1. Undertaking Systematic Literature Reviews By Dr. Luke Pittaway Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development

2. Introduction –What can be found can be used, before it can persuade, it must be known. Someone must organise it, integrate it, extract the message… we have reached a point in our field where new methods of discovering knowledge in “findings” and “results” are needed. The armchair literature review in which one cites a couple of dozen studies from the obvious journals can’t do justice to the voluminous literature of research that we now have (Glass, 1976)

3. Introduction Stage One Background to Evidence-informed Practice and Systematic Review The nature of management research using a systematic approach

4. Origins of Evidence-Based Practice Only 15 to 20% of medical interventions were supported by medical evidence (Smith, 1991) A research-user gap existed Academics not practitioners drove the research agenda The relevance, quality and applicability of research was questioned Collective wisdom from research was being lost

5. Evidence-Based Policy Since 1995 the UK Government has expected all departments and quasi-government organisations to make better use of research when making policy The ESRC set-up an evidence network Multidisciplinary centres have been set-up –E.g. What works for Children, Centre for Evidence Based Public Health Policy There are also international consortia –Cochrane Collaboration –NHS Centres for Reviews and Dissemination

6. Reviewing the Evidence Research Evidence –Using a methodology for: Locating Selecting Appraising Extracting Synthesising Reporting Disseminating Utilising

7. Reviewing the Evidence What do we know? –Research provides context and background –Evidence-informed policy and practice What must we ask next? –Rationale for research questions –Judgement for policy making Two types of review –Systematic reviews –Narrative reviews

8. A Systematic Review A review of the evidence on a clearly formulated question that uses systematic and explicit methods to identify, select and critically appraise relevant primary research, and to extract and analyse data from the studies that are included in the review. Statistical methods (meta-analysis) may or may not be used.

9. Narrative V Systematic Narrative Review Implicit Studies chosen by the reviewer Replication is not possible Unplanned, unfocused, open to tangentalism No quality assessment Reviewers tend to rely on the quality rating of journals Deductive Certain explanations are favoured or disqualified by the reviewer Little evidence into practice Researchers drive the process Stored in academic journals Reviews are often lost/forgotten Systematic Review Explicit Protocols provide predetermined criteria for including and excluding studies Replication is possible Transparent process audit trail Quality assessment Checklists to assess the methodological quality of studies Inductive Researcher bias is reduced, all explanations are taken into account Serves research, policy and practice Collaborative process and practice orientated Stored by international consortia Searchable databases of reviews make them available to researchers and practitioners

10. Principles of Systematic Review Explicit a priori criteria for planning the review Exhaustive searches for published/unpublished studies Evaluation of study quality Listings/tables of included and excluded studies with the reasons for doing so and the study characteristics Transparency of the reviewer’s procedures and justifications for all decisions taken and the conclusions drawn Interpretative/inductive synthesis of studies