Systematic Review Essentials

Because meta-analysis represents the final stage of a systematic review it is important to cover some systematic review essentials before conducting your meta-analysis. When I teach postgraduate psychology students about systematic reviewing, I always outline six steps I follow: (1) proposing a review question; (2) specifying inclusion criteria; (3) developing a search strategy; (4) data extraction; (5) quality appraisal; and (6) data synthesis. In this chapter, I will explain how the first three steps are identical in a meta-analysis and systematic review and highlight how the second three steps differ between meta-analysis and systematic review to prime the reader for material covered in subsequent chapters. This chapter also covers PROSPERO, a register of systematic reviews, and PRISMA, reporting guidelines for communicating the results of meta-analysis.