Title: Understanding the Complexity of Writing a Literature Review

Crafting a literature review is an integral aspect of academic research, requiring meticulous attention
to detail, comprehensive analysis, and a systematic approach. Often underestimated, the process
demands significant time, effort, and expertise to produce a scholarly piece that adheres to rigorous
standards. One effective method of mastering this intricate task is by exploring systematic reviews
of literature examples, which serve as invaluable guides in navigating the complexities of academic
writing.

A systematic review of literature exemplifies a structured approach to synthesizing existing research

findings on a particular topic. Unlike traditional literature reviews, which may lack a systematic
methodology, systematic reviews meticulously identify, evaluate, and analyze relevant studies to
provide a comprehensive overview of the subject matter. By following a predetermined protocol,
researchers ensure transparency, consistency, and reliability in their review process, thereby
enhancing the credibility and validity of their findings.

However, delving into the realm of systematic reviews can be daunting for many scholars. The sheer
volume of literature, diverse methodologies, and varying quality of studies pose significant
challenges. Moreover, the stringent criteria for inclusion and exclusion, rigorous data extraction, and
statistical analysis further complicate the process. As such, aspiring researchers often find themselves
overwhelmed by the intricacies of conducting a systematic review.

To alleviate the burden and streamline the writing process, individuals can turn to professional
academic writing services such as ⇒ StudyHub.vip ⇔. With a team of experienced writers well-
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researchers can save time, overcome challenges, and produce exceptional literature reviews that
contribute meaningfully to their field of study.

In conclusion, writing a literature review, especially a systematic review of literature, is a challenging

yet essential endeavor in academic research. By studying systematic review examples and seeking
assistance from reputable academic writing services like ⇒ StudyHub.vip ⇔, scholars can navigate
the complexities of the writing process with confidence and precision. Embracing a systematic
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Standardizing the description of PICO elements across studies facilitates these comparisons. Writers
can easily summarize material but seem to struggle to adequately synthesize knowledge about their
topic and express that in their writing. Research and Synthesis Table Templates This Excel workbook
includes simple templates for creating research tables and synthesis tables. The selected outcomes
from applying these rules to studies 3 and 6 are indicated by an asterisk in Table 9.3.b. Table 9.3.b
also illustrates an approach to tabulating the extracted data. Introduction, sometimes method that is to
be followed, analysis, opinions, comparisons, conclusion, and references. What to consider when
critically appraising a systematic review. A meta-analysis combines data from different studies,
effectively creating a larger sample size to improve the quality of information. More Posts Share this:
Print Email Facebook Twitter. Diagnostic test accuracy reviews produce a summary of diagnostic
test performance so that their accuracy can be determined before use by healthcare professionals. A
bibliography of the included studies should always be created, particularly if you are intending to
publish your review. UM subscribes to Covidence for UM students, faculty, and staff. Guidance for
authors when choosing between a systematic or scoping review approach. She obtained the add
qualification from American board in infectious disease. MEDLINE (OVID) Comprehensive index
to the international literature of biomedicine including clinical practice, psychosocial issues, health
care administration, medical research, nursing, and more. Chair of Information Systems IV,
University of Mannheim, L 15, 1-6, 68131 Mannheim, Germany. Each study’s point estimate of the
relative risk is plotted around a line of “no effect.” A risk of 1 means that there is no difference
between the intervention and control groups. The 95% confidence interval is very large and crosses
1. Hence for final analysis, only about 10% of the original selection of articles made it through the
entire screening process. Could the conclusions of the study have been influenced by bias? 7. To find
examples of systematic literature review articles you can check Cochrane Database of Systematic
Reviews, BioMed Central’s Systematic Reviews Journal, and PROSPERO. Where possible, however,
both relative and absolute measures of effect should be provided. What types of systematic literature
reviews are there. Yes, it’s important to acknowledge and discuss literature that presents different
viewpoints or contradicts your hypothesis. Reviewed articles may be summarized in the form of
tables, and can be further structured using organizing frameworks such as a concept matrix. Relevant
research that can be brought to the table for this review is then found, assessed, and selected in this
way. The main components of a systematic literature search are an established eligibility model, a
systematic review process, an assessment of the validity of the results, an understanding and
presentation of the results, and a reference list. The literature review is not just a summary of the
already published works. This template can be used for a literature review at any level of study. We
provide a walkthrough of the template and review an example of a high-quality literature research
chapter here. Himmelfarb Library recommends using RefWorks to manage your references.
