"The core of evidence synthesis is the systematic review of literature of a particular intervention, condition or issue.
The systematic review is essentially an analysis of the available literature (that is, evidence) and a judgment of the effectiveness or otherwise of a practice [...]"
JBI, 2020.
Systematic reviews gather, appraise and synthesise data from all available research to answer a focused research questions. These reviews are conducted to:
Systematic reviews answer a well defined, focused search question and are transparent in their methodology. the sleection of studies is based on pre-defined inclusion and exclusion criteria that are also clealry reported.
For these reasons, systematic reviews, together with meta-analysis in healthcare sit at the top of the hierarchy of evidence.
The below guidance is meant to be a starting point for you to begin work on your systematic review.
You might be assigned a topic by your supervisor, or you might be able to choose it yourself. Either way, your topic and research question should focus on something that is still uncertain in the wider literature. You might have come across studies with contradicting results, or you might know of a topic that is controversial and or lacking guidance. In other words, the topic has no clear conclusion and the evidence is not sufficient.
To define a topic or question, you might want to:
Possible databases include: Web of Science and Scopus (multi-disciplinary), Proquest (Business and Social Sciences), IEEE Explore (engineering).
The more you explore the literature, the clearer your chosen topic will be.
You might be ready for step 2: formulating a research question.
You will now have a clear idea of what you want to find out, so you need to decide where to find that information. In other words, you need to select databases to search for studies.
Systematic reviews normally use around 5 databases, but this might vary depending on what the purpose of your review is (is this an assignment?) and the expectations set on you by your supervisor or lecturer.
You might also want to think about other sources beyond bibliographic databases, for example, sources of grey literature, clinical trials registers, conference papers, reports etc.
Refer to your Subject LibGuide to explore what databases are most relevant to your topic. You want a mix of multi-disciplinary, broad databases and more specialised ones. You might also need to seek advice from your Information Specialist.
Consider using question frameworks to formulate a well defined, focused research questions. These are acronyms used to identify the main components of the question. Common frameworks are:
PICO: Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome
SPIDER: Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research Type
CIMO: Context, Intervention, Mechanisms, Outcomes
Here you can find a breakdown of all frameworks, with examples included.
Your question might not fit into a framework; however you want to make sure that it is still clear and focused. The scope of the question should not be too broad.
You can now move to step 3: selecting databases.
After selecting databases, you need to prepare a search strategy.
1. Think about the main concepts that you need to include in your search (you can refer back to your question framework). These will be the building blocks of your search.
2. For each concept, think of alternative keywords.
3. Combine groups of keywords with appropriate database operators.
4. Re-write the strategy for each database, keeping the same keywords but changing symbols and operators as needed.
If this is your first time writing an advanced strategy, you might need to ask your Information Specialist for help. They will also be able to give you feedback on what you have already prepared.
Search strategies will need to be reported in full as part of your appendices.
These 4 general steps are the beginning of your searches and a good starting point for the review. Check further resources below for more information and step-by-step methodology.
Further resources
|
Need advice? Your Information Specialist can help you with:
Book an online 1-1 appointment here >>> |
 |