Your systematic review should contain each of
the following sections:
- TITLE - The title should identify what the
report is about and what it is (systematic review, meta-analysis, or both).
- ABSTRACT - The abstract should provide a
structured summary of the parts of the review.
- INTRODUCTION - The introduction should
describe why the review is needed (the rationale for the review) and the review
objectives (the question being addressed).
- METHODS - The methods section should
include a thorough description of how the systematic review was conducted,
including whether or not you created a protocol and where it is registered,
what your eligibility or inclusion criteria were, what your sources of
information were and the date they were searched, your full search strategy,
your process for selecting studies and collecting data, the data collected, how
risk of bias was assessed on an individual study basis and across studies, your
summary measures (risk ratio, difference in mean, etc.), and how results were
synthesized and analyzed. If you have a protocol, much of this information can
be taken from there.
- RESULTS - The results section should
include the findings of your review, including a description of the studies
screened for eligibility and the studies selected, the characteristics of the
included studies, the risk of bias for each individual study, the results of
each individual study, a synthesis of the data for each outcome considered, the
risk of bias across studies, and any additional analysis conducted.
- DISCUSSION - The discussion section should
include a summary of the main findings of the report, including the strength of
evidence for each outcome and the findings' relevance to key groups, the
limitations of the report, and a conclusion that contains a general
interpretation of the results.
- FUNDING - Any funding received for the
review and the role of the funders in the review should be described in this
section.
For more information, check out the
PRISMA
checklist (PDF). |
