Your text suggests that there are differences between systematic reviews of literature and a review of literature. Identify four of the differences and then discuss two of these differences.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Ans: The focus is different, selection bias is reduced, rigorous steps and procedures are followed, and assessment and analysis of studies are more thorough. Details to include are a systematic review focuses on systematically collecting together every scientific study on a topic of interest and evaluating them. The focus of the systematic review is conducting the best review possible rather than using it to serve another study. A systematic review follows specific guidelines in collecting studies on a topic. This means systematic reviews are less prone to biases, such as selection bias, that may result from choosing different studies as is done in traditional literature reviews. A systematic review reports exactly how many databases were searched, the rationale of choosing those specific databases, what keywords or combination of keywords were used, and how many results each search yielded. They are inclusive of all the studies that fit the predefined criteria of searching. The researcher cannot decide against including a study in the review without a specific reason that needs to be reported. A systematic review of literature is a research study that focuses on other scientific studies. As such, conducting a systematic review implies following rigorous steps and procedures to achieve the best quality possible. A systematic review answers the question on how the data were collected, how the studies were collected, what sources were used and why, and how the researcher made the decision in including specific articles but leaving out others. A traditional literature review will often provide some information on one or two studies and will summarize the conclusions of another study, depending on how the researcher has designed the review. A systematic review of literature will collect all the methodologies of all the studies, conclusions, and discussions and will provide summaries as well as analyses of these scientific studies.