Is a literature review esseantial in a dissertation?
I’m in Australia, and I’m sure the rules might be slightly different, but I can’t see how you write a masters dissertation *without* a literature review. You must have read some theory, used someone else’s research, if only to situate your own work in the field. The purposes of the lit review: – to show that what you did hasn’t been done before, or at least, not in the way you did it – to show where your study relates to work already done – to show that you’ve read around the area and can critqiue work already done. Without knowing what discipline you are studying, it is hard to be more specific about what your lit review should have in it.
