Avoiding laundry lists with synthesis

A common mistake in literature reviews, but often elsewhere in dissertations too, is what our respected colleague Mary Nassimbeni calls "the laundry list" syndrome. The laundry list is a way of organising your literature review by author, so that you present the content of each section of the review as a list of what you have read and what each author has said in turn. While the laundry list shows that you have nominally done the required reading for your review, it (a) is boring for an examiner to read, and (b) does not convince anyone that you have actually understood what you have read. The key to avoiding laundry list syndrome is consolidation and synthesis.

One of the things an examiner is on the lookout for when reading your dissertation is your ability to synthesise information. This is not only the domain of your data presentation chapter or your conclusion: they will be looking for it in your literature review as well. Synthesising is not the same as summarising (there will be another blog post on summarising and paraphrasing soon). At the very basic level synthesis requires you to pull information from various sources apart, and then put it back together in a new structure. Not only does this make your literature review a lot more pleasant to read and prove that you have filtered and internalised the important information, it also helps to keep your word count down (which is a good thing!) because you are not repeating the same information over and over again.

Yes, it means more work for you, but this is work that really pays off in so many ways: it helps you to understand everything better, it lays the groundwork for your analysis, it helps you to find new ideas, and it pleases the examiner (and your supervisor).

1. Steps for synthesising:

1. Start with your notes: What really important things has the author said about a particular topic, and what are the main points of that? Run through this for each author.

2. Determine what the sources have in common: what have they said that is the same across all of them?

3. Determine what differentiates them: Do they disagree on any points, or has one said something that the others have not?

4. Group the common elements and the differentiating elements. List and attribute the common elements first, then highlight and attribute the outlying ones and the contradictions.

5. Provide a short outline and interpretation of the commonalities and differences.

2. The differences between a laundry list and a synthesised list:

This is what the two different types of list look like:

Laundry list	Synthesised list
Author 1 says a,b,c,d,e Author 2 says b,c,a,d,f Author 3 says b,d,f,a,g Author 4 says a Author 5 says g,f,h Author 6 says a,b,d,e,g	Authors 1,2,4 and 6 all agree that a Authors 2, 3 and 6 add b, while Author 2, Author 3 and Author 5 also say that f. There is a broad consensus around b, but only Author 5 mentions h and Author 6 mentions g. Authors 1 and 6, both include e, but Author 3 regards it as part of f
Interpretation: It is important to note that Authors 2, 3 and 5 have a perspective x that differentiates them from the traditional view. Author 5's statement that f may be a reaction to y, and their statement that h may be seen as radical or reactionary by others. For the purposes of this study, g and h can be ignored because m, and we will support Author 2 in their assertion that b is the fundamental principle of the topic.	Interpretation: It is important to note that Authors 2, 3 and 5 have a perspective x that differentiates them from the traditional view. Author 5's statement that f may be a reaction to y, and their statement that h may be seen as radical or reactionary by others. For the purposes of this study, g and h can be ignored because m, and we will support Author 2 in their assertion that b is the fundamental principle of the topic.

You will note that the interpretation is the same, but the synthesised list groups the elements from all of them thematically. The laundry list belongs in your notes; the synthesised list belongs in your dissertation. The synthesised list in this example looks longer than the laundry list, but remember when you are writing up that you will be avoiding a lot of repetition.

3. Techniques to help with synthesis:

1. Tag your notes: Your note-taking technique is key to good synthesis. If you are careful to tag your notes with keywords, it will be a lot easier to synthesise information. This is the discovery phase.

2. Card sorting: Write each separate point from each author on a separate card, together with the name of the author (or a key that you can use to identify them, such as initials and publication date). Post-it notes work well for this, too. This is the analysis phase.

3. Group the cards or Post-it notes by theme, and then give each theme a name. Start your list with the most highly populated group.

4. Useful resources

(If you find any others, please feel free to add them in the comments on the blog post)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7HtCHtQ9w0 (note that different citation formats are covered in this video: please

stick to UCT Author-Date format for citations).

• https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/learning-commons/documents/writing/synthesis/asked-to-synthesize.pdf

• https://emedia.rmit.edu.au/learninglab/content/synthesising-0

• Permalink to resource Rudestam, K and Newton, R. 1992. Surviving your dissertation. Sage in UCT Libraries (requires login) https://uct.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma990009400090904041&context=L&vid=27UCT_INST:27UCT&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&isFrbr=true&tab=Everything&lang=en

For further assistance, ask the Humanities Librarians to help you to locate additional resources. Remember that the Writing Centre can also assist you in structuring your writing effectively.