Question about literature review

Is it ever appropiate to cite popular literature or secondary sources in a lit. review?

What if there's little or no research on your topic? Do you then cite the popular journals/books as opposed to the academic?

I ask this because of the scarcity of research on my own topic. There's a river of info in the popular publications. Somehow, I don't think they should be ignored.

Any thoughts?

Roscoe

 

While I know that you will be offered good advice here, you also will want to talk with your supervisor. Each school (and each supervisor) is going to be a little different on t his issue. Better to find out exactly what is acceptable.



Tom Nixon

 

If your promoter is like mine, I'd urge you to follow Tom's advice Roscoe.

 

Roscoe asks:

> Is it ever appropiate to cite popular literature or secondary
> sources in a lit. review?

Of course! You should also cite Web pages, TV shows, anywhere that you've seen something relevant.

But, you should make it clear that you know the difference between a scholarly source and a non-scholarly source. Maybe put them in different sections.

> What if there's little or no research on your topic?

If you're doing the first scholarly research on something, then the info in the popular sources is likely to be wrong, so you'll be citing them chiefly in order to refute them.

 

I would think the quality and usefullness of the information is more important than the publisher.