Systematic Reviews

What is a systematic review?

Basically, a systematic review is a protocol-driven, comprehensive literature review, and usually designed to answer a specific clinical question. High quality systematic reviews seek to:

• Identify all relevant published and unpublished evidence
• Select studies or reports for inclusion
• Assess the quality of each study or report
• Synthesise the findings from individual studies or reports in an unbiased way
• Interpret the findings and present a balanced and impartial summary of the findings with due consideration of any flaws in the evidence.

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Also, based on Cook's article (1997), "a properly conducted systematic review faithfully summarizes the evidence from all relevant studies on the topic of interest, and it does so concisely and transparently." 

Adapted under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. from: YourHealthNet, "Navigating Effective Treatments With Systematic Reviews: An online toolkit that will help you understand and develop the skills to explore health research"  developed and published by the Centre for Health Communication and Participation with support from the Australasian Cochrane Centre.

If you are interested in doing a systematic review, check out the Library's systematic review services for faculty and consider signing up for the So You Want To Do A Systematic Review Workshop.