POLT 403F – Politics Senior Honors: Where to look: Resources

Since preparing a bibliography is one of the first steps toward the literature review, it probably won't surprise you that we recommend exploring bibliographies prepared by experts in your field.

Book reviews, particularly those appearing in scholarly and peer-reviewed publications, will situate the book under review within the broader context of other publications on the topic.

If you're including a book in your literature review, don't stop at the reference list in the book itself; find reviews! 

The resources highlighted below are a great place to look for scholarly articles of all sorts; to limit your search to book reviews in a database, you can often filter by content type.

Scholarly books, including monographs (works by a single author) and edited volumes (a collection of works by multiple authors), can be a great resource as you prepare your literature review. 

When evaluating a book for relevance to your topic, look for keywords in the table of contents and the index. When you identify a book that is relevant to your work, you'll be sure to find valuable information by exploring any reference list, footnotes, end notes, or bibliography.

The resources highlighted below facilitate the fastest access to print and electronic books, but if you can't find something there, don't give up! You can access most resources via Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

Dissertations and theses will often include a literature review, and therefore, can be of great use to you as you prepare your own literature review.

Increasingly, degree candidates are encouraged or required to submit electronic dissertations and theses (ETDs) for inclusion in institutional repositories, which makes accessing these documents easier than ever.

Find ETDs in the databases highighted below; for a complete list of dissertation and thesis databases, filter by Types in the Databases A-Z.

Research encyclopedias can provide you with essential background on a topic, and also on the history of scholarly work related to that topic. 

Handbooks will often introduce important theories and methodologies (including research methods), and will also trace the development of the same.

As we've mentioned elsewhere, a great place to get started is in somebody else's literature review! 

Many of the authors whose work you'll be consulting will have prepared literature reviews of their own; of course, not everything they cover will be relevant to your work, but just as listening will prepare you to take part in a conversation . . .

Note: Depending on the database, it may or may not be possible to filter results by resource type (i.e., "Literature review", "Systematic review", or "Meta-analysis"); in the latter case, including the term(s) as a keyword is a decent work-around.

A systematic review aims to answer a research question, and to do so with minimal bias; a systematic review evaluates all available sources that fit a set of defined criteria.

Whereas a literature review applies inclusion and exclusion criteria to any given resource, a systematic review should encompass and account for all resources that meet such criteria.

To learn more about the role of systematic reviews in political science research, see:

• "Systematic Reviews in Political Science: What Can the Approach Contribute to Political Research?".

Some systematic reviews will also include meta-analysis. Meta-analysis involves the use of quantitative methods to synthesize and evaluate the results of other studies. When you're doing quantitative work, look for meta-analyses that will help you to identify relevant studies, but also, methodologies that you might adopt in your own work!

To learn more about the role of meta-analysis in political science research, see:

• "Synthesize This: Meta-Analysis as a Dissertation Tool".

For more information about identifying literature reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, see:

• "Systematic Reviewing and Meta-Analysis" in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences; or
• our research guide Evaluating Scholarly and Peer Reviewed Sources: Putting scholarly writing into context.