I´m going to perform a qualitative systematic review and one thing that really confuses me is the fact
that most articles, during sections like the discussion, tend to support their findings by citing external literature, so they are only providing theories as to why something turned out one way or the other during the investigation.
I was wondering if those analysis could or even should be taken into account doing the results synthesis given that the qualitative method usually makes use of as much information available as possible.
Article A Guide to Writing a Qualitative Systematic Review Protocol ...
Article How to Do a Systematic Review: A Best Practice Guide for Con...
The above may be helpful to start with. Good luck.
I have not encountered the problem you describe, but I certainly agree that the Results and Discussion sections should focus on what was learned from the review itself. The only reason I can see for discussing external theory is if the field itself has a series of coherent and competing theories. If so, that should be clearly specified in the introductory sections of the review.
As David L Morgan said, this is not commonly observed. Discussion is generally used for contextualizing the results or identifying gaps of knowledge. The protocol that you are building for your own review is important to include in your "a priori" plan the way you would use discussion. Most of time I say to my students not to focus too much on the discussion because it is the most "opinion-oriented" part of a manuscript. Traditionnally authors are self-citing their previous work and theories eluding other work (at least partially). However, in field where there are paucity of data it may be relevant to mention the competing theories but being cautious on the fact that discussion can be biased toware authors' opinions...
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