I am preparing a systematic review on the effectiveness of social and emotional curricula in encouraging self-determination. It is very difficult to use traditional strings to find curricula however there are articles that list and compare curricula, how do you justify using them as the basis of the review in the methodology? I am specifically looking at 'early years' defined as up to 5 years in preschool settings.
What I do is after starting with traditional clear search terms and conducting an exhaustive search of the literature, I conduct a secondary search utilizing terms or phrases that were found during the initial search. These often include specific program/curricula names. That is the basic justification, that in conducting the initial search this is what was found. Targeting your systematic review is acceptable as long as you allow the data to speak for itself, so in this case you found specific curricula, now search for that curricula. If you started out by searching a specific curricula then your systematic review would be about that curricula only and not about the effectiveness of this type of programming.
It is important to use systematic approaches when performing systematic review studies (since your study needs to be reproducible). Once you establish your list of keywords, based on your study aim(s), you should be able to get access to the available citations. It is also important to try different database sources to increase your sample and decrease bias.
Although this site ( http://www.library.illinois.edu/bix/pdf/genguide/searchtips.pdf) has a focus on the biological sciences it might give you some ideas on how to combine your subject headings and descriptors for your search. Make sure to document ( keep a log) of the dates you run your search and how you combined your words (methods).
For general info also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_term
Yes, why not ; as long as you systematically and exhaustively searched more recent scientific resources. At the end, your professional critical review and reflection are of paramount importance!
Good Luck.
Berhanu
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