Davinia - I'm not surprised that you are confused. There is a lot of confusion around these terms as they are used interchangeably. An integrative review is a general review of the existing literature as a 'systematic' process. It usually involves both quantitative and qualitative studies - hence 'integrative' (inclusive) - but is not always the case. Some people also call it a systematic review. However, this process is very different to a Cochrane-based 'systematic review' (sometimes meta-analysis) of clinical trials. Other terms that are used and confused are 'narrative review' and just the plain, simple 'literature review'. If you add into the 'rich' mix - contexts such as 'concept analysis' and 'discourse analysis' and 'meta-analysis' - then it becomes more confusing. 

The attached chapter may assist. 

Dear Davinia Mª Resurrección

please check the pdfs

regards

http://libguides.sjsu.edu/c.php?g=230370&p=1528399

I have a slightly different interpretation to what Dean said above, although like him I am also not surprised that you are confused! I would suggest that an integrative review is simply a specific form of systematic review, usually undertaken where meta-analysis or meta-ethnography of one form or another cannot be carried out, but which allows for the combination of various methods to synthesise the findings. There is best practice guidance by Whittemore and Knafl (2005) in Journal of Advanced Nursing, and also a nice paper by de Souza et al (2010) called Integrative Review: What is it? How to Do it? I have undertaken one of these myself and registered it as an integrative review on Prospero, the international register of systematic reviews (and avoided the Cochrane Collaboration). 

And just to make it even more confusing, there are scoping reviews, which appear to be somewhat similar in idea to integrative reviews. Many of my students have undertaken scoping reviews and have been successful in getting them published.

http://joannabriggs.org/assets/docs/sumari/Reviewers-Manual_Methodology-for-JBI-Scoping-Reviews_2015_v2.pdf

Thanks for your responses and for the attached pdfs.

What about the quality of the studies that are included in the review? If we're including qualitative and quantitative studies, the quality is quite difficult. Moreover, if in the quantitative studies we include retrospective studies, RCT's studies, etc.

Is there any publication related to how to deal with quality of the studies in an integrative review?

Thanks!

Hi Davinia, there is. The following are all good

Pope C, Mays N and Popay J (2008) Synthesising Qualitative and Quantitative Health Research: A Guide to Methods. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill.

Popay J (2006) Moving Beyond Effectiveness in Evidence Synthesis: Methodological Issues in the Synthesis of Diverse Sources of Evidence. London: National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

Dixon-Woods M, Agarwal S, Young B, et al. (2004) Integrative Approaches to Qualitative and Quantitative Evidence. London: Health Development Agency 181. Available from: http://www.nice.org.uk/aboutnice/whoweare/aboutthehda/evidencebase/keypapers/papersthatinformandsupporttheevidencebase/integrative_approaches_to_qualitative_and_quantitative_evidence.jsp

Hope these help!

The search strategy developed by US National Library of Medicine to create the systematic reviews subset on PubMed lists all interchangeable words.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/pubmed_subsets/sysreviews_strategy.html

Your talk is really interesting. Please can you talk a little about the use of PICO, PICOD, PICOT at : a) Integrative Revue and b) Systematic Revue. When I read Whittemore & Knafl (2005), I see 5 steps, without reference to PICO or PICo. I'm sorry I don't write very well in English

Hi, Davinia, I think that it is not only you are confused but there are many people might not know it. What review did you chose in the end? It also depended the subject and the aim that you want to do review. I have done a integrative review about Augmented reality in medical education. I  have also led a protocol of Cochrane review project about online learning for medical student. Each method has their limitation.The AMEE guide paper mentioned the limitation of systematic review for medical education that the result of systematic reviews depended on the measurement points chosen by researcher. I have strong feeling about it when I led the Cochrane review project. However, systematic review is broadly accepted in medicine area. 

Hi Egui,

At least, I carried a systematic review following PRISMA statement. 

Davinia,

This may be of use in the future for conducting QA with disparate research studies used in integrative reviews. I use Hawker, S., S. Payne, et al. (2002). "Appraising the Evidence: Reviewing Disparate Data Systematically." Qualitative Health Research 12(9): 1284-1299 (see attachment for checklist).

