Systematic reviews (SRs) are the type of research in which a process of reviewing all existing evidence from the past primary research is undertaken. A systematic review provides a summary of the overall quality of the past individual studies relevant to answering a research question. Therefore, systematic reviews are considered the best evidence amongst the different types of research.
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Cochrane. (2016, Jan 28). What are systematic reviews? [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/egJlW4vkb1Y |
The process of reviewing includes collecting, appraising and analysing the findings of empirical / primary research studies (such as randomised controlled trials, observational studies etc.), summarising and then synthesising the evidence. A meta-analysis in a systematic review is the use of statistical methods to summarise the results of all included studies in a review so as to understand the clinical and statistical significance of the research findings.
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are traditionally used for evaluating cost-benefits and effectiveness of treatments, interventions and diagnostic tests, drug adverse effects and prognostics and risk factors of medical conditions. However, they can also be used for summarising the quality of other types of reviews. For example, there are systematic reviews of rapid reviews, systematic reviews of scoping reviews and systematic reviews of research methods.
You may also be interested in featured reading: What kind of systematic review should I conduct? A proposed typology and guidance for systematic reviewers in the medical and health sciences written by Zachary Munn, Cindy Stern, Edoardo Aromataris, Craig Lockwood and Zoe Jordan (2018) and Errors to avoid when searching for studies for systematic reviews: A guide for nurse researchers written by Simon Briscoe (2023).
Free course available:
The Campbell Collaboration's online course on systematic reviews and meta-analysis is now available. This is a self-paced, asynchronous course covering the entire process of systematic reviews from problem formulation to meta-analysis, was designed with Campbell Collaboration researchers in mind, but appropriate for anyone interested in learning rigorous review methods for the social sciences. The course is currently being offered for free and learners may be solicited for feedback, as the developers are trying to continually update and improve the course.
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Click or below to learn more about different reviews. Click to open examples of review papers.
Rapid Review
What is it?
(JBI, 2020a)
Cochrane Rapid Review (RR) Methods (Cochrane Training, 2020a)
PRISMA-RR: a reporting guideline for rapid reviews of primary studies is currently under development.
(Stevens, et. al. , 2022)
Example:
(Lal & Adair, 2014)
Scoping Review
Whether to do scoping review or systematic review?
(JBI, 2020b)
Systematic review or scoping review? Guidance for authors when choosing between a systematic or scoping review approach (Munn, et. al., 2018)
Steps of Scoping Reviews (Evidence Synthesis Ireland, 2020)
Conduct and report guidance (JBI, 2020c)
PRISMA for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA, 2021)
Example:
(Fusar-Poli, et. al., 2020)
Umbrella Review
What is it?
(JBI, 2020d)
Reporting Guideline: Preferred Reporting Items for Overviews of Reviews (PRIOR) (Pollock, 2019)
Example:
(Radua, et. al., 2018)
Narrative Review / Synthesis without a Meta-Analysis (SWiM)
Different types of SRs (JBI, 2020e)
SWiM reporting guideline (Cochrane Training, 2020b)
SWiM reporting guideline (Campbell et. al., 2020)
Jump to the detail step-by-step process of conducting a systematic review.
Example:
(Johnson & Sandford, 2005)
Systematic Review with a Meta-Analysis
What is it? (Cochrane, 2016)
How to interpret a forest plot in a meta-analysis? (Clinical Information Sciences, 2016)
What does CI 95% mean? (O'Brien & Yi, 2016, p. 1680)
Jump to the detail step-by-step process of conducting a systematic review
Examples:
SR of treatment / intervention effectiveness (Stacey et. al., 2017)
SR of prognostic / risk factors (Bates et. al., 2007)
SR of adverse effects (Shuster, Jones & Salmon, 2007)
SR of diagnostic test accuracy (Sun et.al., 2012)
Living Systematic Review
Introduction to Living Systematic Reviews (Cochrane Training, 2017)
Living Systematic Reviews: towards real-time evidence for health-care decision-making (Mavergames & Elliott, 2022)
Living systematic reviews guidance (Cochrane, 2021)
What, why, planning and guidance document (The Cochrane Collaboration, 2022)
The PRISMA - LSR: an extension of the PRISMA 2020 statement for Living Systematic Reviews is currently under development.
(Kahale, et. al., 2022)
Example:
(Thombs, et. al.,2020)
References:
Bates, M.N., Khalakdina, A., Pai, M., Chang, L., Lessa, F., & Smith, K.R. (2007). Risk of tuberculosis from exposure to tobacco smoke: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Archives of internal medicine, 167(4), 335-342.
