Which Review Is Right for You?: Planning Your Review
Identify Research Question and Define inclusion and exclusion criteria
Identify your research question. Formulate a clear, well-defined research question of appropriate scope. Define your terminology. Find existing reviews on your topic to inform the development of your research question, identify gaps, and confirm that you are not duplicating the efforts of previous reviews. Consider using a framework like PICO (see below) to define you question scope.
Define inclusion and exclusion criteria. This is also known as creating a review protocol. Clearly, state the criteria you will use to determine whether or not a study will be included in your search. Consider study populations, study design, intervention types, comparison groups, measured outcomes.
Guidelines and Resources for Reviews in Environment
- The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE)The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) is an open community of scientists and managers working towards a sustainable global environment and the conservation of biodiversity.
- Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE)The Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE) Instrument evaluates the process of practice guideline development and the quality of reporting
Registering your protocol
It is recommended that you register your systematic review protocol prior to conducting your review. This will improve transparency and reproducibility, but will also ensure that other research teams do not duplicate efforts.
A protocol documents the key points of your systematic review. A protocol should include a conceptual discussion of the problem and include the following:
- Rationale, background
- The potential contribution of the review to clinical decision making
- Is there enough relevant literature to merit a systematic review/meta-analysis of studies
- Inclusion/exclusion criteria
- PICOS of interest (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcomes, Study types to be reviewed)
- Sources you will use to search the literature (& search syntax if possible)
- Screening methods
- Data extraction methods
- Methods to assess for bias
- Contact details
If you are working with the Cochrane or Campbell Collaborations, you will publish your protocol with those organizations. If you are working independently, consider registration with:
- PROSPEROAn international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care. Key features from the review protocol are recorded and maintained as a permanent record.
- Open Science FrameworkAn open source web application that connects and supports the research workflow. Researchers use the OSF to collaborate, document, archive, share, and register research projects, materials, and data. OSF can be used to pre-register a systematic review protocol and to share documents such as a Zotero library, search strategies, and data extraction forms.
Methods for Evaluating Reviews of Public Health Interventions
- A Schema for Evaluating Evidence on Public Health InterventionsLucie Rychetnik and Michael Frommer of the University of Syndey. A guide to appraising evidence through the collection and evaluation of research papers and reports.
- NHS Centre for Reviews and DisseminationGuidance from the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD), a world renowned institute that produces policy relevant research and innovative methods that advance the use of research evidence to improve population health.
- The Community GuideThe Community Guide conducts systematic reviews of interventions in many topic areas to learn what works to promote public health.