These review techniques have evolved over time and can sometimes influence each other a little bit.
The authors presented a structured summary of intervention and comparator groups for each study,
and then categorized intervention components thought to be important for enabling patients to
manage their own condition. Table 9.3.b shows selected intervention components, the comparator,
and outcomes measured in a subset of studies (some details are fictitious). Systematic reviews have a
necessarily narrow focus (e.g., “hypothermia to reduce neurological damage following coronary
artery bypass surgery,” Ref. 5); however it may be more informative for clinicians to be able to
access a summary of evidence from a range of related systematic reviews. Acknowledgments The
authors would like to thank Dr. Rebecca Stores and Dr. Chris Markham for their support and useful
comments on the manuscript. The title of your manuscript can also reflect some of these factors
about the purpose and scope of your review. Those conducted under the auspices of the Cochrane
Collaboration are held in particularly high regard (7) but on a general note, there are a number of
reasons as to why caution is required in the interpretation and application of the findings of a
systematic review. It’s basically a hint for the following researchers. Cochrane RevMan 5.0
Download RevMan for Non-Cochrane Reviews (Cochrane Training) Survey or Form Software
(Qualtrics, Poll Everywhere) Survey or form tools can help you create custom forms with many
different question types, such as multiple choice, drop downs, ranking, and more. Planning
contingencies for anticipated scenarios is likely to lead to less post-hoc decision making ( Chapter 2
and Chapter 3 ); however, it is difficult to plan for all scenarios. Relevant past research is selected
and synthesized into a coherent discussion. The outcome measured here is all-cause stroke and
systemic embolism, ischemic and unspecified stroke and hemorrhagic stroke. Web sources are
searched via Scirus, and include author homepages, university sites and resources such as the
preprint servers CogPrints and ArXiv.org, and OAI compliant resources. You can find our full
collection of templates here. PDF Five tips for developing useful literature summary tables for
writing Literature summary tables are not only meant to provide an overview of basic information
(authors, country, purpose and findings) about included articles, but they should also provide
detailed information about the theo-retical and conceptual frameworks and the methods used in the
included article. Extract the data Every step of the data extraction must be documented for
transparency and replicability. These preregistration plans include a specific search strategy using
specific search terms for individual scholarly databases so other researchers can recreate the search. A
ready-made example of literature review helps to know how to get started properly without
straggling with irrelevant information and searching through tons of unnecessary materials. RJ’s
position is supported by the NHMRC Cochrane Collaboration Funding Program and Cabrini
Institute. 9.7 References Chamberlain C, O’Mara-Eves A, Porter J, Coleman T, Perlen SM, Thomas
J, McKenzie JE. Literature reviews, on the other hand, do not follow such rigid or explicit methods.
There are two main ways to search the database: --- select General Search to search for articles by
subject term, author name, journal title, or author affiliation --- select Cited Reference Search to
search for articles that cite an author or article that you specify. The unfiltered search results should
be saved and retained for possible reanalysis. FAQs: Literature Review Template What format is the
template (doc, pdf, ppt, etc.). The literature review chapter template is provided as a Google Doc.
Tabulating study characteristics is generally preferable to lengthy description in the text, since the
structure imposed by a table can make it easier and faster for readers to scan and identify patterns in
the information presented. Table 9.3.b illustrates one such approach. Method: We conduct a
systematic review of the literature on UCASD. In this example, 141 were people assigned to the
intervention group in Study A. From Lab to Literature: Exploring the Roadblocks Physicians
Navigate in Publishing Their Research Levels of evidence-based medicine in mass gathering public
health and emergency medicine literature review A clinical literature review of effective supervision
in clinical practice settings Comments are closed. After preliminary examination of the outcome data,
the review authors changed their planned intervention groups. When the outcome is something bad,
like death, the intervention should be designed to reduce the risk, which is represented by a risk ratio
less than 1. In: Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors).
