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CEP 683/684 - Practicum III/IV: Advanced Counseling Skills / Crossley, Michelle


Types of Literature Reviews

Narrative or Traditional literature reviews
Narrative or Traditional literature reviews critique and summarize a body of literature about the thesis topic. The literature is researched from the relevant databases and is generally very selective in the material used. The criteria for literature selection for a narrative review is not always made open to the reader. These reviews are very useful in gathering and synthesizing the literature located. The principle purpose of a narrative review is the give the author and reader a comprehensive overview of the topic and to highlight significant areas of research, narrative reviews can help to identify gaps in the research and help to refine and define research questions. Where a narrative approach differs from a systematic approach is in the notation of search methods criteria for selection, this can leave narrative reviews open to suggestions of bias. 

Scoping Reviews
The purpose of the scoping review is to find ALL the materials on the topic. When undertaking a scoping review it is important to systematize your search strategies to ensure you can replicate your searches and to attend to any gaps that appear in results. 

When reading and sorting the results, again apply some of the measures used in a systematic review so that your search results are sorted by key themes and well organized.

"Different types of literature reviews" by Griffith University Library is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Writing Literature Reviews

Reference Librarian, Associate Professor

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Dragan Gill
she/her
Contact:
Adams Library 412
401-456-8145