_ARE 4205 Market Planning and Survey Research in the Food Industry — Literature Searching

A review of literature searches current journal articles and other types of relevant literature to discover information on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, discusses methodology and provides an analysis of what was found and the sources in which they were found. For instance, information found in the Journal of Food Research would be evaluated very differently from information found in Wikipedia.

Synthesize your findings. Your findings are your evaluation of the literature which you reviewed. What are the strengths and weakness of the studies you reviewed? How did the studies you reviewed compare or relate to each other? What research trends and gaps in the research did you find while researching your topic?

Across the articles that you read, pay attention to what are the:

• What did the researchers find? How do they interpret those findings?
• Are there any important trends that you see across the studies?
• Did the researchers propose any theories from their research?

Identifying these elements as you are reading and writing notes about your sources will help you later when you start writing.

• Do not over quote. If you only quote from every single author you found, then you are not showing any original thinking or analysis. Use quotes judiciously. Use quotes to highlight a particular passage or thought that exemplifies the research, theory or topic you are researching.
• Instead, use paraphrasing. Restate the main ideas of a paragraph or section to highlight, in your own words, the important points made by the author.
• Summarize findings, important sections, a whole article or book: This is different from paraphrasing since you are not re-stating the author words but summarizing the main point of what you are reading in a concise matter for your readers.

Note: In all cases, do not forget to give credit to these sources since they are not your original ideas but someone else. Check the specific citation style you are using for the appropriate in-text citation format)

• Paraphrase and Summary (University of Toronto)

  Great site that explains when to paraphrase vs when to summarize when writing your paper