Prior to completing the review, it would be advisable to consider rerunning the search to check for
any recently published studies that the first search may have missed.
Furthermore, they include the possibility of evaluating consistency and generalization of the
evidence regarding specific scientific questions and are, therefore, also of great practical value within
the psychological field. You’re also welcome to convert it to whatever format works best for you,
such as LaTeX or PDF. Does this template include the Excel literature catalog. RJ’s position is
supported by the NHMRC Cochrane Collaboration Funding Program and Cabrini Institute. 9.7
References Chamberlain C, O’Mara-Eves A, Porter J, Coleman T, Perlen SM, Thomas J, McKenzie
JE. Systematic Review source The first thing that you need to know about systematic reviews is that
it tackles a clearly formulated and constructed question. So now it is time to extract all the
information that is of actual use to your review. Parallel tracks Parallel interwoven creation tracks.
Radeva-Petrova et al. ( 2014 ) wrap up on page 120. The process of performing a systematic
literature review must be transparent and. The main components of a literature review are overview,
techniques, discussion, conclusion, and bibliography. Disseminate findings Since the Cochrane
Collaboration’s reviews are published in the online Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, they
are often lengthy and comprehensive. Apart from checking these protocol databases, search UM
Library databases like PubMed, CINAHL, or PsycINFO. A classic systematic literature review can
take different approaches: Effectiveness reviews assess the extent to which a medical intervention or
therapy achieves its intended effect. A summary table helps you record the main points of each
source and document how sources relate to each other. Through a range of tools and practical
resources, this international, cross-sector initiative aims to educate researchers, promote integrity, and
build trust in credible research and publications. Need of systemic review and meta-analysis: There
are several reasons for performing a systematic review and meta-analysis: It may assist in resolving
discrepancies in results published by individual studies that may include bias or errors. The screening
is done in two phases: Pre-screening of all titles and abstracts, and selecting those appropriate
Screening of the full-text articles of the selected studies Make sure reviewers keep a log of which
studies they exclude, with reasons why. ?? Visit our guide on what is an abstract? 6. Building a
summary table and developing solid synthesis skills is important for nurses, nurse practitioners, and
allied health researchers. Gather data from many different, independent studies that look at the same
research question and assess similar outcome measures. The rows of the forest plot represent the
individual studies included for that comparison and outcome. The authors further specified that if
there were multiple time points at which the outcome was measured within a time frame, they would
select the longest time point. This is where your librarian will come in handy again. Most commonly
this is the statistical combination of results from two or more separate studies (henceforth referred to
as meta-analysis) of effect estimates. As the review progresses, this detail may be replaced by
standardized description of PICO characteristics (e.g. the coding of counselling interventions
presented in Table 9.3.a ). Table 9.3.b illustrates one approach to tabulating study characteristics to
enable comparison and analysis across studies. Statistical methods ( meta-analysis ) may or may not
be used to analyse and summarise the results of the included studies. - Cochrane Collaboration
Definition Considerations before you start. Apply appropriate grading of your evidence and consider
the strength of your recommendations. This is common in the social sciences and humanities. A
further consideration is the type of studies on which the results have been based. Methods for the
statistical synthesis are described in Chapter 10, Chapter 11 and Chapter 12. 9.2 A general
framework for synthesis Box 9.2.a A general framework for synthesis that can be applied irrespective
of the methods used to synthesize results Box 9.2.a provides a general framework for synthesis that
can be applied irrespective of the methods used to synthesize results. Using the Research Table This
is an example of a research table, in which you provide a basic description of the most important
features of the studies, articles, and other items you discover in your research.
