Reviewing and using the literature

Abstract

A project is an exercise in which you construct an argument, drawing on your own ideas and on various data used to support these ideas. As you might recall from section 4.2, these data fall into two types: primary, being the material you gather yourself in the empirical stages of your project work; and secondary, the material gathered by other people before you, made available to you in a variety of locations. The whole of Part 3 will deal with how to marshal primary data; the purpose of this present chapter is to help you to handle secondary data, or what is often known as ‘the literature’. You’ll find yourself using the published literature in two ways: for review, and for referencing; and the first part of this chapter outlines what is involved in both. In each case, you will need to know what subjects and authors to look for, where and how to look for them, and how to use them when you’ve found them: and these issues provide the remaining sections of this chapter.