Critical Review Of Literature In Social Research

ABSTRACT 

For some inexperienced researchers, reviewing literature is just one of those implicit

requirements for accepting a manuscript for publication in a journal or for the paper to appear

cosmetically academic, and not necessarily for its epistemic value. It should be more than

that, and in fact ought to be the least reason for engaging in the exercise. Even among some

researchers who conceive it as an important ingredient of a study or manuscript, it is often

detached from the process of research conceptualization. In the latter sense, the researcher

works to the answer by undertaking a review based on already decided topical variables.

Thus, the literature section is, in a number of instances, the most neglected part of a

manuscript; a situation borne mainly out of ignorance of what constitutes critical search for

truth. Interestingly, several people do not consider the teaching of the fundamentals of

reviewing literature as an essential aspect of research methodology. Consequently, a large

number of researchers begin their reviewing activity on the basis of conjecture that is bereft

of any form of formal tutelage (Boote and Beile 2005). Hence, for the most part, literature

review is conceived in some quarters as a haphazard venture as it relates to content and

timing.

Ideally, literature review should commence at conception of a study and run through

the entire period of research (Nwankwo and Emunemu 2015). A paper that is rooted in timely

and extensive review of literature is markedly different from another for which less emphasis

is placed on when review begins and robustness. Early reviews lead to prompt identification

of gaps in knowledge which is a prerequisite to forestalling academic redundancy on one

hand and reinventing the wheel on another (Kim 2015; Bui 2009). Although a researcher,

before the review, may have decided on engaging certain dependent and independent

variables in the research process, emerging insights from reviews may however clearly

suggest that toeing that line will most likely not situate the study on the threshold of adding to

knowledge. As a corollary, the researcher will eventually hardly scream eureka (I have

discovered) in the end if s/he continues on that path. To be sure, unless and until the shout of

discovery (waoooo...) becomes the swan-song of a researcher in a particular study