With my undergraduate research students (who tend to conduct small-scale qualitative studies ), I
encourage them to conduct a narrative literature review whereby they can identify key themes in the
literature. For instance, the intervention may work differently in different contexts, and the included
studies were gathered from all over the world. These preregistration plans include a specific search
strategy using specific search terms for individual scholarly databases so other researchers can
recreate the search. These can help provide readers with more context about the review, and its
conclusions. Suggestion. A shift from an up-front design to up-front analysis. It might be possible to
hire study authors to collect missing data for data pooling (e.g., means, standard deviations). Virtual
Forge A Survey On Intrusion Detection Systems A Survey On Intrusion Detection Systems Mary
Calkins Similar to Systematic Literature Review Sample ( 20 ) Why Manual Pen-Testing is a must
have for comprehensive application security. What types of systematic literature reviews are there.
Check the basic literature review format and elements used in the example. If the experiments and
trials identified in the literature search are of a uniform nature, a meta-analysis may be performed.
There are circumstances under which a meta-analysis is not possible, however, and other statistical
synthesis methods might be considered, so as to make best use of the available data. There are many
challenges and skills required for producing a systematic review. Microsoft Products (UNC
Information Technology Services) Cochrane RevMan RevMan offers collection forms for
descriptive information on population, interventions, and outcomes, and quality assessments, as well
as for data for analysis and forest plots. You will need to search the cognate literature before
claiming there is “little previous research” on your topic. Data is combined and re-analyzed,
providing a greater statistical power than any single study alone. Apart from checking these protocol
databases, search UM Library databases like PubMed, CINAHL, or PsycINFO. The main difference
between literature review and systematic review is their focus on the research question; a systematic
review is focused on a specific research question whereas a literature review is not. Literature
reviews can usually be conducted by a single person rather than a team. Using a topical approach,
precision is never on top of the list when conducting this sort of analysis. Integrates findings from a
large body of quantitative findings to enhance understanding, draw conclusions, and detect patterns
and relationships. PDF version of this page (470K) Other titles in this collection Advances in Patient
Safety Related information PMC PubMed Central citations PubMed Links to PubMed Similar
articles in PubMed It Is Not That Simple nor Compelling. One inclusion criteria might be that
assignment to study arms had to be random; an exclusion criteria might be all studies without a
control arm that used a placebo. The process may be subject to bias that supports the researcher’s
own work. Chapter 2 defined three types of PICO criteria that may be helpful in understanding
decisions that need to be made at different stages in the review: The review PICO (planned at the
protocol stage) is the PICO on which eligibility of studies is based (what will be included and what
excluded from the review). There are two main ways to search the database: --- select General
Search to search for articles by subject term, author name, journal title, or author affiliation --- select
Cited Reference Search to search for articles that cite an author or article that you specify. This
comprehensive range of resources includes over 3,000 records across seven publication types:
Evidence Based Recommended Practices, Evidence Summaries, Best Practice Information Sheets,
Systematic Reviews, Consumer Information Sheets, Systematic Review Protocols, and Technical
Reports. Five key themes were found in the literature: poor communication can lead to various
negative outcomes, discontinuity of care, compromise of patient safety, patient dissatisfaction, and
inefficient use of resources. Furthermore, critical review applies to research areas where point-by-
point arguments on a particular research topic are needed to be identified to reach an accurate and
precise conclusion on the research question. Recently uploaded Bayesian Analysis Fundamentals
with Examples Bayesian Analysis Fundamentals with Examples Tushar Tank Website Fixer-Upper
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Samantha Russell John See - Narrative Story John See - Narrative Story Alan See 2023 MAP Data
Analysis - St. The 332 natural disasters in 2011 caused the highest economic damage ever recorded;
Asia was the continent most often hit, followed by the Americas, Africa, Europe and Oceania.
