Reviewing the literature: choosing a review design

Many health professionals, students and academics including health researchers will have grappled with the challenges of undertaking a review of the literature and choosing a suitable design or framework to structure the review. For many undergraduate and master’s healthcare students their final year dissertation involves undertaking a review of the literature as a way of assessing their understanding and ability to critique and apply research findings to practice. For PhD and Master’s by Research students, a rigorous summary of research is usually expected to identify the state of knowledge and gaps in the evidence related to their topic focus and to provide justification for the empirical work they subsequently undertake. From discussions with students and colleagues, there appears to be much confusion about review designs and in particular the use and perhaps misuse of the term ‘systematic review’. For example, some quantitatively focused researchers subscribe to a ‘Cochrane’ approach as the only method to undertake a ‘systematic review’, with other researchers having a more pragmatic view, recognising the different purposes of a review and ways of applying systematic methods to undertake a review of the literature. Traditionally, systematic reviews have included only quantitative, experimental studies, usually randomised controlled trials.1 More recently, systematic reviews of qualitative studies have emerged, 2 and integrative reviews which include both quantitative and qualitative studies.3

In this article, we will build on a previous Research Made Simple article that outlined the key principles of undertaking a review of the literature in a structured and systemic way4 by further exploring review designs and their key features to assist you in choosing an appropriate design. A reference to an example of each review outlined will be provided.