How to Write a Literature Review for an Agriculture Dissertation

An agriculture dissertation is an original academic manuscript based on research to satisfy the graduation requirements in the undergraduate, masters, or Ph.D. levels around agricultural activities such as crop production and rearing of livestock. A literature review is a systematic method of identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing current work produced by other researchers within a particular area of interest.  The literature review is the second chapter of the agriculture dissertation after the introduction to the agriculture dissertation, and you develop it from the research topic and the research questions of the agriculture dissertation.

The literature review serves several purposes in a dissertation such as, determining the research methodology and design of the agriculture dissertation, guiding the theoretical framework of the agriculture dissertation, identifying the various contributions of researches in your research topic, and the gaps in knowledge that could lead to further research studies.

The various activities in carrying out a literature review include, identifying the research questions, locating and selecting the sources, analyzing and evaluating the sources, organizing the information to build an argument, synthesizing and critiquing the literature, and the considerations in writing the review.

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Research Questions

The literature review of an agriculture dissertation is embedded, meaning it forms a part of the research study and connects the sources and the research problem as well as informs the research design for future studies. You use the literature review to demonstrate how the research study expands the existing knowledge and contributes to a fuller understanding of the research topic. The research topic and the research questions are formulated in the first chapter to guide the literature review process.

Restate the research question in your literature review, then choose keywords that you could use for your search.  You then enter the keywords in electronic databases to acquire sources on your subject such as titles, abstracts, and author’s name, among others. You can use synonyms to keywords and phrases to research questions to search for sources within your research topic. You can also use a subject or descriptor to search databases and catalogs. You could also use a related article to identify keywords within your research topic. In case it is difficult for you to determine synonyms to use in the databases, you can use the thesaurus to find terms that are specific to your discipline of study. Some of the databases that you can use for your agricultural dissertation are the BIOSIS Previews, among others.

As you search the databases, back up the articles or create your bibliography to keep a record of the sources for easier retrieval when conducting your research or writing your references.

Selecting and Analyzing Sources

Choose the appropriate sources for conducting your literature review by first scanning the sources. Secondly, determine the scope of the literature review. Thirdly, use the criteria for inclusion and exclusion to narrow down your sources of information.

Scanning the sources involves determining the relevance and usefulness of each article to the literature review by examining if it is peer-reviewed or written by a well-known researcher. You then skim through each article by checking the abstract, introduction, headings, among other sections.

You then determine the scope of the review, that is, the level of coverage of your literature review.

Finally, determine what to include or exclude in the literature review using considerations such as the comprehensiveness of your literature review, the time of publishing, the relevance of the article to your research study, among others. You then identify relevant information from the sources you identify by reading and analyzing the selected texts. You could create a document folder consisting of all the sources of information that you have decided to use for the literature review of your agriculture dissertation. Take notes of any relevant information from the different sources and document for easy tracking of those sources whenever you need them. You can use the article note-taking index cards (ANTICs), either handwritten or electronic, to ensure the information you acquire from the sources is orderly structured.

Interpret and summarize information that you considered relevant from each article and then select only the ideas that are apposite for understanding your research topic. You can then create thematic-concentric circles to identify major themes of your literature review.

Critical Evaluation and Organization of Literature

Once you have obtained information from the various sources, and then adopt a critical stance by assessing the strengths and shortcomings of the information you extracted. You could also group the sources to critique the groups together by identifying the patterns of weaknesses that are common across the research studies.

You then organize and structure the knowledge you have acquired from the various journal articles and form a meaningful storyline that builds your literature review. You can adopt an organizational strategy to achieve a logical order on the multiple sources, enhance understanding of the information relevant to your research topic, and prompt the development of a new perspective on the literature. Some of the approaches you can use to synthesize and organize information in your literature review are the synthesis matrix, summary table, mapping, and outline.

Argument Development

You then construct the argument you put forward in your literature review. The argument of the literature review could be an argument of discovery or an argument of advocacy. The argument of discovery analyzes an existing piece of literature, and you write what you gather while reading the sources about the research topic. On the contrary, the argument of advocacy interprets the meaning of existing knowledge in the context of future implications.

To develop your argument of discovery, first summarize and interpret the information you have collected from the different sources. Secondly, critically evaluate the knowledge you have recorded around your research topic by identifying gaps, underrepresentation, contradictions, and omissions from that information. Finally, extend the current knowledge by recommending rationale such as future research or action that needs to be implemented around the research topic.

Synthesizing Literature

Analyze the knowledge you have acquired from the various sources around your line of argument by making connections among the individual sources and identifying the patterns and trends from those sources. Some of the strategies you can use to systematically identify patterns and trends from the information you have collected are; the grouping of the different sources, comparing and contrasting the journal articles, identifying contradicting findings, and adopting critical dispositions.

Writing and Editing the Literature Review

Write your narrative combining your ideas with those of other authors from the sources you adopted for your literature review. To differentiate between your ideas and those of other researchers, you could use the first–person voice and use citations to indicate when you are writing someone else’s ideas. Ensure that all the sources you cite in our text are recorded in your reference list.

The other thing to consider in writing the literature review of your agriculture dissertations the writer’s voice, that is, the way you present yourself considering the authors you cite and the target audience. The various strategies that you can use to assert your authorial voice are indicating relationships among citations, using evaluative verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and phrases, among others.

Proofread your literature review to identify any areas that may need editing, such as grammatical errors, paragraphing, among others.