Systematic reviews

A systematic review is considerably more in-depth than a literature review.  Systematic reviews aim to find and evaluate every source of evidence relevant to your research question.  Systematic reviews should follow a clear and specific methodology so that they can be easily verified and replicated.  In summary you will need to:

• Define a focussed, clear research question which your review will address
• Develop a search strategy to include identifying which databases to search and which keywords to use
• Carry out your literature search and manage the references that you find
• Evaluate, analyse and synthesise the results
• Write up your systematic review

The Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York has a useful guide to undertaking systematic reviews.  You can browse examples of existing systematic reviews in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

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