---
title: "Systematic review"
chunk: 4/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_review"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:26:30.659047+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Joining a collaborative volunteer effort to help categorise and summarise healthcare evidence
Data extraction and risk of bias assessment
Translation of reviews into other languages
A systematic review of how people were involved in systematic reviews aimed to document the evidence-base relating to stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews and to use this evidence to describe how stakeholders have been involved in systematic reviews. Thirty percent involved patients and/or carers. The ACTIVE framework provides a way to describe how people are involved in systematic review and may be used as a way to support systematic review authors in planning people's involvement. Standardised Data on Initiatives (STARDIT) is another proposed way of reporting who has been involved in which tasks during research, including systematic reviews.
There has been some criticism of how Cochrane prioritises systematic reviews. Cochrane has a project that involved people in helping identify research priorities to inform Cochrane Reviews. In 2014, the Cochrane–Wikipedia partnership was formalised.

==== Environmental health and toxicology ====
Systematic reviews are a relatively recent innovation in the field of environmental health and toxicology. Although mooted in the mid-2000s, the first full frameworks for conduct of systematic reviews of environmental health evidence were published in 2014 by the US National Toxicology Program's Office of Health Assessment and Translation and the Navigation Guide at the University of California San Francisco's Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment. Uptake has since been rapid, with the estimated number of systematic reviews in the field doubling since 2016 and the first consensus recommendations on best practice, as a precursor to a more general standard, being published in 2020.

=== Social, behavioural, and educational ===
In 1959, social scientist and social work educator Barbara Wootton published one of the first contemporary systematic reviews of literature on anti-social behavior as part of her work, Social Science and Social Pathology.
Several organisations use systematic reviews in social, behavioural, and educational areas of evidence-based policy, including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE, UK), Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE, UK), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ, US), the World Health Organization, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), the Joanna Briggs Institute, and the Campbell Collaboration. The quasi-standard for systematic review in the social sciences is based on the procedures proposed by the Campbell Collaboration, which is one of several groups promoting evidence-based policy in the social sciences.

=== Homelessness ===
in 2020 the Campbell Collaboration published its first systematic reviews in homelessness, commissioned by the Centre for Homelessness Impact, in order to encourage robust, policy-relevant evidence into a field with very little tradition of such an approach. The topics for three initial systematic reviews were chosen by using Evidence and Gap Maps published by the Centre, bringing together causal research on homelessness in one place and thereby identifying areas with sufficient research to conduct a synthesis of available evidence.
These first systematic reviews on homelessness looked at accommodation-based interventions, institutional discharge and interventions to improve access to health and social care. The accommodation review, which evaluated the impact of different housing models, found that interventions that combine stable housing with high levels of personal support, such as Housing First, tend to be more effective than those offering accommodation with little or no support. The review on the effectiveness of discharge programmes that provide housing assistance for individuals leaving institutions such as hospital, the armed forces and prison, concluded that well-designed and delivered discharge programmes can significantly reduce the likelihood of homelessness. The third looked particularly at access to care for people with multiple and complex needs, and emphasised the importance of integrated, person-centred approaches.
Further systematic reviews have since been conducted, including into the effectiveness of case management to support individuals impacted by homelessness and two reviews of the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions for people experiencing homelessness. Again, these were commissioned by the Centre for Homelessness Impact.

=== Others ===
Some attempts to transfer the procedures from medicine to business research have been made, including a step-by-step approach, and developing a standard procedure for conducting systematic literature reviews in business and economics.
Systematic reviews are increasingly prevalent in other fields, such as international development research. Subsequently, several donors (including the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and AusAid) are focusing more on testing the appropriateness of systematic reviews in assessing the impacts of development and humanitarian interventions.
The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) has a journal titled Environmental Evidence, which publishes systematic reviews, review protocols, and systematic maps on the impacts of human activity and the effectiveness of management interventions.

== Review tools ==
A 2022 publication identified 24 systematic review tools and ranked them by inclusion of 30 features deemed most important when performing a systematic review in accordance with best practices. The top six software tools (with at least 21/30 key features) are all proprietary paid platforms, typically web-based, and include:

Giotto Compliance
DistillerSR
Nested Knowledge
EPPI-Reviewer Web
LitStream
JBI SUMARI
The Cochrane Collaboration provides a handbook for systematic reviewers of interventions which "provides guidance to authors for the preparation of Cochrane Intervention reviews." The Cochrane Handbook also outlines steps for preparing a systematic review and forms the basis of two sets of standards for the conduct and reporting of Cochrane Intervention Reviews (MECIR; Methodological Expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews). It also contains guidance on integrating patient-reported outcomes into reviews.

== Limitations ==