Good question. In my opinion, there are some issues to deal with these kinds of research. A study should be structured based on a theory or prior conceptual frameworks, otherwise you should have a strong argument to make it a gap in the research which needs knowledge and experience. If previous literature are valid and helpful, you can use them. Some questions may help you:

1. Do you got any theory for your topic?

2. Are those old studies reliable for reference?

3. Why there is no recent research? What were the findings of prior studies that stoped further research?

4. What’s your supervisor‘s opinion toward this?

Anyways, if your topic is really important, don’t give up.

Good luck

I completely agree with Atefeh Kia. My suggestions are these:

Is your dissertation for graduation or Post graduation or Ph.D?

First examine the text books where you will find related work.

Ask your researcher about new dissertations that he/she knew as being conducted on this topic (recently).

Ask your librarian of your University to show dissertations (between 2000-2019) done in your field and check them to find any small relevant findings that you find as useful for your review of related literature.

Finally i believe that it will be useful if you can type your title or theme in research gate and like sites and then see if you can find any research that were conducted after 2000 as a result of the search. There will be some articles which need permissions from the authors and then you can contact them.

All The best. If you find such sources, kindly post it here so that whoever suggested you (like me and Atefeh Kia etc) will feel happy that your need is met.

Regards

Dr.Deepthi Balla

In all honesty, i will meet my potential advisor in july for the first time (orientation). This will be for graduation.

I have been doing plenty of searching and pre-reading to be as prepared as I can be and clearly the nerves are getting to me. I know how to search for research that is not the issue. Perhaps i just need more time and am getting somewhat frustrated. My current university where I work has access to many databases however since it's in Korea; no relevant dissertations unfortunately. Thus, i will have to wait until i have access in July.

As for the older studies reliability; yes they are quite solid. After reading much literature it seems not much has changed regarding the theory, concepts, techniques so they be worth a mention.

I literally found a framework 30 minutes ago that draws many similarities to the one i was planning on developing so that has actually relieved me somewhat as now i will seek to adapt it for my korean context.

I really appreciate the help!

You can indicate that there is a gap in the literature between 2000 and 2019.

The question is a legitimate right,

Often Google does not give an acceptable search result: but with repeated searches and using different abbreviations tools and at different times you will find that Google is improving the search results

Literature review is not done for the sake of literature review. Before reviewing the literature, you must justify the requirements for the method of solving the problem posed and solved by You. Every source in the review you should consider from this point of view. At the end of the literature review, you should make a rating of known methods by the degree of decreasing their compliance with the requirements justified by You. As a result of the review, it should be concluded that there are no methods in the literature that would fully meet the requirements you have justified. The best is the method of such and such an author, but it does not fully meet Your requirements. To finalize it in your dissertation is your task, which makes the work relevant. If there are no new sources, then it is necessary to rely on those that are and say about it.