*Political Science Guide: Literature Matrix

A literature review matrix serves to help you visually organize your thoughts on an article.

This is only one option of many that can help you organize your thoughts; you can easily change the sections of the first page to reflect your discipline. 

The first part of this two-part document helps you analyze each individual article for its research question(s); method(s); results; and conclusions. It also enables you to evaluate it for its strengths and limitations and identify its themes before you attempt to connect it to other research.

The second part helps you visually connect the themes and identify disparate themes so that you can begin to synthesize established knowledge on your topic and identify alternative points of view on the topic and speak to why those might exist.