The Inclusion team has considerable experience in conducting literature reviews for a number of our research projects. Literature reviews are useful for identifying current understanding and practice, consolidating existing evidence, exploring ‘what works’ and finding where there are gaps in knowledge. Our approach is to review and synthesise a wide range of relevant literature in order to provide a comprehensive background on a subject matter and to inform our conclusions and/or recommendations.
We also have experience in undertaking systematic reviews. A systematic review is a summary of research that uses explicit methods to conduct a literature search and appraisal of the literature. Systematic reviews are more rigorous than literature reviews, as the focus is on the quality of the literature through a defined assessment procedure. We adopt the approach to systematic reviews devised by the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations.
Our literature reviews involve:
- Development of a review protocol - to identify the key search phrases and will help ensure the review process is transparent and replicable
- Defining a clear search strategy – to document and make clear how the relevant literature has been identified, thereby reducing selection bias
- Undertaking data searches – with utilisation of:
key academic databases e.g. SSCI, IBSS
existing collections of relevant evaluations and reports at Inclusion
our long-standing national networks of policy makers and practitioners
websites of service delivery organisations
government websites
Reviews we are currently conducting include:
Reviews we have conducted recently include:
