Systematic reviews and meta analysis: introduction
8 important questions on Systematic reviews and meta analysis: introduction
Why are literature reviews helpful/ informative?
- They can provide you w/ up to date information
- Identifying significant issues/ themes for further research (research gaps)
- Guiding development of research topics / questions
- Presenting the used methodologies and research tools
What are some types of literature reviews
- Narrative or traditional reviews
- Critical reviews
- Scoping reviews
- Systematic reviews
Aren't as black and white as presented here in the slides
Goes from less to best
What is this types of literature review: narrative / traditional reviews?
- General overview of the literature
- Usually no specific research question as point of departure
- Often has diverse/ multiple aims and purposes
- Different types of studies/ literature are taken into account but often no aim to be comprehensive in selection of included studies
- Expert based
- Selection of studies potentially biased
- Weighting of studies not transparent
- Higher grades + faster learning
- Never study anything twice
- 100% sure, 100% understanding
The fourth type of literature review: systematic review
- Is very transparent
- Departs from a specific research question
- Follows the real methodology
- Quality assessment which may determine inclusion/ exclusion (very specific criteria)
- Gives recommendations for clinical practice and future research
Why is it important to summarise studies
- There is an overload of information/ evidence, hard to keep up with
- Therefore systematic overviews are created, and they also need to be updated when new evidence is found --> Cochrane quote
What does the Cochrane collaboration do?
- Producing evidence
- Making our evidence accessible
- Advocating for evidence
- Building an effective and sustainable organisation
A small summary of two methods of reviews
What is this type of literature review: critical reviews
- This is one step up to the other method
- Aims to demonstrate writer has extensively researched literature & crucially evaluated its quality
- Goes beyond mere description and includes some degree of analysis and conceptual innovation
- Typically results in hypothesis or model
- Seeks to identify most significant items in the field
- No formal quality assessment of included studies
- Analysis are typically narrative, perhaps conceptual or chronological
- Seeks to identify conceptual contribution to embody existing or derive new theory
- Not very transparant
The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:
- A unique study and practice tool
- Never study anything twice again
- Get the grades you hope for
- 100% sure, 100% understanding
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