In addition to providing background for your research problem, literature reviews cam also help conceptualize a model that summarizes the relationship you hope to predict. If you are performing purely exploratoryresearch, you will not need to develop a model before conducting your research. Once you have turned your research objectives into research questions, the information needs can be listed and the data collection instrument can be designed. However if one or more of your research questions require you to investigate relationships between variables, then you need to conceptualize these relationships. The conceptualization process is aided be developing a picture of your model that shows the predicted causal relationship between variables.