Research Guides: Systematic Reviews: Home

Systematic Reviews

What is a systematic review?

A definition by White & Schmidt (2005) states,

"Systematic reviews retrieve, appraise and summarize all the available evidence on a specific health question. They are designed to reduce the effect of the reviewers' own bias, and a full protocol should be written to define and guide the process. The appropriate resources should be in place before undertaking a review. The steps of the review are: frame the question and choose appropriate methods; identify relevant work; extract relevant data on outcomes and quality; summarize the evidence; and, interpret the evidence."

Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions by Julian P. T. Higgins (Editor); James Thomas (Editor); Jacqueline Chandler (Associate Editor); Miranda Cumpston (Associate Editor); Tianjing Li (Associate Editor); Matthew J. Page (Associate Editor); Vivian A. Welch (Associate Editor)
The revised edition of the Handbook offers the only guide on how to conduct, report and maintain a Cochrane Review; The second edition of The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions contains essential guidance for preparing and maintaining Cochrane Reviews of the effects of health interventions. Designed to be an accessible resource, the Handbook will also be of interest to anyone undertaking systematic reviews of interventions outside Cochrane, and many of the principles and methods presented are appropriate for systematic reviews addressing research questions other than effects of interventions. This fully updated edition contains extensive new material on systematic review methods addressing a wide-range of topics including network meta-analysis, equity, complex interventions, narrative synthesis, and automation.