You can create evidence and summary tables to describe study characteristics, results, or both. Meta-
analyses are typically presented in forest plots (see the next section for how to interpret these). So,
whether you are writing a student papers, dissertations, or scholarly report it is necessary to learn a
few tips and tricks to organize your ideas. Always cite your sources correctly and paraphrase ideas in
your own words while maintaining the original meaning. It contains 3 sections: Instructions to
authors Additional supporting material Appendices with calculations and examples This material is
intended as a practical supplement to the advice in the Cochrane Handbook. This refers to the
material that is either unpublished or published in non-commercial form (e.g., theses, dissertations,
government reports, fact sheets, pre-prints of articles). Web sources are searched via Scirus, and
include author homepages, university sites and resources such as the preprint servers CogPrints and
ArXiv.org, and OAI compliant resources. Introduction In some aspects, systematic reviews vary
from conventional narrative reviews. Your systematic literature review doesn’t have to contain a
comparison, but you’ll want to stipulate at this stage, either way. The tables included information
about authors, country, purpose, study design, setting, sample characteristics, sampling technique,
method of. A summary table helps you record the main points of each source and document how
sources relate to each other. A summary table is also called a synthesis matrix. It’s best to formulate a
detailed plan for how you’ll present your systematic review results, guidelines can be found for
example from the Cochrane institute. It’s basically a hint for the following researchers. This is
achieved by simplifying or omitting stages of the systematic review process. Those conducted under
the auspices of the Cochrane Collaboration are held in particularly high regard (7) but on a general
note, there are a number of reasons as to why caution is required in the interpretation and application
of the findings of a systematic review. If studies included in a review are at a high risk of bias, one
may place less confidence in their findings. You can create evidence and summary tables to describe
study characteristics, results, or both. In the fourth stage, the ?nal sample passed a ?rst
categorization. This is one of the spa treatments given to the hands and feet. Search results may be
filtered by screening titles first, then abstracts of relevant-looking titles and finally the full reports.
Sometimes confused as a blanket term for other types of reviews. After that, there is an option to
highlight the key points and give recommendations for future studies or research. In simple words,
what key points will be added to the body part. PRISMA Statement PRISMA Elaboration and
Explanation Document Moher D, Shamseer L, Clarke M, Ghersi D, Liberati A, Petticrew M, et al.
Cochrane RevMan 5.0 Download RevMan for Non-Cochrane Reviews (Cochrane Training) Survey
or Form Software (Qualtrics, Poll Everywhere) Survey or form tools can help you create custom
forms with many different question types, such as multiple choice, drop downs, ranking, and more.
For permission to re-use material from the Handbook (either academic or commercial), please see
here for full details. Some things to keep in mind as you begin your own research and writing are
ways to avoid the most common errors seen in the first attempt at a literature review. Why Manual
Pen-Testing is a must have for comprehensive application security. ClinicalTrials.gov Database of
clinical trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, other Federal agencies and the
pharmaceutical industry.
Numbers of participants and studies addressing these outcomes. Ideally, this will provide more
reliable findings, leading to higher-quality conclusions and recommendations for further research.
Similarly, a well-conducted systematic review might not have been recently updated and its findings
might not therefore be based on current primary research. A minimum of two is a good rule of thumb,
with a third to serve as a tiebreaker if needed. Let’s consider systematic and literature reviews side-
by-side to understand how systematic reviews are unique. Requirement Through understanding of
the topic with relevant studies as backup and statistical analysis. As a researcher, you will probably
want the opportunity to communicate and exchange ideas with people from a broad range of
disciplines, and some review organizations provide seminars, conferences and online discussion
rooms so creating a hub for a community. It is worth checking that, based on issues around risk of
bias, you agree with the conclusions made by the systematic review authors. On the left of the forest
plot you will find a list of these included studies (commonly given a study ID consisting of the first
author’s name and the year in which the study was published). This is where your librarian will come
in handy again. Systematic Literature Review Sample 1. 1.Introduction. This is the median control
group risk across 8 trials of 3,663 women. It’s best to formulate a detailed plan for how you’ll
present your systematic review results. The secret to creating an effective search strategy is to strike
a balance between sensitivity and precision. Using comprehensive and exhaustive searching of the
published and unpublished literature, searching various databases, reports, and grey literature.
