Skip to Main Content

Systematic Reviews

This is a guide for learning about systematic reviews.

Start Here

Before you begin searching for an article, you must first understand the methodology of a systematic review and prepare a question that best fits this research style. In order to prepare, you will need to know about Frameworks, Guidelines, and Protocols.

Frameworks

Frameworks are a way to develop your research question. There are several different ways to frame your research question depending on the topic, discipline, and type of question. Below are several popular frameworks. For an extremely thorough list, visit the University of Maryland's Guide.

 

Framework Stands For Example Discipline/type
PICO

Population, Patient, or Problem

Intervention

Comparison, Control, or Comparator

Outcome

In adult patients with total hip replacements (Population), how effective is pain medication (Intervention) compared to aerobic stretching (Comparison) in controlling post operative pain (Outcome). Health care/ quantitative
PEO

Population

Exposure

Outcome

What are the attitudes (Outcome) of elementary school teachers (Population) towards teaching neurodivergent students (Exposure)? Qualitative
SPICE

Setting

Perspective 

Intervention

Comparison

Evaluation

What are the benefits (Evaluation) of a doula (Intervention) for low income mothers (Perspective) in the developed world (Setting) compared to no support (Comparison)? Social Sciences/qualitative

 

Guidelines

Guidelines are the blueprint to any systematic review. There are two major types: Conducting and Reporting guidelines.

Conducting Guidelines: these are general or discipline-specific. They lay out the methodology and best practices of performing a systematic review.

Reporting Guidelines: these lay out how to document and report your research. These guidelines may be specified by the journal you plan to publish in. 

Protocols

A protocol will list your rationale, hypothesis, and planned methodology for research. The protocol should be used as a guide while conducting research. To improve transparency and reproducibility, reduce bias, and limit duplication of effort, protols should be registered before conducting your review. There are several different places to register your protocol--we recommend registering it somewhere discipline specific or with AU's Institutional Repository. Below are some potential registration locations:

Cochrane Library

Campbell Collaboration

Collaboration for Environmental Evidence

PROSPERO

Open Science Framework