*Finally* started getting this down. Way later than I'd intended. 1500 words so far, how many am I looking at for a social sciences subject?

Depends on the project and the overall word limit. If 80,000 is the target, your literature review would be anything between 20,000 and 30,000.

Just piggie-backing on this post. And how long should a lit review be in the area of biological sciences? The same?

I think my main lit review was about 25k-30k and the whole thesis was about 80k

However I think that this is probably quite long for a biological science (I know lots of folk probably do it at this length) but in my experience they are more likely 60-70K and about 200-250 pages that kind of thing.

They are really quite individual and the main thing is to tailor it to your own needs - it may help to look at some of your sups previous PhD thesis' that should give you a rough idea of length and style

S

I was told mine should be first chapter - around 10,000 (social science) - but depends on subject area

yeah, it's looking like around 10,000 according to the powers that be. Unless I was proposing a whole new way of doing things, in which case it would need to be more. As it is, I'm using established methods within an existing theoretical framework, so one chapter, 10,000.

I'm wondering about this too, most of my material will come from books, jourmals, gov webistes etc. and there is going to be a lot of analysis of same so my problem is where does the lit review end and the rest of the thing begin . I have one samll bit of research which will invole questionnaires, simply because there is a need to prove my initial scene setting is justified, before I launch into the rest. The problem is there has been very little research done in my area, and what is more some of the stuff that has been done has major flaws that are only obvious if viewed alongside the points I will be making later. (for example one report suggests that most people in the area are ex military - the sample was very small and the sampling was unconventional - whereas I never had anyone from any of my various sources over the years from this background) so there isn't much literature to review and if I review it here, what goes in the other chapters?

Can't help there joyce, might be a question for your supervisor.

Meanwhile though, 5000 words, 1 of 5 sections done. Finally getting somewhere :)

Joyce - there're no hard rules about organising a thesis with a standard lit review. I'm breaking mine up into the appropriate chapters - there will be no single lit review chapter. perhaps you could arrange yours to better suit your material.

When I presented my chapter plan sans lit review I was told there had to be one, so I've put one in, but am not sure what is going to go in it yet!

I'm surprised at that. I was told that the chapter plan can take basically any form that suits the project. Of course there has to be a lit review somewhere somehow - but not as a dedicated chapter. I hope my external agrees with my supervisor about this!

I'm in soc.sci.& wrote a first draft that was about 9500 wrds. I was told to aim for 10-15,000. Doing the corrections and making it into the second draft is so painful, I haven't been able to do that for a while (was busy with other things). writing is so hard to start sometimes better get a start

15,818. Done :)

Obviously this is now going to get ripped to shreds by my supervisor, but *surely* I have just finished the basis of my literature review!

Looks like beer o'clock to me.

My first attempt at a lit review was completely ripped to shreds by my supervisor and I basically had to re-write it. It's good that you have the basis done though, Barnaby.