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Doing a Systematic Review by
Completing a systematic review and unsure where to start or what path to take? Set out on your journey confidently with this practical guide written by a team of experienced academics. With a friendly, accessible style, the book covers every step of the systematic review process, from planning to dissemination. This book will help you to: * Work with qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods data * Understand the how-to of systematic reviews with a range of real-life examples and case studies * Learn from students who have been in your shoes with FAQs taken from actual supervision meetings. This book will not only support you to overcome common challenges and pitfalls, it will give you the knowledge and skills to produce an excellent review and you might even enjoy the journey! Alongside updated examples and case studies, this edition also includes two new chapters to help you write and register your review protocol and understand and synthesise data from correlational and experimental studies. The book is accompanied by an online guide for teaching, including videos, example documents, further reading, software recommendations and weblinks.
How to Do a Systematic Literature Review in Nursing by 
Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review by
Whether you are new to literature reviews or working with new types of data, this book takes the guesswork out of writing your literature review. From deciding how much literature to include to managing your data, assessing your sources, and writing results, it outlines a step-by-step process that works with any data. To help you choose best approach for your research, this book includes: · Worksheets and decision aids to help you plan and organise your literature review · Worked examples and case studies to show you what - and what not - to do in practice · Troubleshooting tips and answers to all your frequently asked questions · Online access to a literature review starter template, an exercise workbook, project diary template, and a source credibility checklist. The perfect project support for any social sciences student, this edition also includes a new chapter on analysing mixed methods research.
Your question should be clear.
Narrow your topic down to an area that you would like to know the answer to, or interesting or worth investigating
Think about:
Before continuing, you need to check if a review has been recently or currently carried out on your question that you're thinking of.
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new windowThe Cochrane Library is a collection of resources that contain high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision making
search in Cochrane Library for already published reviews on your subject area
Search PROSPERO for any planned or ongoing systematic reviews.
Scoping reviews are not included in PROSPERO or Cochrane.
If your research question idea already exists in PROSPERO and/or Cochrane.
During your scoping searches, it might be worth considering if you'd like to look at Qualitative or Quantitative research for your review.
| QUALITATIVE | QUANTITATIVE |
| collecting and analysing non-numerical data | objective measurements: statistical, mathematical, numerical analysis |
| concepts, opinions, experiences | gathering numerical data & generalising across a group of people or explain a particular phenomenon. |
| first hand observations, interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, participant-observation | polls, questionnaires, surveys, using pre-existing statistical data |
| recordings made in natural settings, documents, case studies etc | large sample sizes representative of the population |
|
felt more than measured not based on measurable terms but the impact of satisfaction and worth |
usually gathered using structured research instruments. Research is replicable. Used to generalise concepts more widely, predict future results or investigate causal relationships. |
Babbie, E.R. (2014) The practice of social research. Fourteenth edition. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning; Muijs, D. (2011) Doing quantitative research in education with SPSS. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Choosing a topic area for your dissertation is the first step.