Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination (Published in association with The Open University),   ISBN:9780761959755

Customer Rating: 

I did a research work and the most difficult part was the literature review. This book makes clear why to do do the literature review, the particular difficulties in the social sciences and how to proceed step-by-step to complete the work. I do recommend.

Customer Rating: 

I bought this book because it was in the medical school bookshop, and I was looking for something about literature review. However, this book is written for people in the social sciences. It has a limited value for someone in clinical research.
There are however some good things, it opens the mind to a different aspect in writing reviews. I am sure I have gained some knowledge from it but it was time consuming. It is well written and has examples.
It will not tremendously help people in clinical research.

Customer Rating: 

Hart's material will benefit anyone who needs to develop and demonstrate their expertise on a topic. He describes how the review contributes to the defense of a research topic and its findings, at the master's and doctoral levels. He presents examples of what thesis and dissertation boards look for in research proposals and papers.

The book describes techniques to extract clues about theories and methods a researcher used. Hart provides excellent guidance on how to analyze the literature on a topic, develop a map of ideas, and synthesize a new contribution.

Anyone who wants to develop their skills as a researcher, or student, should definitely purchase this book. I also shared many of this book's insights with my friends, who are not researchers.

Although I strongly recommend the book, I only rate it 3 stars. The book is unorganized, and the writing is poor.

In an example from Chapter 4, Hart presents a table of 19 common fallacies. The first column presents the type of fallacy (in no logical or methodical order). He titles the second column "What it is and how to avoid it" but only the first entry presents any "how to avoid it" data. The remaining 18 entries have no advice on avoidance.

I also felt some diagrams present no useful information; and his prose rambles and repeats itself. In short, Hart gives us dynamite information, but it is frustrating to sort through its sloppy presentation.

Customer Rating: 

Foudn the text minimally helpful. Not full of insight but just common sense.
Cost is too high for the return.

Customer Rating: 

I found this book to be a great resource as I am doing research for my dissertation. It has helped me to look at the lit review in a new light and has given me several ideas of others avenues to search.