Thesis or Dissertation Chapter 2: What to Include and How to Write It

Many students write Chapter 2 as an annotated bibliography: one source, one paragraph, then the next source. It reads like diligence and it fails the chapter's real job, which is to show your committee that you can weigh the scholarship around your topic and that your study answers a question the scholarship has left open.

Programs organize the chapter differently. Some combine the literature review with the theoretical framework, some move the framework to Chapter 1 or give it a chapter of its own, and some qualitative traditions treat the literature in a different way. Check your program's requirements and your chair's expectations before you plan the structure.

What goes in it

A short opening tells the reader what the chapter covers and how it is organized. Where your program expects it, say how you searched for sources.

The theoretical or conceptual framework follows or runs alongside the review. A theoretical framework draws on an existing theory. A conceptual framework is built from the relationships among concepts that the literature supports. Either one has to do work in your study, and the chapter should say what that work is: how the framework shapes your research questions, your data collection, and your analysis.

The review itself is the main body. It organizes the research by theme or concept, sometimes by method or by period, and it evaluates what it finds. It ends at the research gap, the specific point your study addresses. That might be a question no one has answered, a population no one has studied, a setting earlier work overlooked, or a limitation in how earlier studies were done.

A brief close then states what the literature establishes and how that leads to your study.

Synthesis is the whole task

(For a step-by-step method of sorting your sources into themes, see our article on organizing sources in a literature review.)

The test of a literature review is whether the chapter says something that no single source says. Take three studies on the same question. Three paragraphs, one per study, tell the reader what each found. One paragraph that sets them side by side, notes where they agree, explains why one differs (a different population, a different measure, a different decade), and says what that means for your question tells the reader something none of them did.

So organize by idea and not by source. Say where studies agree and where they conflict, and what limits their conclusions. Include the contrary evidence. A committee member who knows a major opposing study will notice its absence.

Currency has no fixed rule. A foundational work from decades ago can remain necessary, and a fast-moving field may need studies from the last few years. Judge by your topic and discipline.

Keep your own voice in charge of each paragraph. The sources are your evidence, and your analysis should carry the point.

Where the chapter connects to the others

The gap you identify has to match the problem statement in Chapter 1. Your research questions should be answerable in light of what the review shows. The framework has to reappear in Chapter 3, where it shapes the design, and in Chapter 5, where you interpret your findings against it. A framework that is named in Chapter 2 and never mentioned again is one of the first things a committee points out.

If the review ends up supporting a different problem from the one you stated, one of the two chapters needs to change.

Our guide to deciding whether your literature review is good enough offers a closer set of tests, and how to avoid citation mistakes covers the referencing. Chapter 1 comes before this chapter and Chapter 3 follows it.

If you want an outside assessment of structure, argument, and fit with your research questions, a chapter review gives written recommendations for revision. The research and the arguments remain yours.