Are you planning to conduct a systematic review for your Master’s or PhD research paper? Or is it your first attempt at it? Most people are enticed into conducting a systematic review because it appears to be the easiest type of study. Right? Well, think again. Systematic reviews are considered to be one of the best in terms of research standards. Evidence-based practice in medicine has to be usually supported by system reviews. So, when did the best become easy? If you plan to conduct one, then do it for all the right reasons. A systematic review, as its name suggests, requires a systematic, unbiased, and critical analysis of recent literature (published or unpublished). It gives you the most accurate and appraised information about a research topic and hence, it cannot be messed up! It is extremely time-consuming, and combining various studies may not be everyone’s cup of tea. It is also something that can’t be done alone. Are you beginning to wonder if a systematic review is too much of a headache for your research paper? Hold on, here is where it starts looking better. Systematic reviews are less expensive, and more accurate and reliable than individual studies, and the results have better generalizability and credibility. And finally, you resume is far more respected and envied by researchers if it has a systematic review on it. Here are some steps that may help you while you undertake this mammoth task: Frame your research question: This is the most basic and fundamental step for any research. There is no research paper without a research question. Although unlike other studies, you need a very clearly defined research question right at the beginning of the study because there is no scope of altering or building on your research question once you have begun with your exhaustive review. Using the PICO method to frame your research question. P-Problem I-Intervention C-Comparison O-Outcomes Select your team: As I said before, you will need a lot of help to complete a systematic review. So, choose the people you know who will make this process a little easy for you. You will need a subject expert to guide you through the topic, a librarian to design your elaborate search strategy, reviewers to screen recent research, and a statistician for data analysis. Flying solo into a systematic review is never a good idea, particularly if you have a submission deadline to meet. Review literature: Most researchers undertake a literature review for any type of study they conduct, but a literature review for a systematic review is different because it has to be detailed and comprehensive to the extent of literally being exhaustive. You need to review literature to identify the studies you wish to include because they need to answer your research question with similar inclusion and exclusion criteria using outcomes that measure the same variables. So, look at maximum resources with minimum restrictions. Quality assessment protocol: Because reviews are held at high quality standards of the evidence it provides, you have to review the quality of every step you take while conducting a systematic review. Write down a protocol, beginning from your search strategy to discussing your results, and follow the standards. Set your level of acceptable standard of inclusion that you will apply to studies. You need to critically appraise every study you include to assess the credibility of their results. It is recommend that once you have a written protocol for your systematic reviews, then you must get it registered at one of the available protocol registries. Campbell collaboration for social sciences http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/ Cochrane collaboration for health care http://www.cochrane.org/ Prospero for any systematic review http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/ Data synthesis and dissemination: After you have extracted the relevant data from the included study, you will need to analyse and interpret the data and its implications. You have to ensure to avoid introducing publication or any other bias that may affect the quality of your study. You can synthesize your data in two main ways: (1) Narrative (systematic reviews) and (2) Statistical (Meta-analysis). This depends completely on your choice. You can also have a narrative synthesis along with a statistical one. These are a few steps that you need to follow to end up with a decent systematic review. Be prepared to invest at least 18 months to complete your systematic review because if you have done everything right then that is how long it will take. Use the appropriate guidelines recommended by your target journal when conducting as well as penning your study. You have various academic paper editing companies that can help you with getting your research paper publication-ready, but you have to be ready to put in every effort required to ensure that your study is comprehensive and accurate. To read more or to access guidelines on systematic reviews follow the links below: http://www.prisma-statement.org/ http://www.jgh.ca/uploads/Library/Instruction/JGH%20SR%202010.pdf http://www.gfmer.ch/SRH-Course-2014/research-methodology/pdf/Systematic-review-Abawi-2014.pdf
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