Assessment Specification
This dissertation requires you to complete a systematic review of literature; you will need to produce a systematic and critical review of empirical studies focussed on a chosen topic area.
Dissertation: Suggested structure for your systematic review
Below you will find some general guidance on how to format your systematic review for the dissertation.
- There will be variations in how you present your dissertation work, this will depend
on the type of review – e.g. quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods review.
- You should also refer to relevant guidance on the conduct or reporting of your type
of review to determine whether adaptations are necessary
- It would be wise to read some published systematic reviews in areas aligned to
your review to determine if there are any templates that may help you with presenting your work.
These guidelines have been developed using the preferred reporting items for systematic
reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA statement) (Moher et al., 2009).
Title:
You should clearly state the type of review that you are doing (i.e. systematic review) and the focus of the review. The focus of the review should be specified according to the framework used to structure your research question e.g. PICO or PEO etc.
* PICOS is an acronym for a standard minimum set of descriptors employed in Cochrane reviews covering: Population; Intervention; Comparison; Outcome; Study design.
Abstract (awarded as part of overall presentation):
It is recommended to write this after you have completed the rest of your dissertation. The abstract should be structured, and should provide the following information:
– Background: provide a brief background with reference to review objectives
– Methods: refer to data sources, study eligibility, study appraisal and synthesis
methods
– Results: include a brief summary of the synthesised results
– Conclusions and implications: Include a brief conclusion with implications for
practice and research.
Typically abstracts are between 300 and 500 words in length i.e. usually not more than one
A4 page .
Each chapter below should contain a brief (2-3 sentences) introduction (at the beginning) and summary (at the end) and be structured using subheadings to signpost
the reader.
Introduction (15%):
You should provide some broad context to the topic area, who does it impact? (Including some statistics would be helpful here) and why this is an important topic (some reference to contemporary policy is important).
You should also include some reference to what we currently know about the topic area (i.e. what is the current evidence base?). You may refer to a systematic review in a closely aligned area and state how your review will differ.
Overall: You should describe the rationale for the review in the context of what is already known.
It is important that you explicitly state the research question that your review will address with reference to a framework (e.g. PEO – population, exposure, outcome or PICO – participants, interventions, comparisons, outcomes.).
It is also important that you clearly articulate the aims and objectives of the literature review. Remember objectives are smaller bite size versions of the aim.
Methods (20%):
The purpose of this section (covering search strategy, eligibility criteria, study selection, data collection, critical appraisal and synthesis on the marking rubric) is to provide
sufficient detail to the reader to enable another researcher to replicate the review process. This section will be tailored to the type of review (i.e. qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods) you are conducting.
It is important that you also demonstrate understanding of the systematic review process by including some justification for your decisions. It is useful to refer to a recognised systematic review methodology during this chapter e.g. Cochrane or JBI or CEBM to help guide the process.
You will need to describe the search strategy, including the methods used to identify relevant primary studies, extract relevant information, assess the quality of the identified studies, and synthesize the findings. This list is not intended to be exhaustive and should be adapted according to the type of review you are reporting.
Your methods section will include sub-sections such as:
▪ Eligibility criteria – Specify study characteristics (such as PICO or PEO, length of
follow-up) and report characteristics (such as years considered, language, publication
status) used as criteria for eligibility. You will need to give a rationale for each with
some references.
▪ Information sources – Describe all information sources employed in the search (such as databases used with dates of coverage) and the date last searched with justification for decisions about the data sources and time coverage.
▪ Search strategy – Present your full electronic search strategy for at least one database, including any limits used, such that it could be repeated. This search can be
included in the appendices and referred to. In the main body of the text include explicit reference in the concepts searched (it may be helpful to include this in a table format, see formative assignment guidelines and should include the use of truncation/wildcards, phrase searching and the use of Boolean operators).
▪ Study selection – State the process for selecting studies (i.e. how were the inclusion and exclusion criteria applied to each study).
▪ Data extraction process – Describe the method of data extraction from reports. What was included in the standardized data extraction forms?
▪ Quality Assessment: – Describe methods used for assessing the quality of the studies and how this information will be used in the data synthesis. What type of critical appraisal tool did you use? And what is the rationale for using the chosen tool?
▪ Synthesis of results – Describe the methods of handling data and combining results of studies (e.g. vote count procedure; meta-analysis; thematic synthesis; meta- ethnography). For all types of review you should provide sufficient detail to allow another researcher to replicate the procedure. A rationale should be provided for the approach you have chosen (you should not include the findings of studies in this section – this is about how you will manage/present the findings in the next chapter).
Results (30%):
This section will need to be adapted according to the reporting requirements for the type of review. Most studies will include the following sections:
▪ Study selection – All reviews should include a flow diagram of study selection
(templates are available for this – PRISMA). The flow diagram should include four
main stages (identification, screening; eligibility and number of included studies). The
number of exclusions, and reasons for exclusion, should be reported as a minimum at
the full-text stage.
▪ Study characteristics – This should present relevant characteristics for which data
were extracted (such as study size, PICO, follow-up period). For example, you may
have studies from different countries or that used different study designs. It is
important that this information is reported alongside the citations. This should be a
short paragraph and should refer the reader to a summary table.
▪ Tabulated results of individual studies – For each included study present summary data in relation to the outcomes of interest or the themes identified together with any additional information required to appropriately interpret the data for each study. This should be presented in a table format. You may however make use of several tables to present your results if this seems logical.
▪ Quality assessment of individual studies – Any assessment of the quality or rigour of the primary studies should be described.
▪ Synthesis of results – Present the synthesised interpretation of the results according to the methods described in your methods chapter across all included studies and
offer some assessment of the magnitude, accuracy, consistency and coherence of the findings. For this part of the dissertation you will be summarising direction/commonalities/differences across studies (qualitatively or quantitatively).
Discussion, conclusions and recommendations (25%):
This section is usually broken down into the following subsections:
- Briefly refer back to your aim(s): Reintroduce the aim of the review and how you
have met this by undertaking the work you have presented.
- Summary of evidence – Summarise the main findings including the strength of
evidence (consider the use of GRADE or GRADE CERQual if appropriate) for each
main outcome or theme (or other substantive finding). Provide an initial
representative overview of the findings.
- Critical Discussion – Discuss your findings within the context of existing literature and other evidence. Was there a consensus within the findings or was an overall effect/picture difficult to assess? Were there any contradictory findings, why may this have been so?
- Strengths and Limitations – Discuss the strengths and limitations of your review.
Highlight methodological limitations of the study design, and at the outcome level
(e.g. risk of bias; difficult comparing outcomes/ data across the identified studies).
Include a critique of the limitations at review level (such as incomplete retrieval of
identified research; reporting bias; weaknesses of the primary literature; lack of
inter-rater reliability checks).
- Implications- Provide an overall interpretation of the results in the context of other evidence, taking into account the limitations of the study, and present implications or recommendations for future research, practice, policy and/or education.
The word limit for this piece of work is 10,000 words (+/- 10%). Pass Mark
The pass mark for this assessment is 50%.
Marking Criteria
This piece of work will not be marked anonymously due to the supervisory requirement for this assessment. Please find the marking criteria on Moodle (Dissertation – Systematic Review Marking Rubric). They are descriptors, based on the module learning outcomes, of the skills, knowledge or attributes you need to demonstrate in order to complete this assessment successfully. Your feedback will be based on them
