Systematic Reviews for the Health Sciences

Congratulations, you are in the last steps of your systematic review!

To reduce errors and bias have two reviewers complete the data extraction and develop a plan for resolving conflicts. Determine the data you need to collect (consider if you will be conducting a qualitative synthesis only or if you will be including a meta-analysis), ideal method to collect this data, and a tool to organize data. Finally run a pilot and adjust if necessary. Commonly gathered fields include:

• Article citation
• Study Details (study objectives, study type, recruitment process, etc.)
• Participant information (demographics, disease, etc.)
• Intervention (duration, timing, etc.)
• Outcomes

Covidence includes the option to extract data as part of the process and offers users the choice between two options.

Writing your systematic review will include all details that would allow a reader to replicate it. Various guidelines offer steps to follow when writing the review. For example, based on PRISMA and IOM guidelines the following information needs to be included in the methods section:

• Search terms
• Database names and interface (e.g. Medline EBSCO) and grey literature sources
• Date of search
• Limits and filters used
• Resources and tools used during the process

Additional resources include: