How to Write a Literature Review for a Dissertation (UK Guide)
A step-by-step method for writing a UK dissertation literature review: searching, screening, grouping themes and writing the gap that justifies your study.
The short answer
A dissertation literature review is a thematic argument about what is already known, written so that the gap your study fills becomes unavoidable. Search systematically, screen against criteria, group sources by theme rather than by author, criticise the evidence, and close with the gap. Expect it to take 20 to 25 percent of your word count.
Step 1: turn your topic into a search strategy
Break the research question into concepts, list synonyms for each, and combine them with AND and OR in your library database, Scopus, Web of Science or PubMed. Record the databases, search strings and dates. UK markers increasingly expect that record, and in a systematic review they require it.
Set inclusion and exclusion criteria before you start reading: date range, language, study design, population. Criteria written afterwards look like justification for whatever you happened to find.
Step 2: screen, do not hoard
Screen titles and abstracts first, then full texts. Most students collect eighty papers and use twelve. Deciding early which twelve carry the argument saves weeks.
Step 3: group by theme, never by author
The clearest sign of a weak review is a series of paragraphs each starting 'Smith (2020) found...'. Group by theme, and let each paragraph carry a claim supported by several studies that agree, disagree or qualify each other.
Step 4: criticise the evidence, not just the findings
Say what a study did, what it found, and why we should or should not believe it. Sample size, design, context and funding all bear on that. Critical appraisal is what separates a first from a 2:1 here.
Step 5: write the gap explicitly
End the chapter by naming the gap in one or two sentences and stating how your study addresses it. The methodology chapter then reads as the obvious response to a problem you have already proved exists.
A workable structure
Introduction and search strategy, then three to five thematic sections, then a synthesis section drawing the themes together, then the gap and your research questions. That shape works for almost every UK discipline.
Common mistakes
Summarising rather than synthesising. Reviewing sources you never cite again. Ignoring findings that contradict your position, which examiners notice immediately. Leaving the gap implicit and hoping the reader infers it.