How To Write A Scoping Literature Review

Introduction

A literature review is a thorough overview of earlier studies on a subject. It examines academic books, journals, and other materials pertinent to a particular field. Its goal is to comprehend the current research and discussions relevant to a specific topic or field of study and to deliver that information in a written report. The structure of a literature review may differ across domains and assignments; thus, the kind of literature review you write will depend on your field of study. Narrative, systematic, scoping, and critical literature reviews comprise some literature review types. However, this blog primarily highlights scoping literature review and how it is done.

What is a Scoping Literature Review?

It is an exploratory research study that carefully maps the literature on a subject by finding significant ideas, perspectives, and sources of proof that guide practice in the industry. Here, the potential reach of the research on a certain subject is evaluated. It aids in identifying research gaps. A scoping review aims to determine the body of literature that already exists on a particular research subject. Nonetheless, this literature review type needs to be comprehensive and "systematic-like". It frequently involves a procedure; the searching is methodical and reasonably comprehensive, and the techniques are well-documented. It could come before a thorough systematic evaluation. Additionally, it can highlight weak areas and elucidate topics in the literature. Ultimately, it strives to offer a summary or map of the available information regarding a specific subject.

Scoping Literature Review Steps

Scoping Literature Review has the following steps:

Step 1

Formulate the research question: It is crucial to have a clear objective and related questions before you begin your investigation. This is achieved in this stage. The objective is the justification for why the review should be done. It should be concise and straightforward and explain to the reader how the study will advance the research subject.

An example of a research objective could be to study how nurse-led care approaches manage chronic illnesses in low-income nations.

The research question could be, "What nurse-led care approaches are used to manage chronic illnesses in low-income nations?"

Step 2

Apply a PCC framework: JBI, an international research organisation, recommended PCC (Population (or participants)/Concept/Context) to identify the key concepts in your main review questions. The framework will then guide your search approach. You may check for any possible overlooked inclusion and exclusion criteria for your protocol by deconstructing your inquiry in this way.

The breakdown of the key concepts of PCC comprises:

Population: Participants' key traits. (for example, chronic diseases patients)

Concept: This might cover information on items that will be described in depth, such as "interventions," "phenomena of interest," and/or "outcomes." (e.g. nurse-led approaches for managing chronic diseases)

Context: It may encompass details about the specific setting (e.g., low-income nations)

Developing a protocol: The procedure serves as your scoping review's game plan or technique. Before commencing your searches, you must first design your methodology. As your review progresses, you could make changes to your protocol. A scoping review's iterative process can call for certain adjustments.

The review plan should include the following:

Eligibility criteria (inclusion/exclusion): Similar to a systematic review, the scoping review should use the inclusion criteria and the source of evidence to determine what should be included and excluded from the review. However, because scoping reviews ask about a specific topic, which is generally focused on mapping descriptive characteristics or features, this technique often has broader inclusion requirements than conventional systematic reviews.

Step 3 Search for evidence

Screening process: To discover primary sources of information that are both published and unpublished (grey or hard-to-obtain literature), as well as reviews, the search strategy for a scoping review, should typically seek to be as thorough as feasible within the restrictions of time and resources. Any restrictions on the scope and depth of the search technique should be explained and justified. The search process should be broken down into three steps, as is advised in all JBI types of reviews.

• The first step is a preliminary, limited search of at least two relevant web databases. Following this first search, the text words found in the titles and abstracts of the papers that were located and the index keywords used to characterise the articles are analysed.
• A second search should be conducted across all included databases utilising all found keywords and index phrases.
• The reports and publications' references list should look for other sources. The third step may look exclusively at the reference lists of the sources chosen from the full text and/or included in the review, or it may look at the reference lists of all identified sources.

