I am stuck fast in the mud.

At bit of background about me ... I work full time, 40 hours per week. I have been a part time student (one Associate Diploma, one Bachelor, and one Masters) during my working life (nearly 30 years). I have a grown up family (wife and two daughters who are both at Uni). I have been able to successfully juggle work, home, and study OK so far. Recently, I have gone through a particularly bad patch at work. I was caught up in some nasty internal politics. I cut my losses, did a triple summersault, and landed on my feet. Unfortunately, it was a serious distraction for about five months.

I have been doing a part time PhD for the last twelve months. The study is related to what I have been observing at work. I have read about 300 academic articles and recently completed an excellent research methodology course.

I have had a couple of aborted attempts at doing the literature review. The results are not PhD standard, way too broad and lacking academic rigor. I have tried a number of different tricks (mind mapping, just writing, etc). It is not helping, just making it more frustrating.

I gather that a PhD should have a “story” or a logical sequence that the reviewer can follow. I have seen some great literature that I can use, the trouble is folding this into my research. My trouble is justifying why I am using a particular academic article for this research instead on another.

Any thoughts on overcoming the writer’s block?

Hi

I am going through something similar at the moment so I can really relate to what you are saying.  I started my part-time PhD in December ( I work lecture full time in a university but have to commute 3 hours a day to get there). I am supposed to have written 10,000 word f my lit review by end December but so far I have written 2,000 words and they are rubbish (I sent them to my supervisor to show I was doign something and his only comment was "they will be a lot better after the work you are doign over the summer" which I took to mean - this is so bad I'm not even going to comment) (I wrote them in June/July & have written nothing since).  What I do have is some very detailed plans/notes (using mind manager) plus a research seminar I am giving next week which I am hoping to get a few thousand words out of.

My big fear is that what I am writing isn't "PhD standard" even though I have distinctions in both my masters' degrees and I have publications.

A friend who has a PhD already and one who is near completion told me that I just have to write - get something down on paper as it an be edited and refined at a later date. Don't try to "write a PhD lit review - just get some thoughts on paper and then take it from there,

I have broken what I need to do into sections and so hope that by just thinking of writing a few hundred words on x and a few hundred words on y it will add up to something.

I don't think you need to justify one article over another - include them both ("x say y; z et al put forward a contrasting perspective...").  For my MA dissertation (15,000 words) I read about 200 sources and 167 of them made it to the final version - I expect that I will be over 500 (or more) for my PhD.

Don't know if this helps but you aren't alone :-)

do read Hart's book on doing a lit review, it's well worth the time it takes as it gives lots of advice about how to go about the process. I'm doing mine in bits as I do the chapters really, but I have used the method described there to set the scene etc.. The thing is, as far as I can see, is that the expectation is that it needs to be more critical than any other review you may have done, so you have to find out what their standpoint is, and how well they have defended that standpoint (what you need does of course depend upon the usual approach in your particular area) It is good if you can show that you have looked at any material which suggests another point of view as this shows depth, and also include the methods you have employed to widen the search if there isn't much literature available, or how you have narrowed it if there is potentially masses of material. As for overcoming the block, you just need to write something, anything for the chapter, what you shouldn't do is write a paragraph and then keep revising it instead of keeping going, revision comes later - and is very cringe making - but get the flow going and at least you will have plenty of material to revise and you may get, oh, half a dozen sentences out of a page for your final effort.:-)

I'd recommend Hart's book too .. but before that i'd reconsider your mind set on this.. if you've 'read about 300 academic articles'  you are doing the literature review.

I'd start by summarising those you find interesting, then seeing if they link together. 

I visualised my literature review with a series of venn diagrams... i had an ever decreasing number of circles, once i got to three i could then "see" the overlaps.   I ended up with two and my interest is in the overlap between these two areas.

