Systematic Literature Reviews

Abstract

Nancy K. Lowe, Editor Reviews of the literature play an important role in the advancement of nursing and biomedical science by combining the results of systematically chosen studies to come to conclusions about a body of research. The research literature on most topics pertinent to the care of women, infants, and their families is broad and interdisciplinary in origin and focus. The evolution of evidence-based practice has led to the proliferation of all types of literature reviews including those that are described as integrative reviews, systematic reviews, metaanalyses, and qualitative reviews (Whittemore & Kna£, 2005). As the science of the systematic review has evolved, so have expectations for a publishable review of the literature. The general goal of systematic or meta-analytic reviews is to identify all studies relevant to a speci¢c topic or question, evaluate the ¢ndings of the relevant studies, and summarize these ¢ndings to make the evidence more accessible to researchers, clinicians, and health care consumers (Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, 2009). The systematic review is the method of choice for evidence-based practice projects such as the Cochrane Collaboration. These reviews usually are focused on identifying the most precise and reliable estimate of an intervention’s eiectiveness from ¢ndings of multiple studies because any single study may overor underestimate the eiect. A meta-analysis is most commonly used to synthesize results from randomized clinical trials, although the method also has been applied to the synthesis of results from epidemiologic or observational research (Stroup et al., 2000). In contrast, systematic or integrative literature reviews may have a wide range of purposes (de¢nition of concepts, review of theories, analysis of methods, and review of evidence) and use broader approaches that may include experimental and nonexperimental studies and information from theoretical as well as empirical literature. Methods also have been described for reviews of primary qualitative studies such as meta-synthesis, meta-studies, formal grounded theory, and meta-ethnography (Whittemore & Kna£, 2005).