Literature Reviews: A Research Guide

"...problem formulations are themselves problematic and so require continual attention to assure that the questions being asked will direct research toward the desired end." -- from "Formulating Research Problems." In Foundations of Multimethod Research, edited by John Brewer and Albert Hunter, 38-58. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2006.

Question formulation, or problem formulation, is a key part of the research process, and should be something you give some thought to before you begin a literature review. The book referenced above is an excellent introduction to problem formulation for a research project.

While you may not be able to formulate a problem or question in great detail until after you've reviewed the relevant literature, you need to have enough of an idea of your question to be able to generate keywords and think about what literature you want to include and exclude when going through your search results.

Be as specific as you can: Try to avoid or at least put parameters around vague terminology such as "best practices" or "stakeholder engagement" in favour of more specific terms, or at least define them in your own mind -- what constitutes a best practice? How is this evaluated? Who are your stakeholders, and how might you engage them, and to what end?

Think about inclusion and exclusion criteria. Does it make sense to limit to recent literature, or include older literature? Are you only interested in literature from certain countries? If studying a human population, do you want to include all ages? Do you want to limit to certain methodologies? You may not build these criteria into your search, but they are useful to have in order to decide whether or not to include the literature you find.

Can you phrase your topic in the form of a question? 

Examples: