78 6 Background Chapters
Throughout this second section of your review, keep in mind that you are engag-
ing in a conversation with other academics. Engagement is the key concept: it is a
spirit of ‘give and take’ that respects the value of multiple perspectives. It is easy to
make the mistake of thinking that the function of this section is merely to ‘report’
or ‘describe’ previous studies in an effort to show that you have ‘done your home-
work’. Rather, you should interweave various studies to build up the argument that
the problem you are tackling is not yet solved and still raises some interesting and
unanswered questions.
Eventually, you will come to an understanding of the most recent thinking in the
field. At that point, briefly summarize the main points that are still troublesome.
You have identified the ‘gaps’ in the theoretical framework and areas that have
remain relatively unexplored by previous researchers. This summary should be set-
ting the ground for the questions or hypotheses that you will be identifying in your
chapter on design of your own research. In a sense, these are the gaps that you are
trying to fill with your own original contribution.
Understanding Current Practices and Technologies
In a third section of background material, you will need to examine the approaches
and techniques others used in research in your topic area. From your previous read-
ing and your attendance at research seminars in your department you will probably
have become aware of the flaws in research design, research methods, and the re-
porting of results that can mar an otherwise competent investigation.
Once you get to know some of the common mistakes, stay alert to them as you
review previous studies. Use your knowledge of such mistakes to point out how a
previous investigation may have made only a limited contribution to solving the
problem you have posed. (If the contribution had not been limited, you would not
have to conduct an investigation—somebody else has already solved the problem!)
Where appropriate, point out the limitations to those approaches; remember, one of
the attributes of a PhD thesis is that the student is aware of limitations. No method
is ‘perfect’, but your review should lead to an understanding of which methods can
be used to achieve solutions to your problem. You will need to draw on this in your
next chapter, where you select appropriate methods for your own research program.
In some disciplines, a key purpose of this part of the literature review is to es-
tablish baselines. The aim of your work may be to improve on the state-of-the-art:
a more sensitive test for contamination, for example, or reduced energy consump-
tion in food preparation. The very presence of these comparative terms here (im-
prove, reduce) suggests that there is something you are comparing against. This is
your baseline. You need to know what the current best competitor is, and later you
will need to test whether your approach has advantages. Perhaps obviously, there is
little value in showing that your approach is better than something which is already
known to be poor—so you need to use your literature review to show that your
chosen baseline really is the best that is currently available.