Create a search plan: The typical procedure for creating a search strategy is as follows:

5. Identify important terms and synonyms that are linked to your study issue.
5. Decide which databases and additional sources (such as grey literature) you need to search.
5. Study selection
5. Apply the appropriate database topic headings to your search technique, such as Emtree [Embase] and MeSH [PubMed/Medline].
5. To produce a thorough and efficient search, use search strategies including nesting, boolean, truncation, phrase searching, and wildcards.
5. Test, evaluate, and modify your search as necessary (Checking the search techniques in published scoping studies for examples of how searches are organised and help with keyword generation might be a helpful place to start.). For instance:
   • Consider if certain ideas or phrases need to be searched in specific database fields (such as title or abstract) to narrow the search.
   • Consider if you need to apply any database criteria to your search, such as publication dates, age, sex, article genre, language, etc.

Document the search: The search method for scoping reviews must be meticulously documented to allow for transparent reporting and auditing. As investigators get more familiar with the body of evidence, new keywords, sources, and potentially helpful search phrases may be found and added to the search strategy, and scoping review searches may be iterative.

Databases: Identify the pertinent databases for your review. Scopus, Cochrane Library, APA PsycINFO, CINAHL, Embase and Medline comprise some key/widely used databases in health-related reviews

Grey literature: Grey literature is a term used to describe content created in print and electronic media but not under the control of for-profit publishers and is, therefore, typically not searchable in databases. Government, academia, and business at all levels all generate grey literature. Some public sources include the Australian Government Department of Health, APO (Analysis and Policy Observatory), Trove, Queensland Government, and many others. It is advised to select sources pertinent to your study subject due to the abundance of potential sources for grey literature.

Citation chaining: This entails looking for papers closely connected to any research you include in your evaluation by searching backwards (reference list searching) and forward (citation searching).

Step 4 Screening

The final search results from databases and other sources are filtered in line with the requirements for the review.

To minimise bias, two reviewers typically carry this out independently.

Duplicates are eliminated before exporting all database results to a program like EndNote.

There are two steps to screening:

First Pass: Title and Abstract

Check the titles and abstracts to eliminate any papers that are not relevant.

Second Pass (Full text)

After the "first pass," read the complete language of the items left or included to ensure they meet the eligibility requirements. There must be explanations for exclusion.

Conflicts amongst reviewers are settled by comparison of the results.

PRISMA flowchart

This outlines the specifics that must be disclosed and recorded for information sources and searches.

The phases of the review process are depicted using a PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) diagram, which records the number of records detected and subsequently eliminated at each stage of the screening process.

An example of a PRISMA flow diagram is shown below:

Step 5 Data extraction

According to JBI, data extraction in scoping review entails charting data to provide readers with a detailed and logical overview of the outcomes that correlate with the scoping review's question(s) and objective(s).

As stated in Chapter 11.2.7 of the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis, some essential details that reviewers could decide to chart for each included record include:

1. Author(s)
2. Year of publication
3. Origin/country of origin (where the source was published or conducted)
4. Aims/purpose
5. Population and sample size within the source of evidence (if applicable)
6. Methodology / methods
7. Intervention type, comparator and details of these (e.g. duration of the intervention) (if applicable). Duration of the intervention (if applicable)
8. Outcomes and details of these (e.g. how measured) (if applicable)
9. Key findings that relate to the scoping review question/s.

You can use editable templates from Joanna Briggs Institute, such as the JBI template and PRISMA-Scr: Checklist and Explanation. PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist is used to ensure that the scoping review conforms to this reporting standard. Moreover, it aids in developing a stronger grasp of pertinent terminologies, fundamental ideas, and important things to report for scoping reviews in policymakers, publishers, researchers, patients, consumers, and other stakeholders.

Step 6: Collate, summarise and report the results

The findings of a scoping review may be presented in your final manuscript in a variety of ways, such as descriptive format that is in line with the review objective(s) and scope; tables and charts that display the distribution of studies by year or period of publication, countries of origin, area of intervention (clinical, policy, educational, etc.), and research methods.

Additionally, according to Section 11.3.8.1 of the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis, the findings can be grouped into the following key conceptual categories:

• aims
• duration of the intervention
• intervention type
• study population and sample size
• methodology adopted
• key findings 
• gaps in the research

A detailed explanation should be given for each reported category. Thats it.

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