What Goes in the Literature Review of the Discussion Section?
What Goes in the Literature Review of the Discussion Section?
Literature reviews play an important role in the discussion section of a manuscript. In this section, your findings should be the focus, rather than those of other researchers. Therefore, you should only use the studies mentioned in the literature review as support and evidence for your study.
There are three ways in which you can use literature reviews in the discussion section:
- To Provide Context for Your Study
Using studies from the literature review helps to set the foundation for how you will reveal your findings and develop your ideas. - Compare your Findings to Other Studies
You can use previous literature as a backdrop to compare your new findings. This helps describe and also advance your ideas. - State the Contribution of Your Study
In addition to developing your ideas, you can use literature reviews to explain how your study contributes to the field of study.
However, there are three common mistakes that researchers make when including literature reviews in the discussion section. First, they mention all sorts of studies, some of which are not even relevant to the topic under investigation. Second, instead of citing the original article, they cite a related article that mentions the original article. Lastly, some authors cite previous work solely based on the abstract, without even going through the entire paper.
We hope this article helps you effectively present your literature review in both the introduction as well as the discussion section of your manuscript. You can also mention any other tips that will add to this article in the comments section below.
References:
[1] http://www.math.montana.edu/jobo/phdprep/documents/phd6.pdf
