You could organise the review according to personality studies, drinking patterns, relationship skills, and so on.

“Characteristics of adult children of alcoholics”. Cover studies that examine related dependent variables.“What strategies enhance organisational effectiveness?” You can organise the review according to the strategy type. Cover studies that examine related independent variables.or any method that makes sense (Cone & Foster, 1993 Newman et al., 1997).moving from general concepts to the more specific concepts.However you organise it, your review should highlight important aspects of the literature especially areas that you wish to address or improve on. Your aim is to indicate to the reader an understanding of the problem under investigation.

Your review will not only synthesise the literature, but it must present the literature in a logical sequence or order. In addition, there should be a sense that you have explained the background to your study that endorses the decision you have made to study your topic. It should not be verbose, or a repetition of the entire contents of that chapter, but rather a succinct account of the current state of knowledge on your topic and the instruments used in the study. The summary is a precis of what has been written about in the chapter. Each sub-section of the suggested review structure will be expanded upon separately. However, if the direction of the study changes due to new research findings, then new literature may need to be included in subsequent sections or chapters. This is most common when the research problem is defined early on and remains relatively unchanged. It is recommended that the literature review forms one separate chapter of your thesis. The following is a guide to structuring your literature review based on Newman et al. This mind map and its sections can also be the subsections that you use for storing the results of your research e.g.

This mind map can then be used to guide your literature search as well as making sure that you discuss pertinent concepts in the review itself. It is suggested that you create a mind map of the all of the terms that apply to your topic before conducting a literature search. As you review books and journals, write down the topic words that you have selected.

Endnote literature review