Integrated Literature Review, Research Question/Hypothesis
Before writing your integrated literature review, you should have searched the research literature
and written summaries of each of the articles. You may want to use Table 4.2 from the text,
“Anatomy of a Research Article and Comparison of Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches to
Research” as a template for completing your individual article reviews.
Integrated Review
Begin by introducing your topic and explain why it is socially important.
Write a few paragraphs in which you integrate the individual, annotated reviews. Avoid listing
each article separately, rather, focus on the themes that cut across several articles.
Summarize what we do and do not know about the topic. Note any gaps and/or limitations of the
previous research. Select one or two specific gaps/limitations and explain how your study will
help address that limitation or fill that gap.
Example: “Based on a review of the literature, it seems clear that social support from families is
related to self-esteem among adolescents from immigrant families (list the citations of the 3 or 4
articles that supported this point). However, it is unclear if the same relationships would be
identified among more recent immigrants. All but one of the studies included in this review were
focused on second or third generation immigrants (citations). The one study that focused on first
generation immigrants was limited in that it only included early adolescents (aged 10–13)
(citation). The proposed study will address this limitation by including both early adolescents
and older adolescents and will include more recent immigrants.”
Research Question and/or Hypothesis
The last paragraph should describe the purpose of your study and include a clearly written
research question/hypothesis. Write a one paragraph purpose statement in which you describe a
research question/hypothesis of your own. Your question should build on—but not replicate—
previous research. Refer back to the limitations you noted of prior research. Explain how your
research question/hypothesis will address these gaps or limitations. State your specific research
question/hypothesis, that is, what you propose to test/examine in your study. Write this as though
it were part of the introduction to your research proposal: “In the current study, this gap in the
literature will be addressed by asking whether social support from families is related to self-
esteem among recent adolescent immigrants. The hypothesis is that recent adolescent
immigrants who receive social support from their families will have better self-esteem than
recent adolescent immigrants who do not receive social support from their families.”