I think you are spot on mind mapping etc, you are going through a PhD.. this is what its like.. confusing as hell ...  embrace it ;-)

you've found this forum which will help too.   take care, Chuff

I can empathize because I had similar problems with my lit review.  After a couple of false starts, I worked out that what I needed was a framework or method to guide me - otherwise how do you know you have reviewed all the pertinent literature? So, I found a couple of guides to Systematic Literature Reviews such as Cochrane(cochrane.org), York Uni (york.ac.uk) and a couple others, and made a start with that - I have adapted the methodology to suit my needs, but I have found it quickly shows you any gaps in your reading and you can point to your systematic searches and say that you have considered everything that was relevant.  This would help sort out any question of academic rigour.

This section is almost stand-alone in my thesis, in that it has informed other chapters but could be read as a paper in itself.  I am sure it could be adapted to be more integrated if you needed. I am happy to supply the pro-forma that I have used which lays it out logically.  I used it because the method was new to me and I felt as though I needed a helping hand.

Good luck!

I'd focus on the problems you've described i.e. "not PhD standard, way too broad and lacking academic rigor". So above all you need to be more selective - which you're finding hard - and be more critical in terms of what you write.

I wrote a very selective literature survey. Rather than think in terms of hundreds of papers I focused on the key ones related to my research topic, and spun a story around those. Could you narrow down to just 10 key papers or books that are relevant? Maybe 25 at a push. But 300 is way too much to cover in enough depth in a good literature review. Once you have identified your core papers you can then start to build an argument and structure around them. You could introduce and discuss more articles as appropriate, but the key thing is to identify your focus.

To choose, think in terms of which are closest to what you are doing, in terms of the materials they are working with, or the methodology, or the argument. What existing work does your research topic build on? Would that help to define what you need to focus on.

Would you find it useful to look at example literature reviews? Your supervisor might be able to show you some that their other students have done, or you could look at other people's PhD theses in the library (the first chapter is usually essentially a lit review). Might give an idea of the sort of standard and style and depth that's required.

I do sympathise as I started my PhD a couple of months ago and am struggling a little to get to grips with the lit review. One of my problems is similar to what you mention - there's been just so much written on the subject that I can't possibly cite (or read!) absolutely everything, but then how to choose which articles to use? My supervisor has been quite helpful in guiding my choice of reading though, maybe your sup should be giving you a bit more advice and pointers?

Hi Whynot,
Am totally in the same boat. In mud :) Trying to overcome writer's block by summarising key points of articles read under headings and hoping that once read back will be able to form more of an argument. Seeing the word count going up is a little bit of a motivation to keep going - gets rid of blank screen freeze. Although find myself procrastinating on Facebook far too much. Good luck with it!

Colleagues,

Thanks for the comments. I will read Hart’s book (in fact, I have just ordered a copy from an online bookstore). I am not too sure about Cochrane; it appears to be too removed from my field.

Yes, the number of articles in the literature review is rather broad. At this stage of the journey, I suppose that I am digging through the mud looking for the few nuggets. It has been a good learning experience, so, I do not consider it a waste of time.

I do like the ideas of just picking out the top 10-15 articles to use as the core of the review. I already have the top five in mind. I also like the idea of doing some Venn Diagrams (I was playing with something similar in the mind mapping space).

I do agree with the advice, the best thing is to keep writing and plugging away.

My mentor actually suggesting thinking of it as a funnel cone or kitchen sieve. Start with the broadest topic and continually narrow in until you reach your finite point. You could also think of it as a sort of taxonomy, starting out by identifying the "big idea" and then working your way to a specifically named topic. My peer review writing group actually drew cones on paper and filled them in with the logical steps until our arguments narrowed. Following those steps really helped in writing the lit review and kept me on a logical track that focused to my main point.

Hope that helps,
Nic

This is my vey first post on this forum. Actually, I joined because I was going to put a post up about being stuck on my literature review. However, Whynot saved me the trouble and all the replies on this thread were very helpful ! Thank you everyone ! Peaty_Girl