Learning to conduct a mini systematic review is an important skill as you get to practise the following
skills: (a)Literature searches; (b) synthesising literature beyond one article; (c) evaluating research articles
and (d) communicating research findings to a lay person.
Search Protocol:
For this assessment you will need to practise developing search protocols and narrowing down your
search. As such you will need to develop a search protocol for what your mini systematic review would be
on. The search protocol is part of your formative assessment for this particular assessment and you will
have the opportunity to submit and get feedback. Use your advanced literature search skills to identify
articles for your mini systematic review.
Advanced Literature Search
While developing the search protocol you will need to practise your advanced literature search skills, to
help you develop the protocol. Once the protocol is developed you will then conduct the search of the
literature for the systematic review.
Selecting Articles
Once you have conducted the search, you will then need to go over the titles and/or abstract of articles
and apply your inclusion/exclusion criteria. Following that you will need to read the full text of the
selected articles and choose (with inclusion/exclusion criteria in mind) which ones you will include in your
systematic review.
Quality Assessment
The quality assessment is an important step for a systematic review and you will need to choose a tool to
conduct this. Information on which tool can be found in the Quality Assessment lecture.
Extraction of Data
What data you will extract from the chosen research articles depends on your research question and the
quality assessment tool you have chosen.
Synthesis of Information
Once the information is extracted, you now need to synthesise the information.
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A mini systematic review should be structured as one would structure a research project. In the taught
session we discuss the PRISMA checklist for systematic reviews/meta-analyses and this is a checklist that
should be completed and read in conjunction with this guide. Please note, you are asked to complete a
mini systematic review so sections about meta-analyses are not needed for this assessment. The minisystematic review should contain the following sections:
Lay person Summary: Normally systematic reviews contain an abstract, but for this specific exercise we
want you to summarise the findings of your systematic review to a lay person. The mini systematic review
findings should be communicated as one would communicate findings of research to a lay person. The lay
person can be members of the public that have no formal education in research. It should be 200-250
words. You should contain information about the background of the systematic review, method, the
results, discussion and conclusion. You do not have to have all these subheadings, but the lay summary
should contain all that information. This section does not count towards the word count.
Background/Introduction: This section should provide information on what the focus of the mini
systematic review is, why it is needed and the general rationale for it. This should not be a long section
but enough to provide context to the reader.
Method: This is a very important section and should have all the subheading as suggested by the PRISMA
checklist for systematic reviews/meta-analyses. As with any project, it is important to report all the
important steps of the methodology for conducting this systematic review. It should be written in the past
tense. See PRISMA checklist for all the subsections needed for this section.
Results: This is where you report the results of the systematic review and provide the synthesis of the
results. See PRISMA checklist for all the subsections needed for this section.
Discussion: Within this section you need to discuss what the synthesised results mean for your research
question, the implications that might come in this area of research. As with a research project, you would
need to have a section on future directions and strengths and limitations. See PRISMA checklist for all the
subsections needed for this section.
Conclusion: Please write the conclusion for the systematic review
Tables/Figures: Please include tables summarising the results of the studies. See PRISMA checklist for
details on what tables/figures to include. Looking at published systematic reviews can also be beneficial.
Usually a table that provides details of all the studies is always included as supplementary material and
this is a table that you can include in an Appendix. Make sure to include all the relevant figures that are
needed for a systematic review, see PRISMA checklist for systematic reviews.
Appendices should include the following:
● the search protocol you created for the systematic review (PICOS).
● the search terms – the full list as entered for the search.
● an example of the literature evaluation you undertook (i.e. the table/information of how you scored
your papers as part of the quality assessment).
● any other documents that would be included in the additional materials of a systematic review.
The following citation is a fantastic book to help you guide you on conducting systematic reviews
Boland, A., Cherry, G., & Dickson, R. (Eds.). (2017). Doing a systematic review: A student’s guide.
a.
Population (e.g. age, gender, clinical
group/sample)
–
People over 60 years of age, any gender, in any
setting
b.
Intervention (e.g. treatment, test, behaviour
change intervention)
–
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
c.
Comparator (e.g. control group, usual care,
alternative interventions examined)
–
Studies with a control group
–
Treatment as usual
–
Waitlist Control
–
Alternative treatment for chronic pain
–
Placebo interventions
d.
Outcomes (e.g. attendance, health behaviour,
patient-reported outcomes)
–
Self-reported assessment of pain intensity
–
Overall wellbeing and quality of life
–
Outcomes related to everyday functioning
–
Psychological wellbeing
–
Are there sustainable (long term) effects
e.
Study/setting (e.g. primary research, randomised
control trials, cohort studies, qualitative studies)
–
Randomized control trials
–
Cohort studies
–
Qualitative studies
