Literature Review Essay

INTRODUCTION

Literature review is the survey and documentation of published and unpublished work in the area of specific interest to the researcher.

A literature can be any material like books, documents, writings, theses etc published on a particular subject. The literature is often subjected to evaluation. This evaluation is termed as literature review. A literature review is basically an effective evaluation of some published documents related to a particular subject. And reviewing the available text or documents is regarded as the essential step in any legal or social research. Lawrence Neuman observed that literature review is based on the assumptions that knowledge accumulates and that people learn from what others have done or written,

By undertaking a review of the relevant literature related to the research topic may reveal that what aspects have been already covered and whether what remains uncovered which is worthwhile subject of study. The important purpose of analyzing the literature is to gain familiarity with the subject, to gain sufficient theoretical and factual background knowledge. It further helps the researcher to avoid the duplication of effort as doing the same thing which has already been covered is worthless unless it has sufficient reasons that justify such

It also helps a researcher in formulating a good research problem. It enables the researcher to learn from others experience like for instance, the various techniques, modes of research, procedures and the research designs used by different researcher which is worth copying so that a researcher can frame a better hypothesis and gain new insights into it. It also enables the researcher how to work out like how to answer a question and indeed, what questions needs to be asked.

An important advantage of review is that the researcher can avoid mistakes by learning from the experience of others, more so where a legal research involves a field study as well. In short, a well-written literature review can provide a ‘mental road map’ of the past, present and future of research in a particular field.

SOURCES OF LITERATURE FOR REVIEW:

The sources of relevant material for literature review may be found in the form of scholarly articles, books, reports, government documents, or official policy reports. Researchers often present reports of their research results as papers at academic or professional gatherings. Many of such reports are found in academic libraries. A researcher should be familiar with the basic methods of locating information in the library and on the