Psychological Research

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What is a systematic review?

A systematic review gathers, assesses and synthesizes all available empirical research on a specific question using a comprehensive search method.

The key characteristics of a systematic review are:

• A clearly stated set of objectives with pre-defined eligibility criteria for studies;
• An explicit, reproducible methodology;
• A systematic search that attempts to identify all studies that would meet the eligibility criteria;
• An assessment of the validity of the findings of the included studies, for example through the assessment of risk of bias; and
• A systematic presentation, and synthesis, of the characteristics and findings of the included studies.

From Cochrane Handbook, 1.2.2

(The information in this page comes from the University of Texas Libraries, who generously licensed their guide with a Creative Commons license).

For an overview to systematic reviews, please visit the link below.

Summarizing vs. Synthesizing

In a systematic review, researchers do more than summarize findings from identified articles. You will synthesize the information you want to include.

While a summary is a way of concisely relating important themes and elements from a larger work or works in a condensed form, a synthesis takes the information from a variety of works and combines them together to create something new.

Synthesis:

"The goal of a systematic synthesis of qualitative research is to integrate or compare the results across studies in order to increase understanding of a particular phenomenon, not to add studies together. Typically the aim is to identify broader themes or new theories – qualitative syntheses usually result in a narrative summary of cross-cutting or emerging themes or constructs, and/or conceptual models."

Denner, J., Marsh, E. & Campe, S. (2017). Approaches to reviewing research in education. In D. Wyse, N. Selwyn, & E. Smith (Eds.), The BERA/SAGE Handbook of educational research (Vol. 2, pp. 143-164). doi: 10.4135/9781473983953.n7

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