5 Literature Review Examples with Annotated Samples
By Dr. Lisa H., PhD in Sociology. Reviewed by Dr. Sarah L.. 2026-06-11.
Key takeaways
- Every paragraph should make a claim about the literature, not about a single study
- Cluster effect sizes or findings inside one citation group to make comparison visible
- Critique the shared methodology of a theme, not individual authors
- Frame gaps as decisions someone needs to make, not just missing studies
- Never open a paragraph with an author's name plus a whole-paper summary
The short answer
A strong literature review example shows three things you can copy: paragraphs that group sources by finding, sentences that explain why sources disagree, and a closing gap statement that leads directly into the research questions. Everything else is formatting.
The five annotated examples below come from completed US master's and doctoral projects, redacted and rewritten. Each is followed by the specific move you should copy.
Example 1: Psychology (quantitative, APA 7)
Randomized trials of cognitive behavioral therapy for generalized anxiety in college populations report large pre-post reductions in GAD-7 scores (Alvarez & Cho, 2021, d = 1.34; Whitfield, 2022, d = 1.12; Osei et al., 2023, d = 1.41). The consistency of these effects across three independent samples is notable given differences in dosage, which ranged from 8 to 16 sessions. Only Osei et al. included a six-month follow-up, and their maintenance effect fell to d = 0.58, raising the possibility that the larger immediate effects reflect expectancy rather than durable symptom change.
Copy this: the parenthetical effect sizes inside a single citation cluster. It compresses three studies into one comparable claim and makes the contradiction visible in one sentence.
Example 2: Nursing (mixed methods, APA 7)
Nurse burnout research has largely relied on the Maslach Burnout Inventory, and cross-sectional studies consistently link emotional exhaustion to patient-safety incidents (Reyes, 2020; Tan & Brooks, 2022). The qualitative literature complicates this picture. In interview studies, nurses attributed unsafe practice less to exhaustion itself than to the workarounds exhaustion produced, such as batching medication passes (Doyle, 2021; Ferreira et al., 2023). The quantitative and qualitative traditions therefore identify the same association but locate the mechanism in different places, and no study has yet tested the workaround pathway directly.
Copy this: naming two literatures, showing they agree on the association but disagree on the mechanism, then declaring the untested pathway. This is the highest-value paragraph shape in a mixed-methods review.
Example 3: Education leadership (qualitative, APA 7)
Case studies of turnaround principals converge on distributed leadership as the practice most associated with sustained gains (Mbeki, 2021; Rowan & Iyer, 2022; Silva, 2023). All three studies, however, sampled schools that had already improved, a selection strategy that cannot distinguish practices that cause improvement from practices that improving schools adopt. The field lacks a study that follows principals from appointment through the first three years regardless of outcome.
Copy this: a single sentence critique of the sampling logic shared by every study in the theme. Methodological critique at the theme level is what separates doctoral reviews from master's reviews.
Example 4: Business and management (case study, APA 7)
Post-pandemic supply chain research has produced a stable list of resilience strategies: supplier diversification, nearshoring, digital twin adoption, and buffer inventory (Ahmed & Rossi, 2022; Kaur, 2023; Lindqvist et al., 2023). What the literature has not established is sequencing. Every published case describes firms that adopted several strategies simultaneously, so the marginal contribution of any single strategy remains unknown, and practitioners are given a menu rather than a priority order.
Copy this: framing the gap as a practitioner problem. Reviews that connect the academic gap to a decision someone actually has to make read as significant rather than merely incomplete.
Example 5: Computer science (systematic, IEEE-adjacent)
Deep learning intrusion detection for IoT healthcare has been evaluated almost exclusively on three public datasets. Reported accuracy above 98% is now routine (Chen et al., 2022; Duarte, 2023; Novak & Hall, 2023), but cross-dataset generalization is rarely tested, and the two studies that did test it reported accuracy drops of 11 to 19 percentage points. High benchmark performance therefore cannot be read as deployment readiness.
Copy this: distinguishing benchmark performance from real-world validity. In computational fields this is the most defensible gap you can claim.
What all five examples share
Each paragraph opens with a claim about the literature, not about a single study. Each cites two or more sources per claim. Each names a shared limitation. Each ends with an explicit or implied gap. None of them contains a sentence that begins with an author's name followed by a summary of that author's whole paper.
If you rewrite your own review so that no paragraph is about one source, you will have done 80% of the work that separates a returned draft from an approved one.
Want a PhD editor to review your draft against these examples? Send it over for a free 500-word sample edit and a fixed USD quote.
FAQ
What does a good literature review paragraph look like?
It opens with a claim about the body of literature, supports it with two or more grouped citations, explains any disagreement between them, and closes with the limitation those studies share.
How do I write a literature review without just summarizing?
Write one sentence per paragraph that could not have come from any single source, such as a comparison, a contradiction, or a shared methodological weakness. Build the paragraph around that sentence.
Are these literature review examples free to use?
Yes. The excerpts are redacted and rewritten teaching examples. Use them as structural models, and never copy sentences into your own submitted work.