2: Writing reviews in health research
This book introduces the different types of reviews used in health care and describes the common steps to conducting and writing reviews. It particularly emphasises what to include in the methods section and how to describe review findings or results. We use a practical approach for those unfamiliar with conducting reviews and provide a variety of tools, examples and links to other resources.
After reading the book and completing the activities, you should be able to:
- understand different types of reviews and how these are used
- plan reviews to answer research questions, including developing search strategies, identifying appropriate data to extract and developing appropriate data tables (or grids)
- synthesise and interpret key aspects of research studies and their findings to answer research questions
- interpret review findings in the context of the research literature.
The book continues with the following sections:
- Why review health research?
- Different types of reviews
- Getting started
- Planning a review
- What should reviews looks like?
- Methods
- Data extraction
- Interpreting the findings
- What can go wrong?
- Reviews at a glance
There is also a glossary of key terms.
