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Literature Review Searching: A Structured or Systematic Approach

This guide provides an overview of using a structured approach to searching when doing a literature review.

Create your research question: Summary

This section contains advice and resources to help you with the first step of your literature review: deciding on a topic and refining your research question.

Points to remember:

  • Read your assignment carefully to make sure you understand what is expected.
  • Start with a broad idea of your topic and brainstorm to narrow your focus, but don't limit yourself by getting too narrow.
  • Be flexible with your topic; expect it to change as you move through the research process.
  • Choose a topic that is interesting to you!

To learn more about choosing a research topic, see the Academic Research Skills Guide.  

Choose a Research Topic

Watch the video below from NC State University Libraries (CC BY) for advice on choosing your topic and refining that topic into a research question: 

View this video on YouTube to access the video transcript.

Create your Research Question

Your research question is the question you want to answer. It shouldn't be too broad or too narrow. It will help focus your search strategy, give you ideas for search keywords, and determine what you will include or exclude in your results. And remember, it should be interesting to you!

  • If your question is too broad, you may get lots of results but only a few may be relevant.
    • Broad question: 
      • What can help reduce anxiety in dogs?
  • With a very narrow question, you may have more relevant results, but only a few.
    • Very narrow question: 
      • Does the use of a Thundershirt® help reduce barking and howling in adopted Beagles during thunderstorms? 
  • You want to have a good balance that is not too broad nor too narrow.
    • Balanced question: 
      • Do anxiety vests help decrease anxiety behaviours in dogs during thunderstorms? 

To help with refining your question, you may want to consider FINER criteria. FINER stands for:

F - Feasible
I - Interesting
N - Novel
E - Ethics
R - Relevant

Victoria University has a excellent overview of the FINER criteria that explains how these criteria can help you refine your question. 

Question Frameworks

  • One simple way to create your question is by considering, "Who, What, and How" when you are designing the question.
  • However, depending on your discipline or type of project, you may want to look at using a question framework, such as the PICOC framework outlined in Table 1. The PICOC framework can be useful for topics in the social sciences:  
Table 1. An example using the PICOC framework. 
Element Definition Example
P - Population Who or what is the problem or situation? dogs with anxiety
I - Intervention OR Exposure What ways would you consider intervening in a situation? Or when it isn't an intervention, what is the exposure (such as an unintentional occurrance or happening) Anxiety vests
C - Comparison What is the alternative? (this is optional) (this is optional)
O - Outcomes How is this measured?  behaviour 
C - Context What is the context of the setting? Is there are specific area, country, etc? North America 

Reference:

Booth, A., Sutton, A., & Papaioannou, D. (2016). Systematic approaches to a successful literature review (2nd ed.). Sage.

  • There are many ways to frame your question and some frameworks are more useful than others depending on the subject or discipline. 
  • The University of Maryland Libraries has an excellent table that lists many frameworks for research questions and the discipline they are used in.