Literature Worries

 

From Johnathan:

The Dissertation Handbook says to limit the Lit Review to 5 years, but what if the main, most comprehensive theory published on the topic was written 15 years ago? Is it appropriate to include that, or do we assume that readers know? Also, I'm terrified of the idea of parallel development. In High School I wrote a paper on how I thought the universe worked. My teacher accused me of plagiarizing it from another theory that was published in the 1930's that I'd never heard of before. How do we ensure that the ideas that we're presenting or researching aren't already covered by other people who use different names or terms for the same concepts? Thanks! 

Great questions, Johnathan! Regarding the 5 year rule- it turns out this is not a very clear rule! Actually, I don't see the 5 year idea mentioned in the Dissertation Guidebook. I couldn’t find an official mention of it anywhere, so I wrote to Martha King, a manager in the Writing Center and this what she reported: 

Hi, Lee,

This question pops up from time to time from faculty across programs. To my knowledge, there is a general guideline based on the intent of the literature review, but no written rule, about the majority of sources in a dissertation from peer-reviewed sources within the last 5 years; there is no guidelines or written rule I know of stating a percentage for older publications such as seminal works. I’m going to quote Lou Milanesi’s [Director of Research Center] response when I consulted with him the last time this question was raised: 

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to confess that I’m not a proponent of an excessively rule-based approach to scholarship. The intent of the literature review is to provide an extensive or exhaustive review of existing knowledge surrounding a given research question. The sources of such information may vary across academic (PhD) and applied (EdD, DBA, DNP, etc) inquiry to extend either knowledge or practice. My basic approach is to ask

What is the purpose of this research?

What are the most reliable and current sources of information to guide it? 

In answer to your first question, you should concentrate on more recent literature, but you can certainly discuss the history of a specific concept. 

Regarding the issue of parallel development, this is really less of a concern at the doctoral level. You want to do a very complete literature search, and see what has been done. If you take a historical approach, discussing where the idea came from and how it has evolved, you will probably catch any related ideas. If you are proposing any new theory or concept, you might want to be even more fussy about using as many possible terms as you can, to make sure you find anything related. Occasionally, you may find a study that is similar to yours- but typically yours and theirs will differ in significant ways. You will ask different questions, have a different population, etc.  

I hope this reduces your worries! If not, please let me know. Next time we will consider – are you on the right path?