Systematic Reviews for the Social Sciences

The protocol 

A systematic review requires a written protocol that specifies the plan which the review will follow to identify, appraise and collate evidence. The protocol makes the review process transparent and helps to avoid or minimise bias. You can think of the protocol as the introduction to your research. 

Components of a protocol 

• Background information This may include a literature review, but it's not the systematic literature review. it's an opportunity to introduce your research question: are there terms you need to define? Foundational papers you want to cite? What brought you to this question?
• The research question What are you asking in your systematic literature review?
• Search strategy clearly lay out the search terms you will use and where you will be searching. Include details of any supplementary searches you plan to undertake. 
• Study selection These are the inclusion and exclusion criteria that you will use when you screen your search results. They will be defined by your research question, but some common ones are listed on this page.

When you begin your research, you will not have all of this information. An important part of your preparing your protocol is undertaking some scoping searches. They will help you define the limits of your search and you can also use these searches to start identifying search terms to use in your search strategy. 

Registering your protocol 

If you are a a doctoral candidate and your review is health-care related, consider registering your final protocol on PROSPERO to publicise that you are doing this research. You can also check here that no one else is undertaking a systematic review on the same topic. 

Next step: The different stages of searching