The purpose of the literature review is to allow you to identify, interpret, summarize, and
synthesize Human Factors literature to identify its strengths and limitations. Conducting a
literature review is a valuable skill for every student, but it is especially important for graduate
students who are responsible for implementing a project or writing a thesis/dissertation.
A literature review is an objective summary and critical analysis of literature pertaining to a
specific topic. It is logically organized into subtopics and refers to the most relevant and up-todate literature.
The typical process for a literature review is as follows: (1) select a topic; (2)
systematically search the literature; (3) gather, summarize, and synthesize the literature; (4)
write the literature review; (5) revise, revise, revise. Note that another step in the literature
review process is to document all references and in-text citations in APA format.
I highly
encourage you to use a citation manager program for this, as it will automate most of this task
for you. Some of the easily available ones are Mendeley, Zotero.
You are free to choose the topic of your literature review, but it must be relevant to the Human
Factors domain, and it must be approved by the instructor. Given the effort required to conduct
a literature review, it behooves you to choose a topic that is most relevant to your MS/PhD
research focus and to focus on articles that are recent. If you do not have a research focus, you
should choose a topic that is most interesting to you.
For the literature review, you are expected to select and review at least 20 articles. You must
start the literature review with an introduction that describes the importance of the topic and you
must conclude the literature review with a section that summarizes what you have found as well
as potential next steps. The body of your literature review must be organized into clear subtopics that illustrate how the literature is grouped into themes. You should organize the body of
the literature review in a clear, consistent, and logical way and avoid the use of jargon or
confusing words. Avoid simply summarizing the articles and what other authors have found; you
must critically evaluate the literature, which will indicate your expertise in the topic. When
synthesizing the articles, you must indicate its strengths and weaknesses and its similarities and
differences to other articles. I encourage you to view the supplementary material on Moodle for
more information about what should be contained in the final literature review.
To ensure that you make substantial progress towards completing the literature review on time,
there are preliminary assignments that lead to the final report.
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pick and describe your topic, then do a literature review matrix
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