Elements of Your Methods Section
As mentioned, your search strategy is also the research method for your systematic and scoping reviews. All the work you did when creating and tracking your searches will be useful when writing up your methods section.
Following PRISMA 2020 Checklist, you should include the following information in your methods section:
- Where you searched. The databases, registers/repositories, websites, etc., that you searched. You'll need to be specific and include
- Exact names of the databases (e.g. CINAHL Complete)
- Dates of coverage, if possible (e.g. CINAHL Complete (1937-present))
- For grey literature, you should consider explaining your approach and how you decided where to search or what sources to consult.
- Details about how you searched
- A complete search string from at least one of your database and registry searches. This should be in a format so that readers can understand exactly how terms were combined and should include any database specific syntax (e.g. "Quality of Life"[MeSH]). This can go in an appendix if space is precious.
- Decision making around the terms you did and did not include and working definitions of your primary terms.
- Specific websites or other sources you consulted for grey literature searches. This could be a list of the websites you mined or an organizational directory where you found names of people in the field. Again, that can go in an appendix.
- Filters/limits. Did you use any date limits or select Peer Reviewed in any databases? Include all of that information.
- Inclusion/exclusion criteria. Explain how you decided which articles to keep/discard. It can also be helpful to include the rationales for those decisions. For example, you might reference a specific definition of a term or reference a date when a type of technology was introduced.
- Your search results. Just the very basics: number of sources retrieved and duplicates removed. You may want to consider reporting database search results separately from grey literature searches.
- Applications you used to assist in your review (e.g. Covidence). Depending on the citation style you'll be using, this may need to be a formal citation and reference or simply a in-text mention with a URL.
- Screening and review processes.
- Interrater reliability - what did you do to increase homogeneity in decision making?
- Consensus - when there were disagreements about eligibility, who made the final decision?
- The number of articles you excluded during each round of screening based on your inclusion/exclusion criteria.
- PRISMA Flow Diagram.
- Data extraction process
- Template. This can be a brief description of you how you developed it, noting anything unique about your template. For example if you based your categories on an outside source, you'll want to reference that source here.
- Extraction process. Who conducted the data extraction? Who finalized the data?
- For systematic reviews
- What data did you collect?
- Did you use any methods to explore any possible cases of heterogeneity among study results?
- Describe how you assessed the certainty or confidence in the body of evidence for an outcome.
- Effect measures. For each outcome, you should specify the effect measures (e.g. are you using the risk ratio in the synthesis or presentation of results for dichotomous outcomes?).
- Quality assessment process. What criteria or guidelines did you use? Specify any tools or methods you used to help assess the risk of bias of the studies and how you accounted for missing results.
Below, we've shared links to both an overview of the PRISMA 2020 Checklist and an app that will help you fill out the checklist.
Links for More Information
