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[cccpres2b]

I am in a doctoral program that provides great support to complete the dissertation. By the end of the next semester I am expected to complete my chapter three, or the literature review. The doctoral program is designed so that each semester we are completing or working on various chapters, as we complete coursework. Yes, it is an Ed.D. program.

My question is regarding using a published literature review as a framework for my own literature review.  I am reseraching a topic on student success. I also work in the field in student success. I found out two months ago, that there was a statewide grant for four colleges to collaborate on publishing a literature review on the topic of student success. The published lit. review has over 100 sources and goes into detail about the various studies. The report is almost like a annotated bibliography but with more detail. In one of my assignments for my research seminar class, I had to submit 50 sources for the beginning of my lit. review for my chapter 3. I went through the report and found the 50 most relevent sources for my topic.

I am responsible for submitting an annotated bibliography in a few weeks, so I will be going over the sources in greater detail.  My question is, how much can we use a published lit. review in our chapter 3, and how do I site that I used a published lit. review in my dissertation?

[scampster]

I am responsible for submitting an annotated bibliography in a few weeks, so I will be going over the sources in greater detail.  My question is, how much can we use a published lit. review in our chapter 3, and how do I site that I used a published lit. review in my dissertation?

Do you have the questions you are asking in your dissertation worked out? If they are questions that haven't been answered before (which is the point of a dissertation, no?) then your lit review should be spun to present how those questions were formulated and what the current state of the literature is on those questions and why what you are doing fills a need. I am assuming the published lit review is pretty broad. In my case, I cited lit reviews like that when I just needed to fill in some basic background info. But the papers that were more relevant to my questions I went through several times, and there are always components that get omitted from published lit reviews. Those I summarized and synthesized completely in my own words and didn't reference the lit review unless I was taking a specific comment in the lit review about the work.

But I am in the sciences, so I don't know if it is different in your field. But when I started I sometimes felt like "so and so summarized the previous literature so well - what can I possibly add to that?" But the more you dig, the more you realize the holes that are left to be filled.

[carebearstare]

Ditto on Scampster's advice.

Everything you write as an academic is an argument, from your perspective. You highlight the literature most relevant to the questions you want to answer, critique the literature that fails to adequately address what you see as pressing, and find spaces in the literature in which to insert your own knowledge and research.

An exhaustive literature review would be helpful in terms of how it points you to what's out there. But it's your job to read it, interpret it, and wrangle with it, if you are to make any meaningful contribution to it yourself.