Briscoe, S. (2023). Errors to avoid when searching for studies for systematic reviews: A guide for nurse researchers. International Journal of Older People Nursing, 00, e12533. https://doi.org/10.1111/opn.12533
Campbell, M., McKenzie, J.E., Sowden, A., Katikireddi, S.V., Brennan, S.E., Ellis, S., ... & Thomson, H. (2020). Synthesis without meta-analysis (SWiM) in systematic reviews: reporting guideline. BMJ, 368:l6890. https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.l6890
Clinical Information Sciences. (2016, Jun 22). Interpreting a forest plot of a meta-analysis [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgJWrHFgh8s
Cochrane Training. (2020a, April 24). Part 2: Cochrane Rapid Review (RR) Methods: A Look at Interim Recommendations [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b99SCLIeV44
Cochrane Training. (2020b, March 3). SWiM reporting guideline: introduction [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YoHQe-53hY
Cochrane. (2016, Jan 28). What are systematic reviews? [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/egJlW4vkb1Y
Cochrane. (2021, May 4). Living systematic review guidance [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/SXUkCh8UG1Q
Cochrane Training. (2017, April 21). Introducing living systematic reviews [videos]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxFw8aTtvq-cyp0IW6xdPu5jc5BlOCYZ6
Evidence Synthesis Ireland. (2020, November 13). Scoping review steps - Heather Colquhoun [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/5NtTSiCD580
Fusar-Poli, P., De Pablo, G.S., De Micheli, A., Nieman, D.H., Correll, C.U., Kessing, L.V., ... & van Amelsvoort, T. (2020). What is good mental health? a scoping review. European Neuropsychopharmacology, 31, 33-46.
JBI. (2020a, October 20). 5 What are rapid reviews? [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/wg0Hjb-_mqU
JBI. (2020b, October 20). 3 Should I undertake a scoping review or a systematic review? [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/BlFExKNmvCM
JBI. (2020c, July 31). How to conduct and report your scoping review: latest guidance [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Db5JILJDRQ
JBI. (2020d, December 9). The JBI systematic review toolkit: diverse approaches to evidence synthesis [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/embed/tXWUaoN3J30?start=1960&end=2050
JBI. (2020e, October 20). 2 What are the different types of systematic reviews? [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Y_rMBiHFyHI
Johnson, A. & Sandford, J. (2005). Written and verbal information versus verbal information only for patients being discharged from acute hospital settings to home: systematic review. Health education research, 20(4), 423-429. https://academic.oup.com/her/article/20/4/423/632669
Kahale, L.A., Piechotta, V., McKenzie, J.E., Dorando, E., Iannizzi, C., Barker, J.M., ... & Akl, E.A. (2022). Extension of the PRISMA 2020 statement for living systematic reviews (LSRs): protocol. F1000Research, 11(109), 109.
Lal, S. & Adair, C.E. (2014). E-mental health: a rapid review of the literature. Psychiatric services, 65(1), 24-32.
Mavergames, C. & Elliott, J. (2022). Living systematic reviews: towards real-time evidence for health-care decision-making. BMJ Best Practice. https://bestpractice.bmj.com/info/toolkit/discuss-ebm/living-systematic-reviews-towards-real-time-evidence-for-health-care-decision-making/
Munn, Z., Peters, M. D., Stern, C., Tufanaru, C., McArthur, A. & Aromataris, E. (2018). Systematic review or scoping review? Guidance for authors when choosing between a systematic or scoping review approach. BMC medical research methodology, 18(1), 1-7.
Munn, Z., Stern, C., Aromataris, E., Lockwood, C. & Jordan, Z. (2018). What kind of systematic review should I conduct? A proposed typology and guidance for systematic reviewers in the medical and health sciences. BMC medical research methodology, 18(1), 1-9.
Pollock, M., Fernandes, R.M., Pieper, D., Tricco, A.C., Gates, M., Gates, A., & Hartling, L. (2019). Preferred Reporting Items for Overviews of Reviews (PRIOR): a protocol for development of a reporting guideline for overviews of reviews of healthcare interventions. Systematic reviews, 8(1), 1-9.
PRISMA. (2021). PRISMA for Scoping Reviews. http://www.prisma-statement.org/Extensions/ScopingReviews
Radua, J., Ramella‐Cravaro, V., Ioannidis, J.P., Reichenberg, A., Phiphopthatsanee, N., Amir, T., ... & Fusar‐Poli, P. (2018). What causes psychosis? An umbrella review of risk and protective factors. World psychiatry, 17(1), 49-66.
Shuster, J.J., Jones, L.S., & Salmon, D.A. (2007). Fixed vs random effects meta‐analysis in rare event studies: the rosiglitazone link with myocardial infarction and cardiac death. Statistics in medicine, 26(24), 4375-4385.
Stevens, A., Garritty, C., Hersi, M., & Moher, D. (2018). Developing PRISMA-RR, a reporting guideline for rapid reviews of primary studies (Protocol). EQUATOR Network. https://www.equator-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/PRISMA-RR-protocol. pdf.
Severn M, Mierzwinski-Urban M, Farrah K, Walter M, Spry C, Argáez C. Grey literature. Last updated 15 March 2023. In: SuRe Info: Summarized Research in Information Retrieval for HTA. Available from: https://www.sure-info.org//grey-literature.
Sun, W., Wang, K., Gao, W., Su, X., Qian, Q., Lu, X., ... & Shi, Y. (2011). Evaluation of PCR on bronchoalveolar lavage fluid for diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis: a bivariate metaanalysis and systematic review. PLoS One, 6(12), e28467.
The Cochrane Collaboration. (2022). Living systematic reviews. Conhrane Community. https://community.cochrane.org/review-production/production-resources/living-systematic-reviews
Thombs, B.D., Bonardi, O., Rice, D.B., Boruff, J.T., Azar, M., He, C., ... & Benedetti, A. (2020). Curating evidence on mental health during COVID-19: A living systematic review. Journal of psychosomatic research, 133, 110113.
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