Systematic Reviews for Social Sciences

The Systematic Review Process

• Develop/identify an answerable problem or question that would fill a meaningful gap in the literature
• Define inclusion/exclusion criteria
• Develop a review protocol
• Create search strategies to locate studies
• Select relevant studies
• Extract data from individual studies
• Assess the quality of the research
• Synthesize and summarize the findings of studies
• Write the manuscript

Before starting your review -  determine if a SR is the best approach to answer your question. 

• Will it fill a meaningful gap in existing literature?
• Is there already an existing review? 
  • If you identify an existing review, assess its quality.
  • If a high quality review exists but was completed several years ago, a new review may be justified.
• Is another type of review a better fit? (Other Review Types)
• Do you have the necessary time and resources to complete a systematic review?

The Review Tools page provides lists of applications to help facilitate/automate the review process.