This is a beginners' guide, aimed at PhD students carrying out their first review.
Preparing a systematic review can seem a daunting prospect, but by breaking it down into stages, being systematic and iterative, and keeping track of what you have tried, you will get through it!
Cochrane is an organisation which produces systematic reviews of primary research in human health care and policy. The following is a definition from their Handbook:
A systematic review attempts to collate all the empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria in order to answer a specific research question. It uses explicit, systematic methods that are selected with a view to minimizing bias, thus providing more reliable findings from which conclusions can be drawn and decisions made (Antman et al 1992, Oxman and Guyatt 1993). Systematic review methodology, pioneered and developed by Cochrane, sets out a highly structured, transparent and reproducible methodology (Chandler and Hopewell 2013). This involves: the a priori specification of a research question; clarity on the scope of the review and which studies are eligible for inclusion; making every effort to find all relevant research and to ensure that issues of bias in included studies are accounted for; and analysing the included studies in order to draw conclusions based on all the identified research in an impartial and objective way.
Lasserson TJ, Thomas J, Higgins JPT. Chapter 1: Starting a review [last updated August 2021]. In: Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 6.5. Cochrane, 2024. Available from www.training.cochrane.org/handbook. Chapter 1: Starting a review | Cochrane Training accessed 3.09.24
Clinical Psychology students can also find discussion in your course handbook:
Getting started - Systematic Reviews - LibGuides at Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk)
Previous systematic reviews carried out by UEA ClinPsyD students will be found in the Norwich Medical School section of the Eprints repository
