Reviewing the literature: adopting a systematic approach

Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care 2004: 30(1) Introduction Review articles are often commissioned or submitted for publication in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care. Review papers summarise current knowledge and often attempt to reconcile conflicting scientific results from individual primary studies. As such, they are an essential resource for busy practitioners and researchers who struggle to keep up with the accumulating, ever-increasing body of evidence. However, many review manuscripts submitted to the Journal are based upon expert opinion rather than objective, systematic appraisal of the literature. The aim of this paper is to highlight the strength of a systematic review approach to reviewing the literature over traditional narrative reviews. In addition, this paper also makes the distinction between systematic reviews and meta-analysis. Regardless of the research question, practitioners should adopt a systematic approach to literature searching, critical appraisal and interpretation of data from primary studies. This paper outlines the crucial steps for consideration and acts as a guide for practitioners conducting reviews in family planning and reproductive health. These criteria may be considered specific to reviews of therapeutic interventions adopting a randomised controlled trial (RCT) design. However, this standard approach can be adopted and modified for reviews addressing different questions and/or study designs, e.g. evaluation of observational studies, diagnostic and screening tests1 or prognostic variables.2 Additionally, the criteria outlined in this paper should enable Journal readers to develop a critical approach to reading published systematic reviews.