– literature survey for the “Economics of the Family” course – 15 papers surveyed required A proper literature survey should include the most important papers but cover a bit more than just those, so that there is some context. If youve surveyed less than 15 papers relevant for your topic, youre failing in your assignment. o You know what that means. This day, the 8th October, there are 13 weeks to deadline. So pace yourself. On average, you need to locate, read and digest about 1-2 papers per week, every week (counting Reading week) between now and deadline, if you want to do this right. Your source for the papers surveyed will be academic literature, and that exclusively so. Neither Time, nor Newsweek, nor Teen People or any other popular periodicals are admissible here. You want to write a review of serious in-depth research of the topic youve chosen. The course reading list can be your starting point. It contains references to many papers which themselves contain references to still other relevant papers. It will be getting steadily updated throughout the semester. Try Jstor.org, SSRN.com, even Google Scholar. If you really hit a snag and seem to be unable to move forward, email me and well figure something out. Do not hesitate to email me, if you dont know where to start or if you become confused as to where to go next. If you do things right, you may be a little overwhelmed at first, seeing how much stuff there is on various topics. I can help you sift through that at first (but Im only going to do that if I first see some initiative on your part). DO NOT write your survey as a series of self-contained paragraph-per-paper summaries. The whole point of research is the ongoing conversation between researchers comparing results, methods, competing hypotheses etc. Moreover, such approach would tempt you to just copy-paste the abstract into your review and I would certainly not look kindly upon that (it qualifies as plagiarism). Instead, try to group your reviewed papers by their particular topic or by their methodology, or even by year of publication, if you can discern a clear thread of research progress through time. Some of the questions you will want to address in your write-up are: o Why is this issue interesting and important? (Does it be it divorce, domestic violence or what have you happen to a large chunk of the population? Or does it happen to a minority but with particularly damaging consequences? Has there been a big shift or a recent change of trend that has put this issue front and center?) o What is the dataset they are using? (Census returns? One-time survey? A follow-up survey? Government statistics?) o What is the unit of observations? (Individuals? Couples? Counties? States?) o What problems might the dataset have? (Is it representative? If it is deliberately focusing on some particular group say, college students does that help the researcher answer the question he/she is asking?) o What is the source of the data? (Questionnaire? Direct observation in real life? Observation under some experimental conditions? Historical documents?) o What are the major claims of each paper your survey (obviously, this is the whole point of writing a literature survey)? o What is method used? (Is it a theoretical paper, with a model and all? What sort of statistical analysis does it employ, if any? Is it a literature survey? Is it a historical narrative that relies primarily on anecdote?) o How has our understanding of the issue at hand evolved? (Is there a difference between the older literature and the more recent one? Have new methods shown some previously undisputed opinions to have been erroneous? Do the papers line up along the battle lines of some long-standing controversy?) o Are there any policy implications emerging from the research? (Which laws does the research suggest need to be changed?) o What is missing from the papers? (Is there any particular question that the research entirely ignores? Is it for lack of data?) If you want to see how literature surveys are done by real pros, you can look at Croson and Gneezy (2009) or Guinanne (2011) as examples. At the very end, having taken a full measure of the field, you can write your own opinion, explaining in one paragraph which papers you found most convincing and most interesting and whether the research has changed your view on the issue. DO REMEMBER to include a proper list of references. For how-to tips, look at how they are done in regular academic papers and do the same thing. Look at how I have done it in the syllabus. It is useless to have a survey of the literature if the reader then cannot actually locate the pieces you are citing.
