What Is a Systematic Literature Review

Every year a huge amount of research is produced and frequently with conflicting findings. Mainly these differences are caused by study differences, flaws or sampling variation. In these situations, its not clear which is the most reliable source and hence problems to decide which source to be used for practice and policy decisions. A systematic review is an act of collecting all the findings, identifying, evaluating and integrating them into high-quality individual studies addressing one or more research questions. I believe a good systematic literature review should be able to establish progress made by research in the effort to clarify a particular problem, identify gaps, relations, and inconsistencies in the literature, comment, explain, extend or develop theory and describe the direction for future research. So systematic reviews can be referred to as research in their rights, but they sit above all other research designs because they have potential to provide the most practical implications (Webster & Watson 2002).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

The Differences between a systematic literature review and a literature review for research or quality improvement project

Systematic literature aims to address these problems by identifying, critically evaluating and integrating the findings of all relevant, high-quality individual studies addressing one or more research questions. On the other hand, a quality improvement project is a continuous learning process, development, assessment and application of a systematic approach that uses specific improvement techniques. These techniques are the improvement of data collection, problem demarcation, and diagnosis, generation, and selection of potential changes and implementation and appraisal of those tools (Bero et al. 1998).

Typology to rate evidence for literature reviews

Typology refers to the factors to consider when rating literature reviews. These factors include;

Transparency, High-quality literature reviews are clear about the design and the methods used for data gathering and analysis.

Cultural sensitivity; Quality literature reviews should be able to generate findings that are not biased and should consider local, cultural factors might affect the behavior and trends.

Conceptual framing. High-quality literature reviews acknowledges the existing research and makes it clear of how their analysis sits within the context of existing work (Hemsley-Brown & Sharp 2003).

References

Webster, J., & Watson, R. T. (2002). Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature review. MIS quarterly, xiii-xxiii.

Bero, L. A., Grilli, R., Grimshaw, J. M., Harvey, E., Oxman, A. D., & Thomson, M. A. (1998). Closing the gap between research and practice: an overview of systematic reviews of interventions to promote the implementation of research findings. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 317(7156), 465.

Hemsley-Brown, J., & Sharp, C. (2003). The use of research to improve professional practice: A systematic review of the literature. Oxford Review of Education, 29(4), 449-471.