This guide is the first of three guides designed to support students working on the research and analysis capstone in the MS in Higher Education program at SESP.

One of the main deliverables for the MS-HE 406 Research and Analysis I course is to produce a literature review. Essentially a literature review is a summary and evaluation of the major research done on a particular subject or topic. Often appearing early in a written paper, the literature review seeks to set the stage for your paper by reviewing what is known about the topic and placing your own research within that context.

The fist step in writing a literature review is to search for what has been written about your research topic. To do this you will need to use tools such as the library catalog and databases to locate existing publications. This guide is designed to help you use these tools.

We will use the same topic/research question for search examples across all of these guides: “How do students who participated in study abroad as an undergraduate say the experience related to their future employment?”

For more help with research, see the Higher Education research guide.