Analysing different types of Literature Reviews
As there are several types of literature reviews that can be used for a specific method and applications. In this post, I try to investigate and report some of the common types of literature reviews.
I tried to identify the purpose, characteristics, pros and cons of each type of literature review (Narrative, Systematic and Scoping).
Narrative review
The main purpose of a narrative literature review is to get an outline of a topic and identifying gaps in the literature.
Characteristics
· Starts with a well-defined question to be answered. However, they usually involve a general discussion of a subject with no stated hypothesis.
· It has no predetermined research question, only a topic of interest.
· Interpret data that are subjective.
Pros
· A comprehensive perspective can be given on specific topics.
· It has more flexibility in how you structure the literature review.
Cons
· The assumptions and the planning are not often known.
· The selection and evaluation biases are not known.
· It is not reproducible.
· High potential for low methodological quality.
Systematic review
The main purpose of a systematic literature review is to collect multiple research papers and summarize them to answer research question using rigorous methods.
Characteristics
· Start with a well-defined question to be answered or assumption to be tested.
· It employs a more rigorous approach to “reviewing” the literature in a clear way (Gregory & Denniss, 2018).
· It is more likely to have considered bias in a methodical way, rather than representing in a better evidence-based source of information than narrative reviews (Gregory & Denniss, 2018).
· Interpret data are objective
· A reproducible methodology with a clear set of objectives.
Pros
· Appraisable
· Easily replicable methodology
· Usually clear and explicit
· Bias is reduced using a systematic method for selecting studies for the review.
Cons
· The scope of review is limited by the defined query, search terms, and the selection criteria (Ferrari, 2015).
· Often reader needs to reformulate the other questions that have not been answered by the main query (Ferrari, 2015).
· Usually time-consuming compared to other types of reviews.
· Usually government reports and policy documents are not usually included which makes it grey literature leading to some bias.
Scoping review
The main purpose of scoping literature review is to summarize a broad topic.
Characteristics
· The main aim is to map the key concepts that underpin a research area.
· It is useful to bring together literature in disciplines with emerging evidence.
· It provides a summary of the existing evidence base irrespective of quality.
Pros
· It provides a comprehensive overview of newer topics.
· It considers a different range of sources.
Cons
· A proper assessment of the methodological quality of included studies is normally not presented (Peters, et al., 2015).
· Going through all applicable literature can be time-wasting.
· Shortage of deepness in the summary of findings.
References
Ferrari, R., 2015. Writing narrative style literature reviews. The European Medical Writers Association, 24(4).
Gartlehner, G. et al., 2019. Assessing the accuracy of machine-assisted abstract screening with DistillerAI: a user study. Syst Rev, 8(277).
Gregory, A. T. & Denniss, R., 2018. An Introduction to Writing Narrative and Systematic Reviews — Tasks, Tips and Traps for Aspiring Authors. HOW-TO-DO-IT, 27(7), pp. 893–898.
Houssami, N., Kirkpatrick-Jones, G., Noguchi, N. & Lee, C. I., 2019. Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the early detection of breast cancer: a scoping review to assess AI’s potential in breast screening practice. 16(5), pp. 351–362.
Morgenstern, J. D. et al., 2020. Predicting population health with machine learning: a scoping review. BMJ Open, Volume 10.
Peters, M. D. et al., 2015. Guidance for conducting systematic scoping reviews. International Journal of Evidence-Based Healthcare.
