Five tips for developing useful literature summary tables for writing review manufactures

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  1. http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0157-5319Ahtisham Younas1,2,
  2. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7839-8130Parveen Ali3,four
  1. 1 Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's, Newfoundland, Canada
  2. 2 Swat Higher of Nursing, Pakistan
  3. three School of Nursing and Midwifery, Academy of Sheffield, Sheffield, Due south Yorkshire, U.k.
  4. 4 Sheffield University Interpersonal Violence Research Group, Sheffield Academy, Sheffield, UK
  1. Correspondence to Ahtisham Younas, Memorial Academy of Newfoundland, St John's, NL A1C 5C4, Canada; ay6133{at}mun.ca

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Introduction

Literature reviews offer a disquisitional synthesis of empirical and theoretical literature to assess the strength of show, develop guidelines for practice and policymaking, and identify areas for future research.i It is oftentimes essential and unremarkably the showtime task in any research try, peculiarly in masters or doctoral level instruction. For constructive data extraction and rigorous synthesis in reviews, the utilize of literature summary tables is of utmost importance. A literature summary table provides a synopsis of an included article. It succinctly presents its purpose, methods, findings and other relevant information pertinent to the review. The aim of developing these literature summary tables is to provide the reader with the data at 1 glance. Since there are multiple types of reviews (eg, systematic, integrative, scoping, critical and mixed methods) with singled-out purposes and techniques,2 there could be various approaches for developing literature summary tables making information technology a complex task specialty for the novice researchers or reviewers. Here, nosotros offer 5 tips for authors of the review articles, relevant to all types of reviews, for creating useful and relevant literature summary tables. We also provide examples from our published reviews to illustrate how useful literature summary tables can be developed and what sort of information should be provided.

Tip 1: provide detailed data most frameworks and methods

Literature summary tables are not only meant to provide an overview of bones information (authors, country, purpose and findings) near included manufactures, but they should as well provide detailed information about the theoretical and conceptual frameworks and the methods used in the included commodity. Effigy 1 provides an example of a literature summary table from a scoping review.3

The provision of information nearly conceptual and theoretical frameworks and methods is useful for several reasons. First, in quantitative (reviews synthesising the results of quantitative studies) and mixed reviews (reviews synthesising the results of both qualitative and quantitative studies to accost a mixed review question), information technology allows the readers to appraise the congruence of the core findings and methods with the adjusted framework and tested assumptions. In qualitative reviews (reviews synthesising results of qualitative studies), this information is beneficial for readers to recognise the underlying philosophical and paradigmatic stance of the authors of the included articles. For case, imagine the authors of an commodity, included in a review, used phenomenological inquiry for their enquiry. In that example, the review authors and the readers of the review demand to know what kind of (transcendental or hermeneutic) philosophical stance guided the research. Review authors should, therefore, include the philosophical stance in their literature summary for the particular article. Second, data most frameworks and methods enables review authors and readers to judge the quality of the research, which allows for discerning the strengths and limitations of the article. For example, if authors of an included article intended to develop a new calibration and exam its psychometric backdrop. To achieve this aim, they used a convenience sample of 150 participants and performed exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the same sample. Such an approach would indicate a flawed methodology because EFA and CFA should not exist conducted on the aforementioned sample. The review authors must include this information in their summary tabular array. Omitting this information from a summary could atomic number 82 to the inclusion of a flawed article in the review, thereby jeopardising the review's rigour.

Tip ii: include strengths and limitations for each article

Critical appraisal of private articles included in a review is crucial for increasing the rigour of the review. Despite using various templates for critical appraisal, authors frequently do not provide detailed information nearly each reviewed article'due south strengths and limitations. Merely noting the quality score based on standardised disquisitional appraisal templates is not adequate because the readers should be able to identify the reasons for assigning a weak or moderate rating. Many recent critical appraisal checklists (eg, Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool) discourage review authors from assigning a quality score and recommend noting the primary strengths and limitations of included studies. It is as well vital that methodological and conceptual limitations and strengths of the articles included in the review are provided because not all review manufactures include empirical research papers. Rather some review synthesises the theoretical aspects of articles. Providing information about conceptual limitations is also important for readers to guess the quality of foundations of the research. For instance, if you included a mixed-methods written report in the review, reporting the methodological and conceptual limitations about 'integration' is critical for evaluating the study's force. Suppose the authors merely collected qualitative and quantitative data and did non state the intent and timing of integration. In that case, the force of the study is weak. Integration only occurred at the levels of data drove. Nevertheless, integration may not have occurred at the analysis, interpretation and reporting levels.

Tip 3: write conceptual contribution of each reviewed article

While reading and evaluating review papers, we have observed that many review authors only provide core results of the article included in a review and exercise non explain the conceptual contribution offered by the included article. We refer to conceptual contribution as a description of how the article'south key results contribute towards the evolution of potential codes, themes or subthemes, or emerging patterns that are reported as the review findings. For example, the authors of a review article noted that 1 of the research articles included in their review demonstrated the usefulness of case studies and reflective logs as strategies for fostering compassion in nursing students. The conceptual contribution of this research article could be that experiential learning is 1 style to teach compassion to nursing students, as supported by example studies and reflective logs. This conceptual contribution of the article should be mentioned in the literature summary tabular array. Delineating each reviewed article's conceptual contribution is especially benign in qualitative reviews, mixed-methods reviews, and critical reviews that often focus on developing models and describing or explaining various phenomena. Effigy two offers an case of a literature summary table.4

Tip iv: etch potential themes from each commodity during summary writing

While developing literature summary tables, many authors use themes or subthemes reported in the given articles as the primal results of their own review. Such an approach prevents the review authors from agreement the article's conceptual contribution, developing rigorous synthesis and drawing reasonable interpretations of results from an individual article. Ultimately, it affects the generation of novel review findings. For case, one of the articles about women's healthcare-seeking behaviours in developing countries reported a theme 'social-cultural determinants of wellness every bit precursors of delays'. Instead of using this theme equally i of the review findings, the reviewers should read and interpret beyond the given description in an article, compare and contrast themes, findings from one article with findings and themes from another article to find similarities and differences and to understand and explain bigger picture for their readers. Therefore, while developing literature summary tables, call up twice before using the predeveloped themes. Including your themes in the summary tables (meet figure i) demonstrates to the readers that a robust method of data extraction and synthesis has been followed.

Tip v: create your personalised template for literature summaries

Often templates are available for data extraction and development of literature summary tables. The available templates may be in the form of a table, chart or a structured framework that extracts some essential data nearly every commodity. The commonly used data may include authors, purpose, methods, cardinal results and quality scores. While extracting all relevant information is important, such templates should exist tailored to meet the needs of the individuals' review. For example, for a review about the effectiveness of healthcare interventions, a literature summary table must include information near the intervention, its blazon, content timing, duration, setting, effectiveness, negative consequences, and receivers and implementers' experiences of its usage. Similarly, literature summary tables for articles included in a meta-synthesis must include information most the participants' characteristics, inquiry context and conceptual contribution of each reviewed commodity so as to aid the reader brand an informed decision about the usefulness or lack of usefulness of the individual article in the review and the whole review.

In conclusion, narrative or systematic reviews are near always conducted as a part of any educational project (thesis or dissertation) or academic or clinical research. Literature reviews are the foundation of research on a given topic. Robust and high-quality reviews play an instrumental role in guiding enquiry, practice and policymaking. All the same, the quality of reviews is also contingent on rigorous data extraction and synthesis, which crave developing literature summaries. We have outlined 5 tips that could enhance the quality of the data extraction and synthesis process by developing useful literature summaries.

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