Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination (Published in association with The Open University)

Doing a Literature Review can help. This accessible text offers advice on how to:

{ search out existing knowledge on a topic;

{ analyze arguments and ideas;

{ map ideas, arguments and perspectives;

{ produce a literature review;

{ construct a case for investigating a topic.

Doing a Literature Review is a practical and comprehensive guide to researching, preparing and writing a literature review, an essential component of research projects. It is an essential tool for postgraduate students but also for undergraduate and novice researchers across the social sciences and humanities.

Doing a Literature Review is a set book for The Open University Postgraduate Foundation Module (D820) The Challenge of the Social Sciences.

Chris Hart's guide to doing a literature review presents a comprehensive perspective on the literature review as a research tool. While it is addressed to scholars in the social sciences, this book is useful in most areas of design research. Hart discusses the role of literature in research. He explains how reviewing earlier work releases the imagination rather than constraining it. He shows how to classify and read research literature, how to analyze arguments, and how to organize and express ideas. He also teaches the reader useful ways to map and analyze the ideas that each body of literature reveals. Finally, he demonstrates in careful, clear stages how to develop and write the literature review. At each point, Hart develops a serious, well-reasoned explanation that helps the scholar to understand why each step is important and how to do it well.

Book review published in Design Research News, Volume 6, Number 5, May 2001 ISSN 1473-3862.


More than Just Doing the Lit Review   June 26, 2003
Margaret L. FalerSweany (Richardson, TX United States)
72 out of 73 found this review helpful

When I purchased this book, I was looking for a potential text for a short-course on writing the disseration I'm teaching. I really expected the standard "here's how to search through the library and databases." This is simply much more that that. It's less about how to do the review itself and more about how to think about your topic. In fact, Hart raises the questions I should have been asking myself--if only I had known--and my advisor wasn't. How much better my work would have been if I'd had an understanding of how to analyze a text from various perspectives. Many texts offer advice on how to write but few talk about how to think about your question and how to fit it within the context of work in your discipline. Hart does this.


so good my advisor is going to use it   July 17, 2005
Darcy J. (North Carolina, USA)
10 out of 14 found this review helpful

This book is great. It has all you need to complete a research paper at any level. I used it for my bachelor's project which, according to my advisor, is equivalent to a Master's thesis in content requirement. My advisor has asked me to lend him the book so he can use it to revise the current research manual supplied by the college. This book is easy to read and has a lot of useful tables and charts.


See the answer in the book: what is the purpose of literature review   February 19, 2009
Joao M. Rocha Filho (São Paulo, Brazil)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I did a research work and the most difficult part was the literature review. This book makes clear why to do do the literature review, the particular difficulties in the social sciences and how to proceed step-by-step to complete the work. I do recommend.


Probably the only book of its kind   March 15, 2000
74 out of 78 found this review helpful

I have read several books on doing literature reviews. Except for this one, they were all about the quantitative style of review called meta-analysis.

This is a well-written and informative text, though it is a little too wordy for me to rate it excellent. It is the only book I could find that describes exactly how to produce the lit review section of a thesis. This is something that even books on dissertation writing tend to leave to your imagination.