Research Guides Homepage: SWK 450: Applied Research: Mistakes to Avoid

Common Mistakes

You use emotional phrases in your literature review. There should be no subjectivity, personal opinion, unjustified claims or words of emotion;
Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
It is too broad and the literature becomes too unwieldy;
You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
Does not describe the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review;
Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.