ABSTRACT
Systematic reviews are a relatively new form of social science research. Systematic reviews offer a way for researchers to be more transparent about how they undertake literature reviews. Using the principles of systematic reviews, researchers create a path that others can follow, showing where and how they located the literature on which their research is based, and revealing the basis for their decisions about which research was included and which was excluded. For practitioners and consumers of research who face increasing pressure to demonstrate that their practice is evidence based, the problem becomes how to sift through all the evidence that is available about a particular aspect of practice. Systematic reviews are a type of secondary data analysis of existing research. They synthesise large amounts of existing literature using transparent methods that can be replicated.
