Comparison of different approaches to literature review
One seeks to generate cumulative knowledge and aims for generalisation while the other is unsystematic and non-reproducible and instead uses a more subjective approach.
What are the differences between a narrative review and a systematic literature review?
A review of a clearly formulated question that uses systematic and explicit methods to identify, select, and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect and analyse data from the studies that are included in the review
What is the definition of a systematic literature review?
Set of statistical procedures designed to accumulate research results across studies in order to estimate the relations between variables
What is the definition of meta-analysis?
Qualitative
What types of studies - qual/quant - do meta-summary and meta-synthesis synthesize and analyze?
Both seek to summarize or synthesize evidences to answer a specific research question and use a collection of diverse studies
What are similarities between a narrative review and a systematic literature review?
AND, OR, NOT
- AND will search for all of your search terms
- OR will search for at least one of your search terms
- DO NOT USE “NOT”
What are Boolean search operators and how do they work?
Quantitative
What types of studies - quan/qual - do meta-analysis synthesize and analyze?
Making the “sum” by quantitatively aggregating qualitative findings
What is the main purpose of a Meta-summary?
They allow for the collection of diverse types of studies, for the exploration of broader or more abstract questions, and they are easier and less time-consuming
What value do narrative reviews still have nowadays?
Narrative reviews, meta-summary and meta-syntheses
What types of literature reviews could be used to synthesize qualitative research findings?
Scoping; planning; searching; screening & assessing eligibility; assessing quality
What are the five stages of conducting a systematic literature review?
Graphical and tabular with narrative commentaries
How are the results of a meta-analysis typically presented?
Not only to summarize the results from previous qualitative research papers, but also to present new perspectives on topics through interpreting findings from different qualitative studies and creating ‘meta-themes’
What are the purposes of a meta-synthesis?
By holding the SHIFT key
How do you select several limiters (for example several languages) for the papers you want to include/exclude on PsycInfo?
Meta-synthesis, meta-summary, and narrative review
Which literature review methods don’t typically imply conducting a quality evaluation of the selected papers?
- * adds different word ending (weigh* -> weighing, weight)
- * adds a word in between (midsummer* dream -> midsummer night’s dream)
What are truncation symbols and how do they work?
The strength of the relationship between two variables
What does effect size measure?
An overall theme, merging themes from different qualitative papers, that can be created by the author of a Meta-synthesis
What is a third order construct?
Any literature produced in electronic or print format that has not been controlled by commercial publishers, like technical or research reports from government agencies, reports and working papers from scientific research groups and committees, doctoral dissertations, conference proceedings, etc.
What is the “gray literature”?
They all are systematic approaches to reviewing or analyzing the literature.
What do systematic literature reviews, meta-analysis, meta-synthesis, and meta-summary have in common?
? when a character is unknown: (wom?n -> woman, women)
# when there MIGHT be another character (colo#r -> color, colour)
What are wildcard symbols and how do they work?
The PRISMA flow diagram
What is typically used in Meta-analysis and systematic literature review to keep track of each step in the selection of included papers, and of the numbers excluded at each of these steps?
Languages
What can you select as a limiter in PsycInfo but not PsycArticles?