Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination (Published in association with The Open University)

I decided to buy this book having read all the fantastic reviews on here, but was sorely disappointed. I am in the process of writing a postgrad literature review for my CIPD and have to say, this book was absolutely no help whatsoever. Maybe it works for academics, but for business students, I would avoid this like the plague. If you're after a book that gives you practical hints on how to get started with your literature review, don't buy this. I found the content and writing style to be largely theoretical and abstract, which made it difficult to follow or glean any quick pointers from. Having trawled through the whole sorry dirge I was left none the wiser by the end of the book and found much more useful and practical tips online.

I used Chris Hart's book as a postgraduate student and I was more than satisfied to say the least. After reading the book I was able to advise my classmates as to how to write a good literature review.

There are a lot of interesting illustrations which thoroughly explain the process of prior research than needs to be done and then how it's all combined and written up as a document i.e. a literature review.

Moreover, the most important elements that are described within the book are the types of research available to the researcher, the goals of a research, the issues of different types of research, the different ways of argumentation, how to cite references, a checklist of do's and don'ts.

I recommend Hart's book to every postgraduate student bound to a literature review write-up and academics in general.

A brilliant book written in such a wonderful, transparent and
understandable style. A real gem that is best in its class. Excellent reference when judging graduate and post-graduate thesis works. Recommended warmly!

The book covers the typical issues in conducting a literature review in the social sciences. It covers the role of the lit review. How to review. Classifying and reading research. Analysing arguments. Organising ideas. Mapping and expressing ideas. The later sections bring to light the real purpose of the review: not to read everything written on x but to put the reasons for your study within the context of the past research in a topic and explore the ideas that have underlain progress in a topic. Excellent

Chris Hart's guide to doing a literature review presents a comprehensive perspective on the literature review as a research tool. While it is addressed to scholars in the social sciences, this book is useful in most areas of design research. Hart discusses the role of literature in research. He explains how reviewing earlier work releases the imagination rather than constraining it. He shows how to classify and read research literature, how to analyze arguments, and how to organize and express ideas. He also teaches the reader useful ways to map and analyze the ideas that each body of literature reveals. Finally, he demonstrates in careful, clear stages how to develop and write the literature review. At each point, Hart develops a serious, well-reasoned explanation that helps the scholar to understand why each step is important and how to do it well.

Ken Friedman
Professor
Norwegian School of Management, Oslo, and Denmark's Design School, Copenhagen

This review originally appeared in Design Research News, Volume 6, Number 5, May 2001 ISSN 1473-3862.