How Do You Know Whne a Lit Review Is Just Summarizing
V tips for developing useful literature summary tables for writing review articles
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Introduction
Literature reviews offer a critical synthesis of empirical and theoretical literature to assess the force of prove, develop guidelines for practice and policymaking, and identify areas for hereafter enquiry.1 Information technology is often essential and ordinarily the first task in any research endeavor, peculiarly in masters or doctoral level education. For effective data extraction and rigorous synthesis in reviews, the use of literature summary tables is of utmost importance. A literature summary tabular array provides a synopsis of an included commodity. It succinctly presents its purpose, methods, findings and other relevant data pertinent to the review. The aim of developing these literature summary tables is to provide the reader with the data at 1 glance. Since there are multiple types of reviews (eg, systematic, integrative, scoping, critical and mixed methods) with distinct purposes and techniques,2 at that place could be various approaches for developing literature summary tables making it a complex task specialty for the novice researchers or reviewers. Hither, we offering five tips for authors of the review articles, relevant to all types of reviews, for creating useful and relevant literature summary tables. Nosotros too provide examples from our published reviews to illustrate how useful literature summary tables can exist adult and what sort of information should be provided.
Tip ane: provide detailed information about frameworks and methods
Literature summary tables are not only meant to provide an overview of basic data (authors, country, purpose and findings) most included articles, but they should also provide detailed information nigh the theoretical and conceptual frameworks and the methods used in the included article. Effigy ane provides an case of a literature summary table from a scoping review.3
The provision of information about conceptual and theoretical frameworks and methods is useful for several reasons. Commencement, in quantitative (reviews synthesising the results of quantitative studies) and mixed reviews (reviews synthesising the results of both qualitative and quantitative studies to address a mixed review question), it allows the readers to assess the congruence of the cadre findings and methods with the adapted framework and tested assumptions. In qualitative reviews (reviews synthesising results of qualitative studies), this information is benign for readers to recognise the underlying philosophical and paradigmatic opinion of the authors of the included articles. For instance, imagine the authors of an article, included in a review, used phenomenological research for their research. In that case, the review authors and the readers of the review need to know what kind of (transcendental or hermeneutic) philosophical stance guided the enquiry. Review authors should, therefore, include the philosophical stance in their literature summary for the particular article. Second, data about frameworks and methods enables review authors and readers to judge the quality of the research, which allows for discerning the strengths and limitations of the article. For example, if authors of an included article intended to develop a new scale and examination its psychometric backdrop. To achieve this aim, they used a convenience sample of 150 participants and performed exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the aforementioned sample. Such an approach would indicate a flawed methodology because EFA and CFA should not be conducted on the same sample. The review authors must include this information in their summary table. Omitting this information from a summary could lead to the inclusion of a flawed commodity in the review, thereby jeopardising the review's rigour.
Tip 2: include strengths and limitations for each article
Critical appraisement of private articles included in a review is crucial for increasing the rigour of the review. Despite using various templates for critical appraisement, authors often do non provide detailed data virtually each reviewed article's strengths and limitations. But noting the quality score based on standardised critical appraisal templates is non adequate considering the readers should be able to place the reasons for assigning a weak or moderate rating. Many contempo disquisitional appraisal checklists (eg, Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool) discourage review authors from assigning a quality score and recommend noting the principal strengths and limitations of included studies. Information technology is also vital that methodological and conceptual limitations and strengths of the articles included in the review are provided because not all review articles include empirical research papers. Rather some review synthesises the theoretical aspects of manufactures. Providing information nearly conceptual limitations is also important for readers to judge the quality of foundations of the research. For case, if you included a mixed-methods study in the review, reporting the methodological and conceptual limitations nearly 'integration' is critical for evaluating the study's strength. Suppose the authors only collected qualitative and quantitative data and did not state the intent and timing of integration. In that case, the strength of the study is weak. Integration just occurred at the levels of information collection. Notwithstanding, integration may not have occurred at the analysis, interpretation and reporting levels.
Tip iii: write conceptual contribution of each reviewed article
While reading and evaluating review papers, we accept observed that many review authors merely provide core results of the article included in a review and do not explicate the conceptual contribution offered by the included article. We refer to conceptual contribution as a clarification of how the article's cardinal results contribute towards the development of potential codes, themes or subthemes, or emerging patterns that are reported as the review findings. For example, the authors of a review commodity noted that one of the research articles included in their review demonstrated the usefulness of case studies and reflective logs as strategies for fostering compassion in nursing students. The conceptual contribution of this enquiry article could be that experiential learning is one way to teach pity to nursing students, every bit supported by case studies and reflective logs. This conceptual contribution of the article should be mentioned in the literature summary table. Delineating each reviewed article's conceptual contribution is particularly beneficial in qualitative reviews, mixed-methods reviews, and critical reviews that often focus on developing models and describing or explaining various phenomena. Effigy 2 offers an example of a literature summary tabular array.4
Tip 4: etch potential themes from each article during summary writing
While developing literature summary tables, many authors use themes or subthemes reported in the given articles as the key results of their own review. Such an approach prevents the review authors from understanding the commodity's conceptual contribution, developing rigorous synthesis and cartoon reasonable interpretations of results from an individual article. Ultimately, it affects the generation of novel review findings. For example, one of the manufactures about women's healthcare-seeking behaviours in developing countries reported a theme 'social-cultural determinants of health as precursors of delays'. Instead of using this theme equally one of the review findings, the reviewers should read and translate beyond the given description in an article, compare and dissimilarity themes, findings from one article with findings and themes from another article to find similarities and differences and to empathise and explain bigger motion-picture show for their readers. Therefore, while developing literature summary tables, call back twice earlier using the predeveloped themes. Including your themes in the summary tables (come across figure 1) demonstrates to the readers that a robust method of data extraction and synthesis has been followed.
Tip 5: create your personalised template for literature summaries
Often templates are available for data extraction and development of literature summary tables. The available templates may be in the grade of a table, chart or a structured framework that extracts some essential data about every article. The commonly used information may include authors, purpose, methods, key results and quality scores. While extracting all relevant information is important, such templates should be tailored to meet the needs of the individuals' review. For example, for a review most the effectiveness of healthcare interventions, a literature summary table must include information nigh the intervention, its type, content timing, duration, setting, effectiveness, negative consequences, and receivers and implementers' experiences of its usage. Similarly, literature summary tables for manufactures included in a meta-synthesis must include data about the participants' characteristics, research context and conceptual contribution of each reviewed article and so as to help the reader make an informed decision about the usefulness or lack of usefulness of the individual article in the review and the whole review.
In determination, narrative or systematic reviews are virtually ever conducted equally a part of any educational project (thesis or dissertation) or bookish or clinical research. Literature reviews are the foundation of research on a given topic. Robust and loftier-quality reviews play an instrumental role in guiding enquiry, practice and policymaking. Still, the quality of reviews is besides contingent on rigorous data extraction and synthesis, which require developing literature summaries. We have outlined five tips that could raise the quality of the data extraction and synthesis process by developing useful literature summaries.
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