Literature Review Outline: Template, Example, and APA 7 Headings

A literature review outline is the plan for your review before you write it: the sections you will use, the point each section makes, and the sources that support each point. A good outline does most of the hard thinking in advance. Once it exists, drafting becomes a matter of turning each point and its evidence into paragraphs, rather than staring at forty PDFs and wondering where to begin.

This guide gives you a template you can copy, a worked example, the APA 7 heading levels most programs expect, and a practical way to build the outline from the papers you have already read.

What a literature review outline should contain

Whatever your field, a useful outline answers four questions for every section:

• What is the point of this section? One sentence that states a claim about the literature, not just a topic label.
• Which sources support it? The studies you will cite, ideally with the page or passage that backs the claim.
• Where do the sources agree or disagree? This is where synthesis happens. A section that only lists studies one after another is a summary, not a review.
• What is missing? Gaps, weak evidence, or contradictions that lead toward your own study.

If each section of your outline has those four parts, you have a plan that can carry a chapter.

Literature review outline template

Copy this structure and replace the bracketed text. Most dissertation and thesis reviews follow a thematic organization like this one; adjust the number of themes to your library (three to five is typical for a chapter).

1. Introduction
   - Topic and why it matters (problem, context)
   - Purpose of the review and the review question(s)
   - Scope: years, databases, inclusion criteria
   - How the chapter is organized

2. [Theoretical or conceptual framework]  (if your program requires it here)
   - The theory/model and its key constructs
   - How it has been used in similar studies
   - Why it fits your study

3. Theme 1: [claim about the literature, not just a topic]
   - Point 1.1 + sources (page numbers)
   - Point 1.2 + sources
   - Agreement / tension between studies
   - What this theme leaves unanswered

4. Theme 2: [claim]
   - ...

5. Theme 3: [claim]
   - ...

6. Summary and gap
   - What is well established
   - What is contested or thin
   - The gap your study addresses, and how it follows from the themes

A worked example

Here is how the template looks once it is filled in. The topic is test anxiety among university students. The sources are placeholders and the findings are illustrative, so you can see the pattern without borrowing anyone's citations or numbers.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Introduction
  - Test anxiety is common among university students and linked to lower performance
  - Review questions: (1) How prevalent is test anxiety? (2) How is it measured?
    (3) How does it vary across student groups?
  - Scope: peer-reviewed studies 2010–2025; ERIC, PsycINFO, PubMed

Theoretical Framework: Attentional Control Theory
  - Anxiety consumes working memory resources needed during exams  [Source A, p. 4]
  - Used to explain the anxiety–performance link in two later studies  [Sources B, C]

Theme 1: Prevalence estimates vary widely, mostly because of measurement choices
  - Reported rates range from roughly a fifth to over half of students  [Sources D–G]
  - Studies using stricter cut-off scores report lower rates  [Sources D, F]
  - Tension: single-site samples dominate; few multi-site estimates  [Source H]

Theme 2: Most studies rely on a small set of self-report instruments
  - Two scales account for most of the reviewed studies  [Sources D, E, G, I]
  - Cut-offs are rarely validated in the population studied  [Source I, p. 212]
  - Gap: few studies combine self-report with physiological or performance data

Theme 3: Differences by gender and year of study are consistent; regional findings are not
  - Higher reported anxiety among women across most samples  [Sources D, E, J]
  - Year-of-study effects point in opposite directions in two studies  [Sources F, K]

Summary and Gap
  - Established: test anxiety is common and measurable
  - Contested: how much, and for whom
  - Gap: no validated cut-off for this population → focus of the present study

Notice that every theme heading states a finding about the literature. "Measurement" is a topic; "Most studies rely on a small set of self-report instruments" is a claim your section can defend. If you want to see a complete outline built from real open-access papers, with every point linked to its quote and page, browse the demo case.

APA 7 headings for a literature review

If your program follows APA 7, your outline levels map directly onto heading levels:

Most chapters only need levels 1 to 3. If you find yourself reaching for level 4, the section is usually trying to do two jobs and should be split. Check your university's dissertation template too: many programs fix the Level 2 headings for Chapter 2 and expect you to fill in the themes beneath them.

Three ways to organize the themes

Thematic is the default for dissertations: sections are built around claims or concepts, and each section draws on many sources. It shows synthesis best.

Chronological works when the story of the field is itself the point, for example how a policy or a construct changed over time. Use it inside a theme rather than for the whole chapter.

Methodological groups studies by design (surveys, interventions, qualitative work). It is useful when the methods explain why findings differ, as in the measurement theme above.

Many good reviews combine them: thematic sections at Level 2, with a methodological or chronological thread inside one or two of them.

How to build the outline from papers you have already read

1. Write your review questions first. One to three questions that your chapter will answer. Every point in the outline should serve one of them.
2. Extract evidence, not summaries. For each paper, note the passages that answer a review question, with the page number. A literature review matrix is the easiest place to keep them.
3. Group the evidence into themes. Sort the passages, not the papers: one paper can feed several themes.
4. Check each theme's footing. A theme resting on one study is a warning sign. Either read more or fold it into a neighbouring theme.
5. Write the claim for each theme. Turn the topic label into a sentence that the evidence supports.
6. Note agreements, tensions and gaps. These become the topic sentences of your paragraphs and lead into your study's rationale.
7. Verify before you draft. Open the PDFs and confirm every quote and page number. It is far easier to fix the outline than a finished chapter.

Using a literature review outline generator

Tools that call themselves a literature review outline generator vary a lot. Some produce a generic structure from a topic, with sources you have never seen; that saves little time and creates citation risk. The useful kind works from your own library: it extracts the evidence from your PDFs, groups it into themes, shows where coverage is thin, and leaves the structure and the writing to you.

That is the approach Lit Review Outline takes for the dissertation literature review chapter: upload the papers you have read, answer one to three review questions, and get a theme map and a Chapter 2 outline where each point carries its quote and page number, plus a Word outline with APA 7 references and an Excel literature review matrix. It is a research-organization tool, not a writing service; you still write the chapter, and you should check every point against its source.

Quick checklist

• Each section states a claim, not just a topic
• Each claim lists its sources and page numbers
• Every theme draws on more than one study
• Agreements and tensions are written down, not just implied
• The summary names the gap your study addresses
• Headings follow APA 7 (or your program's template)

For the structure of the whole chapter, including where the theoretical framework and search strategy usually go, see how to structure Chapter 2 of a dissertation. If your school calls this chapter the Review of Related Literature, see the RRL format guide.