February 25th, 2009 | 
Author: Literature reviews survey research done in a particular area. Although they also evaluate methods and results, their main emphasis is on knitting together theories and results from a number of studies to describe the “big picture” of a field of research.
Research articles, on the other hand, are empirical articles, specifically describing one or a few related studies. Research articles tend to focus on methods and results to document how a particular hypothesis was tested. The Introduction of a research article is like a condensed literature review that gives the rationale for the study that has been conducted.
Published literature reviews are called review articles. The emphasis in review articles is on interpretation By surveying all of the key studies done in a certain research area, a review article interprets how each line of research supports or fails to support a theory. Review articles are valuable, not only because they cite all the important research in the area surveyed, but also because they compare and evaluate all the key theories in a particular area of research. Again, notice the companion goals of a literature review: to describe and to evaluate.
Posted in 
Tags: 
