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Systematic Reviews (2+ people)

This guide will look at resources for conducting a systematic review (SR) of literature on a topic

Resources around the writing of protocols for systematic reviews

Butler, A., Hall, H., & Copnell, B. (2016) 'A Guide to Writing a Qualitative Systematic Review Protocol to Enhance Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing and Health Care', Worldviews on evidence-based nursing, 13(3), 241–249. doi:10.1111/wvn.12134

 

Have a look on some of the protocol register websites to see what their guidelines say to include in a protocol, and to see how researchers who've already uploaded a protocol to those platforms have written them.

Please visit this website, where you can download Sarah Visintini’s Review Protocol Template. Citation: Visintini S. Review Protocol Template. Halifax: Maritime SPOR SUPPORT Unit; 2017.

The template from Sarah Visintini hosted at the University of Ottawa website, shows the different elements that can be included in an SR protocol.

Review Protocol Template by Sarah Visintini is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

 


 

Protocol Example

Briggs, J. (2007) 'Appendix 1: Systematic Review Protocol Example: Smoking Cessation Interventions and Strategies for Hospitalised Patients', in Pearson, A., Field, J. & Jordan, Z. (eds.) Evidence-based clinical practice in nursing and health care: assimilating research, experience and expertise. Oxford: Blackwell pp.173-176. Available from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781444316544.app1 (Accessed: 09 December 2022)

The Cochrane Handbook has a section on developing a protocol

Lasserson, T.J., Thomas, J. & Higgins, J.P.T. (2022) 'Chapter 1: Starting a review' in Higgins, J.P.T., Thomas, J., Chandler, J., Cumpston, M., Li, T., Page, M.J., & Welch, V.A. (eds.) Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 6.3 (updated February 2022) Available from: https://training.cochrane.org/handbook/current/chapter-01#section-1-5 (Accessed: 09 December 2022)

 

Cochrane also has an interactive module on writing a protocol

Sambunjak, D., Cumpston, M., & Watts, C. (2017) 'Module 2: Writing the review protocol', in Cochrane Interactive Learning: Conducting an intervention review, updated September 2022.  Available from https://training.cochrane.org/interactivelearning/module-2-writing-review-protocol (Accessed: 09 December 2022)