Healthcare Research

Evidence-based practice requires critical analysis of current policies, practice, activities and research.  A literature review enables a student or researcher to explore the existing evidence, evaluate the strength of this evidence and suggest further action.

The topic for the review, or research question, must be manageable though and feasible within the time available and the context of other academic and personal responsibilities.

Tools like PICO can help you to ensure your research question is robust, or to ensure you have a valid focus for your review.

Plan - create a timeline

Use one of the many tools available, e.g. Gantt chart, to plot the timeline for your project.  One option is to use the Project Planner feature within Sage Research Methods resource.

Time management can be a critical factor when searching for literature. Planning ahead can be especially useful so consider compiling a search strategy to help you develop your search and select material appropriately.

So, what does a search strategy involve?

• Themes and keywords:
  • Which themes are you including? 
  • Which are the principal key words or search terms for each theme? 
  • Are there obvious alternative search terms that should be included?  For example, 'international' could also be described as 'global' or 'worldwide'.
• Item types:
  • Which types of material are you including in your review?  This will vary according to the level of study and subject but could be restricted to research articles or encompass policy papers, textbooks, reports, conference presentations, blogs and more.  If in doubt, see the listing in Finding Sources
• Resources:
  • Which search resources are you going to use to find the relevant literature?  Options include bibliographic databases and Google Scholar (journal and research papers); the library's OneSearch (books, exemplars and more), Google or other general search engines (policy papers, blogs ...).
• Additional selection criteria:
  • Which other factors will determine your selection of individual items?  For example:
    • Does a specific date range for publication apply? 
    • Are you only interested in a specific scenario or environment?
    • Are you focusing on (for example) a specific population, product or genre?

Do you need to document the number of entries found?

If so, a variation/simplification of the PRISMA flow diagram will be useful

Searching, especially when using bibliographic databases, can be a complex task as so many journal articles and other items are indexed.  Structuring your search using Boolean terms "AND", "OR" and "NOT" will be particularly helpful, e.g. (Students OR undergraduates) AND (impact OR effect OR implications) AND Covid-19. 

Other options are also in common use though.

Looking for a specific item?

Use the author's surname and the whole title, or one or more words from the title. For example, Saunders research methods

Searching for items on a topic?

Enter the key words defining the topic, e.g. business research methods 

Looking for a set phrase?

Use quotation marks to search for an exact term, e.g. "primary school"

Not sure about the spelling?

Check the database or other site to see which symbols, if any, can be used as wildcards.  If supported, you can simultaneously search different spellings of a word. 

For example, in EBSCOhost databases, wom?n will generate results for woman and women (one letter difference); lab#r for labor and labour (multiple letters are possibly different).

Evaluating your sources

You will be assessing the quality and relevance of your many sources, as recommended in our Evaluating Sources guide, during the literature review and, sometimes, later phases of your project.  

In addition, you may also be expected to take account of scholarly research evaluation tools.  These can be seen in some of the bibliographic databases, e.g. Scopus and Web of Science. These tools include:

• Citation counts (or Times cited) - the number of times an article has been cited in subsequent articles.
• h-index - the number of articles an author has each with a certain number of subsequent citations.
• Impact - the number of citations an article receives within a set period of time and measured against similar entries in the same academic discipline.
• PlumX metrics - the number of mentions an article receives in multiple resources, including social media, and the number of times it is captured by reference management tools.

Evaluating health-focused research

Prefer other tools, e.g. the checklists listed below, when evaluating the quality of research in clinical trials and other health-focused research studies.