Systematic reviews in the social sciences: a practical guide

Such diverse thinkers as Lao-Tze, Confucius, and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have all pointed out that we need to be able to tell the difference between real and assumed knowledge. The systematic review is a scientific tool that can help with this difficult task. It can help, for example, with appraising, summarising, and communicating the results and implications of otherwise unmanageable quantities of data. This is important because quite often there are so many studies, and their results are often so conflicting, that no policymaker or practitioner could possibly carry out this task themselves.Systematic review methods have been widely used in health care, and are becoming increasingly common in…