Documentary research pertains to the use of the academic work to create academic prose. The research is conducted for the purpose of supporting the main research and enlisting academic references for justification. The documentary research includes conceptualisation and analysis of the documents of academic origin. These documents are classified as primary, secondary and tertiary documents, public and private documents as well as solicited and unsolicited documents. These documents are then analysed accordingly from different points of view. Both qualitative as well as quantitative analysis techniques can be employed. The documentary research however results in a historical analysis as the documents that are being researched and analysed have already been published.
The literature review is a similar research technique for analysing already exiting and published documents of academic as well as informational origin. In a literature review, the works of the different scholars and their case studies relevant to the topic at hand are summaries and analysed for the information that they add to the reach at hand. The main purpose of the literature review is not just to support the main research topic but to update the readers of the research on the developments that have taken place in terms of the topic of the research. It follows a logical sequence and flow of ideas which are relevant as well as consistent to the dissertation topic.