UNDERSTANDING LITERATURE REVIEW AS A RESEARCH METHOD
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Knowledge breakthroughs have been identified in many disciplines such as technology, science, engineering, management, social, business, finance, and health; as a result, it is quite challenging to get updates on the current level of advancements, and establishing gap in a subject matter without a literature review. The role of literature review in research papers cannot be overemphasized; hence, the need to explore suitable methods to conduct a literature review. This study aims at exploring literature review as a research method, with a view to identifying the suitable methods for reviewing literatures. Literature review is a study of academic references on a subject matter, and it helps in analyzing recent issues, models, and ideas, revealing appropriate hypotheses, concepts, theories, models, methods, and lacunas (gaps) in previous researches. Writing a literature review entails finding relevant publications in the form of journal articles or books, evaluating the publications without bias, and summarizing the findings. The fundamental processes of reviewing literatures are finding relevant material, reviewing references, identifying trends and issues, gap identification, and outlining the findings. Finally, the essence of literature review in researches is not to replicate everything that earlier authors have written on a subject but to critically appraise previous studies, identify gaps, and fill the missing gaps. This study appraised the methods of literature review, revealed the major steps for reviewing papers, and exposed the readers to the dynamics of writing sentences in their own simple way.
JEL Classification Codes: B40, C82.
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