{"id":102,"date":"2014-04-10T12:47:35","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T12:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/?p=102"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:24:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:24:00","slug":"systreview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/2014\/04\/10\/systreview\/","title":{"rendered":"Conducting a systematic literature review: reflections and resources"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/files\/2014\/04\/Syst-review.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-109\" alt=\"Syst review\" src=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/files\/2014\/04\/Syst-review-257x300.jpg\" width=\"149\" height=\"161\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the past couple of months I have been undertaking a systematic review (of sorts) of the learning outcomes (LOs)\u00a0literature.\u00a0 I say &#8216;of sorts&#8217; because I have followed all but the final few\u00a0protocols of a systematic review &#8211; I have reviewed the extent of certain features within the LOs literature but have\u00a0not quality assessed studies of LOs (I am being deliberately vague here as I am currently writing up my findings for publication).\u00a0 I have, therefore, termed the process I&#8217;ve been engaged in as a &#8216;systematically-organised review&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Falling in love?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>My aim here is not to split hairs about terminology but to reflect briefly on the nature of what I&#8217;ve been doing.\u00a0 Not long after I started my review, I came across this blog post titled <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cifor.org\/19403\/my-first-systematic-review-how-i-fell-in-love\" target=\"_blank\">&#8216;My first systematic review: How I fell in love&#8217;<\/a>.\u00a0 I have to admit, at that point I was not sure whether I liked doing my review, let alone loved it.\u00a0 But as time went on I got to understand more what Dr Sini Savilaakso was talking about &#8211; I had actually started to enjoy the process.\u00a0 In her blog post Dr Savilaakso explains how she &#8216;fell in love&#8217; with her first systematic review.\u00a0 I&#8217;d like to add here a\u00a0couple of\u00a0points about why I&#8217;ve enjoyed the process so much too:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To some extent there has felt less pressure within this whole process, but at the same time I have felt that I&#8217;ve been doing really important work.\u00a0 Let me explain &#8211; I have felt less pressured because I am not trying to create new knowledge, arguments, theories, etc., around the issue of LOs.\u00a0 I have instead been exploring what has already been &#8216;put out there&#8217; to make some kind of assessment about the make-up of the LOs literature.\u00a0 This is really important to do because so much that is incorporated into education\u00a0does not often have its literature or research base scrutinised.\u00a0 To understand if an educational approach or strategy has any kind of validity, we should be exploring (and assessing)\u00a0the body of knowledge surrounding it.\u00a0 This is why I feel that I have been doing important work, even though I&#8217;ve felt at the same time that it&#8217;s been a less pressurised process.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It has helped me to feel more of an &#8216;expert&#8217; in my chosen area (i.e. learning outcomes) and to talk about it with confidence due to my detailed and in-depth knowledge of the published literature.\u00a0 Of course, all research should be grounded within thorough literature reviews, but undertaking a specific review in such a rigorous and robust manner (i.e. with specific and recorded search strategies, methodically searching databases etc) means there is less chance that I have gaps in my knowledge by missing important pieces of work.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Useful links<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to add here some links to sites that I&#8217;ve found useful, particularly for developing my search parameters and protocols:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alliance4usefulevidence.org\/assets\/Learning-from-Research-A4UE.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Learning from research: systematic reviews for informing policy decisions: a quick guide<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/community.dur.ac.uk\/ebse\/resources\/templates\/SLRTemplate.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Template for a Systematic Literature Review Protocol<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.senseaboutscience.org\/data\/files\/resources\/52\/Sense-About-Systematic-Reviews.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Sense about science: systematic reviews<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/sru.soc.surrey.ac.uk\/SRU54.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Social research update: systematic reviewing<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nottingham.ac.uk\/shared\/shared_enquire\/PDFs\/VictorLiz_1_.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Systematic reviewing in the social sciences<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Lessons learned<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In her blog post, Dr Savilaakso also offers some useful lessons that she has learned from her experience of systematic reviewing.\u00a0 I&#8217;d like to add a\u00a0few of my own:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0Dr Savilaakso says to work with team mates that you love.\u00a0 I would reinforce this point, but also add the need to work with team mates who have sufficient time to give to the process too.\u00a0 In my case, I was the lead researcher and conducted the whole review, but for reliability purposes I needed at certain points another particular project member to review samples of the literature retrieved so that we could compare our results.\u00a0 This\u00a0colleague was extremely busy with other research projects and found it hard to find the time to\u00a0do these sample reviews.\u00a0 Whilst for the most part it did not cause too much of a problem, I did get anxious at certain points that I could not progress with the review until we&#8217;d undertaken one of these reliability checks.\u00a0 Of course, we are all very busy and to some extent this sort of situation might be unavoidable &#8211; but it is a point worth bearing in mind, particularly if you want to get your results published as soon as possible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Accept that at times it will feel a very tedious process.\u00a0 As much as I enjoyed it overall, there were many times that all the database searching, reviewing piles of papers, etc, felt very tedious.\u00a0 When you start feeling like this, my advice is to take\u00a0some kind of\u00a0break &#8211; go for lunch, get a cuppa, do some other work for a bit.\u00a0 When I felt like this my mind would want to start rushing through everything to get it finished &#8211; but of course the danger then is that you rush by and overlook something important.\u00a0 Accept that rigorous and robust results are achieved largely by work that often feels\u00a0tedious and time-consuming.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Allow time for hard to access papers to be found (either by yourself or by research\/library support).\u00a0 Don&#8217;t rush into writing up your results until you&#8217;re sure your literature searching is complete and you&#8217;ve retrieved all the papers you need.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As my own first review is coming to its end, I still wouldn&#8217;t say I&#8217;ve fallen in love with the process, but I have been surprised at how much I have enjoyed\u00a0it &#8211; from the feelings of rigorous literature searching to the satisfaction of providing answers to\u00a0my research questions.\u00a0 I am currently writing up my review for publication and I hope I can share more information about it with\u00a0you soon.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, happy reviewing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the past couple of months I have been undertaking a systematic review (of sorts) of the learning outcomes (LOs)\u00a0literature.\u00a0 I say &#8216;of sorts&#8217; because I have followed all but the final few\u00a0protocols of a systematic review &#8211; I have reviewed the extent of certain features within the LOs literature but have\u00a0not quality assessed studies [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":109,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-researchinglos","category-uolproject","tag-researchreflection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/loproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}