Rethinking my literature review

This entry was posted by on Tuesday, 14 June, 2011 at

Totally rewriting my review of literature. I’m not certain this is the best idea but I’m going to do it anyway. :/ I’m looking at the dissertation of some one who did sport tourism. Their dissertation is about 250 pages. Their review of literature eats up pages 26 to page 108. This seems really long. Mine was much shorter and my methodology was much longer than their methdology. This all tends to make me insecure.

What I think I am going to do with my review of literature is reorganise and rewrite the damned thing into the following sections:

  • Sport sociology
  • Sport tourism
  • Sport marketing
  • Fans and the media
  • Popular culture studies
  • A definition of sport fandomEach section will look at how sport fans are treated by that group, how those groups depict fans and explain how fans respond to events taking place in their community and then come up with a definition for fans. I’ve got the latter, minus sport tourism. I’ve come to the conclusion that for at least one chapter, the one on bicycling, I can’t find sources talking about its characteristics in the traditional sense because they use sport fandom type phrases that I know but talk about fandom in a way that is more participation for cycling than I see for Aussie rules football. The goal is say have people fly from Melbourne to Perth to compete in a bicycle event, than it is to have people fly from Melbourne to Perth to watch Lance Armstong or Cadel Evans. That’s why I feel like they need to be there. Still, hugely yeah. I have the sources to do that… but just a bit scary to need to do that rewriting and no clue how it will come out.

    The historical information about the sport teams that I have I think I will move into mini literature reviews about a team that preface the larger results chapter. So the chapter about AFL team characteristics will be a microchapter in front of the first major chapter about the AFL. The NRL information will be in front of the first major chapter about those teams.

    Hoping that by doing this I will address comments by my upgrade assessors and my supervisors.

    • Related Posts:

    Tags: , , ,
    Category: Academic, Cycling Australia
    You can follow any responses to this entry via RSS.
    You can skip to the end to leave a comment. Trackbacks are currently not allowed.
    • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

      Glad to see sport sociology in there and that as the first thing.

      There were only 4 fields before.

      “Fans and the media” probably does fit in well in the narrative between “Sport marketing” and “Popular culture”.

      Athletics is very similar to cycling in that the goal is participation, especially for young people and for charity (this could come into sports sociology).

      This rewriting is exciting because it seems that nobody else has done it in this way. That’s what a dissertation is all about: crystallising knowledge and experience and putting new knowledge into the field.

      Sport tourism: think about the Grand Final, and big events… It is even more important for smaller events.