How to Structure a Literature Review Like a Funnel (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Literature review is like a funnel. At the top of the funnel, you're broad, taking a panoramic sweep of existing studies, the state of the art, the strengths, the weaknesses, the trends, where the field is moving. As you move down this funnel, you're going to start distilling and narrowing, getting to the conclusion that ultimately, ideally, will roll out the red carpet for what you want to do next. This could be Chapter 3, Chapter 4 in your PhD. It could be the empirical research you want to justify to a grant funder, or it could just be completing by showing what the gaps are in the field and making suggestions for future directions. The two biggest mistakes I see people commonly make is they're at the wrong stage of the funnel. Maybe right now, you're already thinking about the research you want to do, you're at the bottom of the funnel, so you start trying to summarize narrow research, and there's just not enough. At the other end, you go way too broad, and you have thousands of articles, and we never see you again.