitting your notes page in two.
• Write your summary of the authors conclusions and evidence in one column.
• In the other half of your page, note your reactions to what you have read.
• Comment on methodology.
• Make connections between your project and what you are reading.
• Compare and contrast the views of other authors.
• Make a note of what you think about the material.
• Even comments like "These arguments are confusing" or "I don't understand this" may be useful.

This two column system has several advantages:

• It keeps you thinking about the major issues and ideas.
• You will be able to differentiate between your views and the work of others, thus reducing the risk of plagiarism ( your material is on one side of the page, everything used from the other side of the page must be acknowledged.)
• You are more likely to filter material and therefore take a more critical approach.

An alternative to the two columns is to use two colours of pen - one for your ideas and the other for quotes and paraphrases. If you prefer writing your notes on file cards, this may be a better choice.

It doesn't really matter how you organise and write your notes as long as you:

• Keep track of the difference between your ideas and those of other authors
• Make sure your notes are legible
• Remember to provide clear references including page numbers in case you want to look at the original material again, or cite it in your review.