Literature review errors - how to avoid the most common mistakes
It is incredibly easy to make literature review errors when you are first starting out on this task. Listed below are some of the most common ones that doctoral students make during their review of the literature. Take a quick look at them. You will see that avoiding them usually requires just a little slowing down and thoughtful planning on your part.
1. It is done in a hurry instead of systematically. Sources are overlooked, skipped.
2. Doctoral student relies on secondary sources.
3. Doctoral student reads journal article results sections only and not the methodology sections which give hints to producing good dissertations.
4. It is too broad a topic and the literature becomes unwieldy.
5. Student makes copies with pages missing.
6. You neglect to generate key words as you pursue the review of the literature.
7. You forget to use the reference section of journal articles to generate lists of more pertinent articles.
