Public Health

The steps for conducting a systematic review are the same as that of a scoping review. The difference is in your scope, you aren't gathering all of the research, only enough to analyze its scope:

1. Form your research team
   1. structured reviews are often so much work that a team of researchers is needed
      1. Guideline: Cochrane recommends the team include "an experienced medical/healthcare librarian or information specialist to provide support for the search process." (Cochrane 2023 4-1)
   2. Make sure you have enough people on your team to allow 2 people to independently review all articles collected
      1. Guideline: "As a minimum, information that involves subjective interpretation and information that is critical to the interpretation of results (e.g. outcome data) should be extracted independently by at least two people" (Cochrane 2023 5-5-2)
2. Form an answerable clinical question
3. Identify the type of review appropriate to your question
4. Identify possible journals for publication
5. Refine research question
6. Check protocols and guides

   1. Read guidelines for your review:

      1. The Institute of Medicine Guidelines

      2. Cochrane Collaboration Guidelines

      3. The Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (University of York) Guidelines

   2. Check registers of protocols of currently underway reviews to be sure that another team is not currently working on a review on your same research question

      1. PROSPERO - International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews

         1. here is an article analyzing PROSPERO: Booth A, Mitchell AS, Mott A, James S, Cockayne S, Gascoyne S, McDaid C. An assessment of the extent to which the contents of PROSPERO records meet the systematic review protocol reporting items in PRISMA-P. F1000Res. 2020 Jul 27;9:773. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.25181.2.

      2. Open Science Framework (OSF)

   3. PRISMA is a checklist that helps you ensure that you report the correct info when you write up your review. It is important to consult PRISMA from the start to ensure that you are gathering data in the correct way to facilitate accurate reporting in your publication later.

      1. PRISMA Flow Diagram is the template used by authors of scoping reviews to illustrate their article search process

      2. PRISMA Flow Diagram Generator

      3. Statement/ explanatory paper

      4. Fillable Checklist - PDF | Word

7. Start a draft of your own research protocol
8. Identify databases for structured search and journals/databases for hand search
   1. Systematic and scoping reviews typically search a minimum of 3 academic journal article databases which cover the disciplines represented by your research question. If there are more nuanced concepts in your question, you may need to search even more databases.
      1. for example, for a research question on Indigenous maternal mental health, a librarian might recommend you search PubMed (medicine), CINAHL (health sciences), PsycINFO (psychology), and one or two non-paywalled Indigenous-focused databases like iPortal or Native Health Database.

   2. Hand-searching is a manual method of scanning select journals from cover to cover, page-for-page for relevant articles in case they were missed during indexing. According to the Cochrane Handbook, "...involves a manual page-by-page examination of the entire contents of a journal issue or conference proceedings to identify all eligible reports of trials.

      "Handsearching may include checking the reference lists of journal articles, a technique called snowballing. In 2013, Craane et al found that "...hand search[ing] plays a valuable role in identifying randomised controlled trials" beyond Medline and Embase.

      Craane B., Dikstra PU. (2012 Feb) Methodological quality of a systematic review on physical therapy for temporomandibular disorders: influence of hand search and quality scales.  Clinical Oral Investigations 16(1) 295-303

      1. Some researchers also place a search of google scholar or non-profit websites under the conceptual heading of their hand search within their methodology, even though they use a structured search phrase to search those websites. This is because, unlike academic article databases, Google does not support article exporting, and it is not often feasible to manually copy-paste all google results into your article database. Instead, articles will need to be hand-selected by the researchers, which is the traditional hand search methodology.

   3. Guideline: "It is highly desirable that searches be conducted of appropriate national, regional and subject specific bibliographic databases" (Cohrane 2023 4-3-1-4)
   4. Guideline: Manage the efficiency and thoroughness of the search in a way that minimizes language and publication bias (Cochrane 2023 4-2-2)
9. Develop a systematic search strategy
   1. form a master search which contains all of the concepts within your clinical question combined appropriately with boolean search commands
10. translate your master search concepts into separate search phrases for each database to ensure that your search works the same despite different database "dialects"
    1. Use Boolean
       • Guideline: "Search strategies should avoid using too many different search concepts but a wide variety of search terms should be combined with OR within each included concept." (Cochrane 2023 4-2-2)
    2. Use subject headings in addition to keywords
       • Guideline: "Both free-text and subject headings (e.g. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and Emtree) should be used." (Cochrane 2023 4-2-2)
11. Finalize and register your research protocol (including search strategy) in a community forum such as the Open Science Framework (OSF),
    1. or asking a specialist such as a Medical Librarian to peer review your search strategy(ies)
12. Conduct searches
    1. Guideline: "Unlike for tasks such as study selection or data extraction, it is not considered necessary (or even desirable) for two people to conduct independent searches in parallel. It is strongly recommended, however, that all search strategies should be peer reviewed, before being run, by a suitably qualified and experienced medical/healthcare librarian or information specialist" (Cochrane 2023 section 4-2-2)
    2. track or use a tool that will record the dates of your searches, your exact search phrases, and any limiters or filters used
13. Export search results
    1. tools such as Covidence and Rayyan can eliminate some file management labor
14. Select studies for inclusion
    1. exclude articles which do not fit within your criteria
15. Critically appraise included articles
16. Extract and synthesize the data
    1. Systematic reviews typically analyze efficacy and other structural and methodological aspects of research studies, but it is also possible to extract more theoretical data.
17. Write and publish your review