Meeting the challenge: developing systematic reviewing in social policy

This article uses the experience of reviewing the evidence on the financial support available for defaulting home owners to consider the opportunities and challenges systematic review methods present to social policy. It addresses concerns about examining the strength of given evidence, and perceptions of it being a purely technical method to review existing research. It argues that there is merit in utilising the method to provide research users with transparent summaries of the most robust evidence with minimum bias. The article outlines the challenges presented and suggests that social policy researchers have a valuable contribution to make to the developing methods.