Systematic Review Template

What’s Included

The Systematic Review Template guides you through conducting and reporting a rigorous review of research literature following established guidelines. The template includes a structured protocol for conducting your review, including your review question, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and search strategy. An abstract section summarizes your entire review for readers seeking quick overviews of your findings.

The introduction section establishes the context for your review and explains why a systematic review of this topic is important. The methods section details your search strategy across multiple databases, your study selection process, data extraction procedures, and quality assessment methods. The template includes sections for assessing and reporting on study quality and bias.

Results sections present your study characteristics, findings, and synthesis across selected studies. The template guides you through meta-analysis if appropriate or qualitative synthesis of findings. The discussion section interprets your findings, addresses heterogeneity across studies, and explores limitations of the evidence base. The template emphasizes transparency about methodology and findings.

Who This Template Is For

This template is essential for graduate students and researchers in healthcare, psychology, education, and social sciences conducting systematic reviews. Graduate students completing master’s theses and doctoral dissertations use this framework for comprehensive literature reviews. Healthcare and evidence-based practice professionals conduct systematic reviews to inform practice guidelines and recommendations.

Academic institutions and funding agencies increasingly require systematic reviews for evidence synthesis in their fields. Researchers seeking to publish in high-impact journals benefit from familiarity with systematic review standards. Professionals in policy development and evidence-based practice rely on systematic reviews for decision-making.

How to Use

Begin by developing a clear review question framed in terms of population, intervention, comparison, and outcomes (PICO). Establish inclusion and exclusion criteria that operationalize your review question, specifying study designs, populations, and outcomes you’ll consider. Register your protocol with a systematic review registry like PROSPERO if appropriate for your field.

Conduct a comprehensive search across multiple relevant databases using systematic search strategies. Document your search terms, databases, and results. Independently screen citations and full texts using your inclusion criteria, documenting your reasons for excluding studies. Extract data systematically from included studies using a standardized form.

Assess the quality and risk of bias in included studies using appropriate tools for your topic and study designs. Synthesize your findings using meta-analysis if studies are sufficiently similar or qualitative synthesis if heterogeneous. Present study characteristics and findings systematically, making your process transparent to readers.

Customize with GenText

GenText can help you develop comprehensive search strategies ensuring you find all relevant research. The AI can assist with screening citations and extracting data from studies, saving time on these labor-intensive tasks. Use GenText to synthesize findings across studies and to develop clear explanations of heterogeneity and limitations. GenText can also help you write accessible abstracts and summaries of your comprehensive findings.