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The Literature Review

Breaking down the elements of various types of literature reviews, including narrative, systematic, and scoping.

What is a Scoping Review?

Like a systematic review, a scoping review follows specific protocols for evaluating a body of literature. However,  a scoping review is a much broader approach to a topic. The are also referred to as "mapping reviews or "scoping studies." Here are some reasons you may look to conduct a scoping review as opposed to a systematic review from the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis:

  • As a precursor to a systematic review.
  • To identify the types of available evidence in a given field.
  • To identify and analyse knowledge gaps.
  • To clarify key concepts/ definitions in the literature.
  • To examine how research is conducted on a certain topic or field.
  • To identify key characteristics or factors related to a concept.

Difference between Systematic and Scoping Reviews

  Scoping Review Systematic Review
Purpose/Aim Provides a narrative or descriptive account of available information Provides empirical evidence that meets pre specified criteria
Protocol Required Developed a priori and post hoc Developed a priori
Research Question Broadly defined Highly focused
Comprehensive Search Explicit and transparent Explicit and transparent
Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria Developed at protocol stage Developed at protocol stage
Study Selection All study types Defined study types; need to meet quality standards
Critical Appraisal No critical appraisal of included studies Quality and risk of bias assessment included
Statistical Analysis "Charts" data according to key issues, themes, etc.

Synthesizes and aggregates findings; often with a meta-analysis

Table adapted from the Ontario Tech University Library's Research Guide on Scoping Reviews. 

Search Tips

Picking Key Words

  1. Use your research questions to pick out essential keywords: see the Venn Diagram on joining topics into a research focus.
  2. Find related terms and synonyms for each concept in your research question. for example:

art museums 

  • Cultural heritage

  • Museums

  • Galleries

Constructing Searches

Most search engines, including Educat+ and CLIO, use standard search language and symbols to convey searches:

  1. Boolean operators connect your terms: AND connects different topics together, OR connects related terms within each topic, NOT removes that search term from results. See the example below.

  2. Quotations: using quotation marks allows you to search for an exact phrase i.e. "Teachers College" instead of 'Teachers' and 'College'.

  3. Parentheses: help group sets of terms to delineate relationships within the search.

  4. Question mark: a question mark in a search has a similar function to an asterisk, but for only one letter i.e. 'wom?n' will capture woman and women.

  5. Asterisks: adding an asterisk at the end of a word will capture related words with the same root or base, i.e. 'philosoph*' will capture philosophy, philosophical, philosopher etc.

Example Search

(“art museum*” OR museu* OR galler*) AND (hiring OR recruit*) AND (divers* OR DEAI OR DEI) AND (manage* OR executiv* OR leader*)

 

Lincoln School Of Teachers College. Summer Demonstration. Recreation Program. (1939). Historical Photographs of Teachers College. Courtesy of Gottesman Libraries.