18 page literature review topic international relations child exploitation and trafficking

See attachments including thesis proposal and professor feedback

Your literature review should provide a broad overview of the research that is important to your study. This section of your thesis should begin with a few introductory paragraphs where you frame the research topic and its significance. To do this you will need to summarize all of the major relevant arguments on the research subject, highlighting the main issues and how the various schools of thought differ. If there are key terms to define the reader should do that here. This section should be organized thematically, so rather an discuss one source within a paragraph you would organize your paragraphs around themes or arguments within the literature. For example, if deterrence theory is important to your research (either it is the main theory in use, or parts of it are important to your research) you would discuss this concept using a variety of references that help demonstrate the scope of knowledge surrounding this theme.

The sources you use within your paper matter greatly to the overall credibility of your research. For this reason a majority of your sources should be coming from peer-reviewed articles, scholarly texts, or other appropriate sources an websites.

The literature review is NOT an annotated bibliography or a “laundry list” of reviewed articles. You should not be dedicating a paragraph or more to each source you consulted. Instead the literature review, should capture and synthesize the issues in the research topic. At the end of this review, you should explain how your study will fit into this larger body of research that has already been carried out. What research gaps will you help try and fill? What unanswered questions will you take into consideration? Are you looking at this question using a different theoretical lens? All of these questions are something that your literature review should answer. Ultimately you want to take time to remind readers of the importance of your research.

One thing to keep in mind as you proof read your literature review is that any information that is specific to your study’s findings should be discussed within the “Analysis & Findings” section of your thesis. Within your literature review you should be focused on discussing the following:

• Prior research that has attempted to answer your question.
• Prior research that is important to understanding your research question or topic area.
• Prior research that explains your theoretical framework.
• Prior research that uses your theoretical framework to answer a different research question (this shows how the theory has been utilized in the past and how it can be harnessed within your study).
• How your theoretical framework will be used to help you answer your question (keep in mind that the theory(or theories) you use within your research do not have to be a perfect fit. In your findings and analysis section you would discuss how well it helps you answer your question).

Your literature review should be 12-18 pages in length and use Turabian “author-date” styles references throughout. The only sources that should appear on your reference list are those that you referenced within the literature review itself.