Health Sciences at ASU

What type of review should you do? It depends on many factors, but generally

• if you have a broad question or want to look at a topic overall, a Scoping Review may be the right choice
• if you need an answer quickly, especially for public health or policy questions, you may want to do a Rapid Review
• If you have to know the answer and it has to be the best answer possible, for a specific and focused question, you may prefer a Systematic Review

For more information:

What kind of systematic review should I conduct? A proposed typology and guidance for systematic reviewers in the medical and health sciences.

PRISMA provides guidance and checklists for elements of a systematic review. They also have information for scoping reviews and an editable template for a PRISMA flowchart, also known as a PRISMA diagram, used to display the steps in your search and screening process of a systematic review.

Cochrane training video (17 min)

After using this resource, you should be able to...

• Recognize the difference between a systematic and non-systematic review
• Identify the elements of a forest plot
• Understand basic principles of meta-analysis

Cochrane Training Video (7:30 min)

This video explains what are scoping reviews and provides some examples of this type of knowledge synthesis

Cochrane Training video (11 min)

This video provides an overview of rapid review methods based on the WHO publication ‘Rapid reviews to strengthen health policy and systems: a practical guide’