Psychology

A systematic review is a type of literature review that is thorough and reproduceable.

Make use of the indexes of literature with the widest coverage available through London Met or for free, use as many keywords to describe your research topic as possible, and use subject headings where available.

Record your searches and results at each stage of the process and build your search up in steps. 

A systematic-type review that you will do as a student is done on a smaller scale than a published systematic review, so no need to include Google Scholar or grey literature sources.

Getting started - choosing databases:

You may want to include the following databases in your search. Most use three or more databases. See the A-Z of Library E-Resources for a description of each and to link through and start searching:

• PubMed (includes MeSH - Medical Subject Headings)
• The Cochrane Library (for RCTs and existing systematic reviews only, includes MeSH)
• CINAHL Complete (includes CINAHL Subject Headings)
• Web of Science
• Trip Medical Database
• SPORTDiscus
• APA PsycINFO

Getting started - scoping searches:

Your first searches will NOT be systematic, but WILL help you to refine your research question, identify gaps in the research, and identify extra terminology for later searches. You may choose to scope only in one database rather than trying many.

The systematic searching and screening process (see the search recordings tab):

• Scoping searches - see above.
• Keyword searches - using synonyms or alternative keywords and building the search in stages, making sure you do Boolean AND and OR searches correctly until you've combined everything and got one set of search results.
• MeSH/Subject Heading searches (where available) - carefully exploring and selecting appropriate subject headings and putting them together appropriately using Boolean techniques (as above), until you have one set of subject heading search results.
• Combining final keyword results with final subject heading results using Boolean OR operator - this removes duplicates.
• Applying filters that help you to find articles that meet your criteria - different filters available in different databases.
• Exporting results from each database into a file or a reference management programme where you can see and remove any duplicates.
• Screening by title and abstract and excluding items that clearly do not meet your criteria.
• Identifying how to get access to the full articles - exclude any that you can't get at all (including through London Met, at the British Library, through the Sconul Access Scheme or via interlibrary loan requests).
• Read full articles and exclude any that do not meet your criteria.

Recording your methods and results:

Record your methods and results at every stage of the process in preparation for writing up your methodology and record reasons for excluding studies. There are tools that can help you do this, such as saving searches with personal accounts in databases, or doing screenshots of your search history, or simply keeping a record in a Word document. Doing a simple Internet search for systematic review tools will show you the range of other tools available.

See the other resources section of this guide to find links to PRISMA for the PRISMA flow diagram.