As your Extended Investigation progresses, you will accumulate a large body of research material — articles, reports, data, arguments. Without systematic strategies for summarising, recording and organising this material, writing a coherent report becomes extremely difficult. Good information management transforms raw research into structured knowledge.
There is a critical difference between:
- Descriptive notes: Recording what a source says (“Smith found that X”)
- Analytical notes: Recording what a source argues and what that means (“Smith’s finding challenges Jones’s claim because…”)
Your literature review and report require analytical thinking — not just description. Your recording system should capture both what sources say and your evaluation of those claims.
KEY TAKEAWAY: Organising your research material by theme and argument rather than by source is the key shift that makes writing the literature review much easier. Stop thinking “what did Smith say?” and start thinking “what does the literature say about theme Y?”
A good summary of a research argument captures:
1. The central claim/thesis
2. The key evidence used
3. The main reasoning
4. The conclusion and its qualifications
5. Key limitations you identified
This format, completed for each source, gives you structured material ready to be incorporated into your report.
The most powerful organisational move is grouping sources by theme — not by source or chronology. Themes should emerge from the research question and the patterns in the literature.
Example: For a question about social media and adolescent wellbeing, themes might be:
- Prevalence and patterns of use
- Psychological mechanisms
- Differential effects by gender/age
- Protective and risk factors
- Methodological debates
Under each theme, you collect all sources that address that aspect — regardless of discipline, date or conclusion.
STUDY HINT: Create a synthesis matrix with themes as rows and sources as columns. Fill in each cell with a brief note on what that source says about that theme. Blank cells are informative too — they show where certain sources are silent.
Another powerful structure: organise sources by their position on a contested claim:
| Position | Sources | Key Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| “X causes Y” | Smith (2020), Lee (2018) | Longitudinal correlations, experimental study |
| “No clear causal link” | Jones (2019), Patel (2021) | Methodological critiques, conflicting data |
| “Effects depend on context” | Wu (2022) | Moderation analysis |
This format directly supports the analytical writing style required in a literature review.
| Tool | Use |
|---|---|
| Mind map | Brainstorming connections between themes and sources |
| Concept map | Showing logical and causal relationships between ideas |
| Synthesis matrix | Comparing sources across themes (see above) |
| Timeline | Showing how views in a field have changed over time |
| Hierarchy diagram | Organising evidence from most to least general |
The goal of recording is retrieval. Organise your notes so that when you sit down to write:
- You can quickly find all sources relevant to each section of your report
- You have your own analytical comments ready to incorporate
- Your reference details are complete and consistent
Practical approaches:
- Use a folder structure: one subfolder per theme
- Use tags or labels in digital tools (Notion, Zotero, OneNote)
- Maintain a master source list with summary and relevance noted
- Keep a “key quotes” document with full citations attached
If you collected primary data:
- Create a separate, organised record of your raw data
- Note your initial observations and patterns as you collect
- Flag anomalies or unexpected results for later analysis
- Keep participant data separate from response data for privacy
APPLICATION: Before writing your literature review, take all your categorised notes and arrange them on a table by theme. Then write one paragraph per theme — describing what the research shows, where it agrees, where it disagrees, and what remains unresolved. This is the structural skeleton of your literature review.
COMMON MISTAKE: Waiting until all research is collected before starting to organise. Organisation should be ongoing — record and categorise each source as you read it. Trying to reorganise 20+ sources at once is overwhelming and error-prone.
