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Contents
- What is a thematic literature review?
- Purpose of a thematic review of related literature
- Example of thematic literature review
- Writing a thematic literature review
- Common errors and key precautions
What is a thematic literature review?
A thematic literature review is a summary of research that organizes studies by theme rather than by publication date (i.e., chronologically).
A traditional (narrative) literature review may or may not organize studies by themes. A thematic literature review explicitly does, and themes are chosen through a systematic process and not just “vibed”.
Let’s take an example of a fictional educational intervention called Bridge to Text (BTT) aimed to address the drop in reading skills among 2nd and 3rd graders and its knock-on effect across the curriculum. The themes that could emerge are “strong gains in decoding but limited transfer to curriculum outcomes”, “staff turnover mediates program effectiveness”, and “hidden curricular costs for ESL students”. Note that these are not obvious “topics” that you’d get from a cursory read through of studies on BTT: “teaching assistants”, “timetabling”, and “test scores” are topics.
Purpose of a thematic review of related literature
A thematic review of related literature does the following:
- Identifies trends and patterns across studies: A thematic review tells you what’s increasing, what’s getting more attention, which methods are frequently used, what common conclusions have been reached.
- Highlights places with insufficient research or where evidence is contradictory. If one theme covers forty studies and an adjacent theme covers three, that asymmetry is an important insight.
- Indicates what doesn’t need research: i.e., topics for which there is already ample, high-quality evidence from diverse populations and settings.
Example of thematic literature review
Refer to the following for examples of how thematic literature reviews can be written and published. Note, however, that each article conforms to the target journal’s length, style, and structure requirements:
- A thematic literature review of innovative strategies to prepare nursing students for aged-care. doi: 10.1016/j.nedt.2020.104355
- Powerful yet disempowered: a thematic literature review exploring the challenges of media reporting on sexual violence. doi: 10.1177/01968599251348248
- Fatigue in prostate cancer: a roundtable discussion and thematic literature review. doi: 10.1016/j.euros.2024.03.003
Writing a thematic literature review
The writing process for a thematic literature review follows some simple steps:
Step 1: Define a research question
Without a clear and focused research question, your review will never be completed. Avoid too broad questions like “Does exercise affect pain” or too narrow questions like “Does biweekly Iyengar yoga reduce chronic knee pain in sedentary overweight postmenopausal women with severe osteoporosis.” Something such as “effect of Pilates on lower back pain in older adults” is just right.
Step 2: Conduct a thorough literature search
You should search 2-3 databases, including at least one general database like Scopus or Web of Science plus subject-specific databases (e.g., CINAHL for nursing and allied health, PsycINFO for psychology). You should set clear inclusion and exclusion criteria beforehand, e.g., you could decide that you’ll exclude studies without a control group or case reports. If you’re new to literature searching, it’s a good idea to get help from an academic librarian in constructing search strings using Boolean operators and controlled vocabulary, and taking some time to understand wildcards, truncation, and filters before you start a search.
Keeping a record of your search is mandatory for a systematic review, but we would recommend it anyway, so that you yourself have a clear record of what’s been done and how you got certain outputs.
Step 3: Extract data
Making a matrix of outcomes and study characteristics will help you write an effective literature synthesis and identify real, valuable themes in the literature. You don’t need fancy tools for this; good old Excel works just as well. You can put your sources as rows and the study characteristics or findings as columns.
Step 4: Identify themes
This is where you go back and re-read every source you’ve included. Highlight any text that directly answers your research question. Don’t just make a summary of each study but look for underlying patterns. Some examples could be
- While examining social media use among adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, you notice that existing research hasn’t looked at academic performance.
- While examining dementia caregiver burden, you notice that qualitative studies frequently bring up “lack of knowledge of dementia” whereas quantitative studies frequently bring up “financial stress”.
- While examining the effect of lean management on employee well-being, you notice that lean management has strongest effects on job satisfaction in studies focusing on clothing and pharma companies, and that studies on tech firms have weak or contradictory findings.
Some concepts may show up constantly in introductions and discussion sections but are never the object of investigation. They’re treated as settled assumptions. These could actually be valuable under-researched areas.
Step 6: Consolidate themes
At this stage, you look for overlapping themes and start merging or splitting themes up. Your goal should be to have a few, well-defined and thoughtfully chosen themes and not a blanket list.
Importantly, it’s fine if a study directly contradicts a theme or doesn’t contribute to it. Don’t exclude that study but report it.
Step 7: Assess/appraise study quality
Although formal appraisal (e.g., through GRADE) is often not required in a thematic literature review, it’s a good idea to consider study design and quality nevertheless. A theme supported by 5 randomized clinical trials is stronger than one supported by 5 retrospective surveys.
Step 8: Write and cite
A thematic literature review is generally structured as follows:
- Introduction: explains why such a review is necessary. Subheadings may not be necessary.
- Body: Discusses 3-5 pertinent themes in the literature. Subheadings are advisable.
- Conclusion: Summarizes key recommendations for future research, and a separate subheading for limitations may be required.
Tips for a polished thematic review
- Use transition words and phrases judiciously, like “Consistent with …” or “In contrary to …”.
- Set up a reference manager before your literature search
- Make sure you have checked for retracted papers, papers published in predatory journals, or papers with broken links/DOIs.
- Proofread carefully and make sure your citations and references match your target journal’s formatting requirements.
Common errors and key precautions
| Error | Why it happens | Consequence | Precaution |
| Themes are just topic labels, not analytic concepts | Coding stops at surface content (“studies on training”, “studies on cost”) | The review reads like a bibliography and has no argument | Choose themes that map to a relationship or difference, not to a single variable |
| Search and inclusion criteria left vague | Reviewer treats searching as preliminary rather than part of the method | Findings can’t be reproduced, “gaps” that you report are already filled | Record databases, strings, dates, filters and inclusion decisions in a table; report exclusion counts |
| Cherry-picking studies that fit an emerging theme | Confirmation bias once a narrative starts to form | Themes look stronger than the evidence supports | Test every study against every theme and report any studies that contradict a theme |
| Themes overlap or aren’t exhaustive | Frame built bottom-up and not consolidated | Studies get double-counted; theme “sizes” become meaningless | Check that themes are mutually distinct and jointly cover the corpus |
| Study quality ignored | Counting papers is easier than appraising them | A theme where most studies have weak designs or biases may not actually hold up | Apply a simple appraisal tool and discuss evidence strength within each theme |
| Incorrect gaps | Just because your corpus hasn’t studied X, it doesn’t mean that no study has examined X | Reviewer claims a gap that other disciplines have already filled | Make sure you search multiple databases and are not filtering by publication date or open access, unless essential to your research question |
