Skip to Main Content

NUR 288: Nursing Concepts IV

This guide is designed for the Nursing Concepts IV Research Instruction.

Literature Review Research

Researching Instruction will cover: 

Discussion about what is a literature review and how to complete a literature review. 

Use of Smart Search and Google Scholar

What is a literature review?

A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. Occasionally you will be asked to write one as a separate assignment (sometimes in the form of an annotated bibliography—see the bottom of the next page), but more often it is part of the introduction to an essay, research report, or thesis. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

From  Taylor, D. (n/a). The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It. University of Toronto, Health Sciences Writing Centre. 

How to complete a literature review

There are several steps in developing a literature review.  These include:

  • Step 1 Define Your Goal
    • Define your paper’s goal
    • Literature review will match paper’s goal
  • Step 2 Do Your Research
    • Review articles related to your paper’s topic
    • Articles are written by scholars
    • Identify top scholars in the field about your topic
    • Include most pertinent publications by those scholars
  • Step 3 Base Summary in Relevance
    • Summarize articles you identified
    • Provide the importance of the article as it relates to your thesis/project statement
    • Establish its relevance to the discussion
  • Step 4 Develop Review Logically
    • What where the earliest ideas on the?
    • How did grow and evolve in the academic conversation?
  • Step 5 Include References/Works Cited List
    • As you write you will include author and date
    • Create comprehensive citation for each article
    • Follow APA format

How to write a literature review