Scandinavian Journal of Management, 31(3), 387-408. Primary research designs and study
characteristics are appraised, data synthesized and results interpreted (4). Systematic Reviews: the
process, quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods. Every year, there is a great increase in the
number of scientific publications. They are therefore a good way of rapidly obtaining current
information on research on a given topic. In addition to including all the questions needed to answer
the review question and. Microsoft Products (UNC Information Technology Services) Cochrane
RevMan RevMan offers collection forms for descriptive information on population, interventions,
and outcomes, and quality assessments, as well as for data for analysis and forest plots. Exclusion
criteria were (a) healthy persons used as controls, (b) patients following heart transplantation, (c)
absence of quantitative description of end points, (d) lack of clear and reproducible results, and (e)
trials in the abstract form without a published manuscript in a peer-reviewed journal. Publications
Account settings Browse Titles NCBI Bookshelf. Main Objective Answer and discuss topics that
have straight answers, such as clinical discussions with no biases. These include limitations, strength
of evidence, biases, applicability, economic effects, and implications for future practice or research.
It’s basically a hint for the following researchers. These approaches include a comprehensive search
of all potentially relevant articles and the use of explicit, reproducible criteria in the selection of
articles for a systematic review. Standardizing the description of PICO elements across studies
facilitates these comparisons. Narrative reviews A mostly provide a broad overview of a specific
topic.
I’m talking about systematic reviews and meta-analyses. For more description of systematic reviews,
including links to protocols, checklists, workflow processes, and structure see “ A Young
Researcher’s Guide to a Systematic Review “. Criteria may include factors relating to the population,
the intervention, the type of study and the outcome. Definition A systematic literature review is a
summary, analysis, and evaluation of all the existing research on a well-formulated and specific
question. These hacks help you understand how to prepare your literature research correctly,
avoiding numerous common mistakes. This example shows a specific type of effect size: relative
risk. Sometimes individuals must meet them adequately, understand the difficulties and determine
their main priorities, deciding what to examine and how to start writing. We will review some of the
tools you can use for data extraction, the types of information you will want to extract, and the
options available in the systematic review software used here at UNC, Covidence. Excluding it
completely from a literature review is inappropriate because the search should be always as complete
as possible in order to reduce the risk of publication bias. The medical literature on which to base
decisions is rapidly growing, but the reliability and relevance of the available research evidence varies
in quality and application across different clinical scenarios. Keywords used in the data search
included: food, naturalness, natural content, and natural ingredients. Undertaken to clarify the state
of existing research, the evidence, and possible implications that can be drawn from that. You will
include relevant theory and empirical research. Authors must, for example, choose their population
age range, circumstances, results, and type(s) of interventions and control groups a priori. When the
outcome is something bad, like death, the intervention should be designed to reduce the risk, which
is represented by a risk ratio less than 1. More than 60% of titles are from countries other than the
US Abstracts go back to 1966. The Evidence for Evidence-Based Practice Implementation.
Covidence allows you to create and publish a data extraction template with text fields, single-choice
items, section headings and section subheadings; perform dual and single reviewer data extraction;
review extractions for consensus; and export data extraction and quality assessment to a CSV with
each item in a column and each study in a row. We don’t know if it prevents maternal deaths, as this
would require very large studies to detect an effect. As with a traditional literature review, the aim is
to identify and critically evaluate and summarise the current evidence on the identified problems.
Systematic reviews follow a clearly outlined convention or plan, with criteria that are clearly
articulated or planned before the review is conducted. The main purpose of this type of research is to
identify, review, and summarize the best available research on a specific research question. What
types of literature reviews can this template be used for. Systematic Review Vs Literature Review:
The Comparison Table To better understand the two types of reviews, we thought it would be better
to use a side-by-side comparison. These details should look familiar from the summary of results
table. You can see a more complete list of options in the Systematic Review Toolbox. Visit our guide
to the best research databases for medicine and health to find resources for your systematic review.
In this case, the result is considered not “statistically significant.”. Your research question tells you
which findings are of interest in your research, so work from your research question to decide what
needs to go in each Finding header, and how many findings are necessary. Extract the data Every
step of the data extraction must be documented for transparency and replicability. A literature
review, which reviews the existing research and information on a selected study area, is a crucial
element of a research study.