Leadership
Assignment 2 Checklist
Use this checklist to assist completion of a transparent, reproducible method section for your critical literature review. Note, the three templates that follow make up all your report of the method section.
1. Include your problem statement and research question from Assignment 1; if you have revised them, please include those versions.
2. Identify all the databases searched. At least four databases related to your discipline need to be explored. The SCU databases are access through the library https://www.scu.edu.au/library/. Note, PubMed and Medline provide relatively similar results, so, it is recommended to use them as alternatives.
3. Identify all search terms in ‘Table 1’ (i.e. using the Database search template that follows). Search terms can be:
– MeSH,
– Database thesaurus compatible and/or
– Free text
4. Identify all limiters in ‘Table 1’, including a specific time-period of literature search (this can be any period related to the last years based on field of the research and availability of the information. E.g. last 6, 10, 15, 20 years).
5. Define and justify the eligibility criteria:
– the study designs (i.e., specify which quantitative/qualitative/mixed method study designs)
– the nature/type of interventions and/or outcomes (for experimental studies)
– participant characteristics (i.e. the population, age range, gender) and the study setting/location
– the publication type and language (e.g. original peer-reviewed research articles in scholarly journals published in English)
6. Run and revise search. Undertake first and second cull, as below.
7. Explain the process of the first cull of articles. Identify number of duplicates. Identify number of articles rejected based reading on the titles and abstracts; give example reasons.
8. Explain the process of the second cull of articles. Select four or more reasons as applicable, for excluding these studies (may not be for methodological quality). Group the exclusions by reason. This cull should be based on reading the whole (‘full-text’) of the article. An example reason is: “The article’s study designs were inconsistent with the inclusion criteria, for example XXX study design (XXX citation)”.
9. Identify the number of records after database searching and after duplicates removed; these numbers should be the same in Table 1 and in Figure 1.
10. Fill in the templates that follow: The Method template, Database search template (Table 1) and modified PRISMA flow diagram (Figure 1). The flow diagram should demonstrate the processes used to arrive at the number of studies you will use in your critical literature review.
