Hey everyone,
I am doing a systematic review and I have finished the title/abstract screening. Now I realised that my inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria are too broad, that many papers ended in the full-text screening are on the borderline. If I include them, the review will be too huge and not practical. I am wondering if it is okay to amend the criteria at this stage, by adding an extra exclusion criteria, which will allow me to do a more focused review and also not have to re-do the review from the very beginning?
As I am not changing my research questions (in the sense of not changing the topic and including extra contents), but to make it topic narrower, would it be a problem for me to carry on with what I have now (using a narrower criteria during the full-text screening) ?
I will make the change and rationale of amendment as transparent and clear as possible, just a bit worried if it is okay and valid to do so.
Happy to hear any opinions/suggestions from you!
Dear Yuqing Che
Don't worry about that!
All of us when we started doing our doctoral theses had the same problem. In the desire to not lose any important bibliography, we ended up including too many things.
A good bibliographic survey is not an endless list of bibliography. It must be the support of a thought, yours, which, being sufficiently mature, allows you to do a thesis, scientific research, etc.
Basically, the bibliography corresponds to our acceptance that before us there were those who thought about the subjects and because of them we do not have to repeat learning.
You must therefore bear in mind the separation between what are your ideas and what are the ideas of those authors who preceded you, and prepared the way that you can now proceed.
Because of their historical and epistemological nature, they are instrumental in their work. Only that.
I suggest you take a moment to reflect: what are the essence of your ideas? What do you want to convey to anyone reading your work? Within this intellectual space, what are the dimensions of technical and EPISTEMOLOGICAL analysis that are underlying? Many failures come from this second reading of the epistemology underlying the research!
To support this reflection, what analytical dimensions do you need? Who made them? This will be your correct bibliography. You don't have more than you need, you don't lack information.
If you can help again don't hesitate to ask.
Good work
Dear Yuqing Che,
In most disciplines it is fine to make minor amendments to a systematic review following publication of the protocol. The important thing is to ensure that you refer to the original protocol in your systematic review report, and state any amendments that have been made during the review process (usually in a separate section and with justification of any changes). If your systematic review protocol is registered with a review library (e.g. Cochrane, Campbell, or the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence), do check the guidelines as they may have specific requirements. Normally major changes to the scope of the review would not be appropriate, so any additional exclusion criteria you are considering should be justified (ie think really carefully why a particular reason for exclusion might be appropriate to add, and discuss with any team members/stakeholders that you are working with)
There are lots of great guidance docs/tweets etc. out there (see the SR collaborations mentioned above for a starting point).
Good luck with the review!
Nicola
Thank you so much Henrique Lopes , Susan J Bondy and Nicola Randall for your kind answers! I found them really useful and now I have successfully amended my protocol.
Thanks for your kind words. If you need something more that I can help please email me: [email protected]
You’re very welcome. I hope the review goes well! As Henrique said, please do ask if you have any other questions.
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