SOURCE: A. Boland. Doing a systematic review: A student's guide, 2nd edition, 2017.
Med Library Study Room - LB 2369 D65 2017
STEP 1: Planning your review
- Find out your submission deadline and work backwards from then to plan your time.
- Check out how much contribution from others is permitted by your institution.
- Identify potential collaborators for specific review tasks.
- Think about the advantages and disadvantages of learning and using specialist software.
- Obtain guidance from your institution about how your review should be presented.
STEP 2: Performing scoping searches, identifying the review question and writing your protocol
- Identify a topic area of interest to you.
- Carry out early scoping searches.
- Focus your ideas to define the scope of the review.
- Finalize your review question and develop your inclusion and exclusion criteria.
- Consider contacting experts in the topic area.
- Write a review protocol.
STEP 3: Literature searching
- Think about how comprehensive your search needs to be.
- Consider the different types of evidence available to you.
- Identify the specific bibliographic databases that you will search for evidence.
- Search bibliographic databases using your final search strategies and collate citations.
- Consider complementary searching activities.
STEP 4: Screening titles and abstracts
- De-duplicate the references.
- Develop and pilot your screening and selection tool.
- Screen all of your titles and abstracts identified via searches against your inclusion and exclusion criteria.
STEP 5: Obtaining papers
- Obtain the full-text papers of all potentially eligible references.
STEP 6: Selecting full-text papers
- Use your screening and selection tool to hep you identify full0text apers for inclusion in review.
STEP 7: Data extraction
- Identify the data that you want to extract.
- Build and pilot your data extraction form or data extraction table(s)
- Extract relevant data.
- Complete the data tables for inclusion in your thesis.
STEP 8: Quality assessment
- Note the design(s) of your included studies.
- Identify the type(s) of quality assessment tool(s) to suit your review.
- Choose appropriate quality assessment tool(s).
- Carry out quality assessment using the appropriate tool(s).
- Tabulate and summarize the results of your quality assessment.
- Think about how the quality assessment results might impact on the recommendations and conclusion of your systematic review.
STEP 9: Analysis and synthesis
- Report your extracted data in your thesis.
- Choose an appropriate method of analysis / synthesis.
- Combine data narratively or statistically in line with your chosen method of analysis / synthesis.
- Present the results of your chosen method of analysis / synthesis.
STEP 10: Writing up, editing and disseminating
- Ensure that you adhere to institutional guidelines regarding presentation and content.
- Be consistent in use of language and abbreviations, and in reporting and referencing styles.
- Ensure sufficient time for write-up and dissemination.
