Research Guides: KINS 2205: Research Methods in Kinesiology: Intro to Academic Literature

Information Pyramid Slide Show

Systematic Reviews

Systematic reviews are often published in scholarly journals and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. They are a particular type of literature review that attempts to answer specific research questions by identifying, critically assessing, and synthesizing all the research studies that meet pre-specified eligibility criteria.

The key characteristics of a systematic review are:

A clearly stated set of objectives with pre-defined eligibility criteria for studies
A systematic search that attempts to identify all studies that would meet the eligibility criteria
An explicit, reproducible methodology
An assessment of the validity of the findings of the included studies, for example, through the assessment of risk of bias
A systematic presentation, and synthesis, of the characteristics and findings of the included studies

(Source: Higgins, J., & Green, S. (Eds.). (2011). Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions (version 5.1). Retrieved from http://handbook-5-1.cochrane.org)

Meta Analyses

Meta-analysis is a research method that systematically combines information from a number of research studies to draw one or more conclusions from the body of available evidence. Meta-analysis is most useful in addressing questions for which a substantial body of high-quality research already exists, because the quality of the conclusions drawn by a meta-analysis depends in large part on the quality of the studies included. Meta-analysis can be particularly useful when studies have produced inconsistent or conflicting results. As the number of published research studies on a particular topic increases, meta-analysis is an important tool to help make sense of the available evidence.

(Source: Boslaugh, S. E. . M. (2019). Meta-analysis. Salem Press Encyclopedia.)