Margarida had asked about the usefulness of the PICOT format for integrative reviews.  My understanding is that this format is more appropriate for a systematic review which has a more narrow focus using homogenous methods than an integrative review which is examining  phenomena more broadly and using disparate methods.

I would like to suggest you, read an article titled: Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Using the Past and Present to Explore the Future

by Richard J. Torraco (2016)

Article Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Using the Past and P...

We went back trying to locate origens and methods used in nursing for integrative reviews. We did an article about it.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0080-62342014000200335.

Hope it helps

Please have a look at this web page: http://science-network.tv/writing-a-systematic-review/ and also at this example of an integrative review: Article Orthorexia nervosa: An integrative literature review of a li...

The main difference between a systematic review and an integrative review is the types of studies that are included in the review.

Systematic reviews include only quantitative, experimental studies, and many times only randomized controlled trials.

Integrative reviews include both quantitative and qualitative studies, or, in other words, both experimental and non-experimental studies.

I don't agree with Nirmala's answer. I consider integrative reviews to be a subset of systematic reviews. I updated this page to clarify: http://science-network.tv/writing-a-systematic-review/

I’m with Ronny. It’s basically what I said above.

Are integrated reviews ranked in the hierarchy of evidence?

Someone just asked me to explain how to do a discursive review? Does anyone know what that means, compared to an integrative or systematic review?

Hi Karen, a discursive review involves examining the underpinning discourses within a corpus of literature, to reveal the different broad thrusts taken. I suppose you could combine it with the formality of the systematic/integrative review, but I haven’t seen one that goes that far. Usually one would employ methods such as critical discourse analysis, but you could also apply content analysis or a combination of the two.

And Laura, sorry just seeing your comment now; Integrative Reviews are a form of systematic review, so yes: they rank very highly in evidence hierarchies (just below RCTs usually, depending on which hierarchy one would use).

I am struggling to be clear about how to evaluate the methodological quality of the primary research articles in integrative reviews where there are both quantitative and qualitative.

Tara Laabar

I used this tool in my integrative review, I think that you may find it useful

https://www.ihe.ca/publications/standard-quality-assessment-criteria-for-evaluating-primary-research-papers-from-a-variety-of-fields

Thank you very much. This is very useful Saleh Al Omar

Systematic reviews combine the primary evidence of multiple studies regarding a specific clinical problem to inform clinical practice and are the method of choice for evidence-based practice. Systematiic reviews are at the top of hierarchy of science research of primary source evidence. An integrative review is the broadest type of research review method, enabling for the collective inclusion of experimental and non-experimental research supporting a more fully understanding of a phenomenon of concern. intergrative review will research primary evidene only such as evidence presented within a systematic review allowing for the intergrated literture review to evaluate, interpret, systhesize the evidence of the systematic reviews. Moreover it is an intergrated literture review, researcing the evidence presented in the systematic literture review of the primary research. research on research.

An integrative review is a general review done in a systematic way. You can include both qualitative and quantitative data in the same review. Wherein, in the systematic review, you can only take quantitative data(experimental study) for your research.

Facing the same question, I found this thread very helpful, thank you all for the answers! I would like to add a few more references from what I've learnt recently and hope they help too. 1. Whittemore (2005) distinguished the four types of revews including ILR and SLR in definination, purpose, sampling frame etc, shown in table 1 as attached, in his article 'Combining the evidence in nursing research: methods and implications'; 2. Torraco's two articles 'Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples' (2005) and 'Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Using the Past and Present to Explore the Future (2016), as recommended by our Professor, provide clear guidelines for wirting ILR.

Thanks everyone. Your responses have been really useful for my integrative review project

Thanks, everyone.

These reviews have their functions in; while systematic review will enable us to synthesise findings of original research mainly quantitative research, integrative reviews enable us to synthesise findings of both quantitative and qualitative research. Integrative reviews are mainly useful in the health and social care branch. This gives us sufficient and robust research materials for knowledge generation, especially for evidence based practice.

Muhammad Aledeh, is it suitable to use integrative reviews in management sciences such as research in environmental management accounting EMA

Dear Temitope Omoworare,

Thank you for your question. Of course since integrative reviews combine quantitative and qualitative research findings, it enable us to synthesise findings, especially where there is lack of evidence elsewhere. Therefore, since scientific studies is not limited to one field of endeavour, applying integrative literature review can well be applied to diverse fields.

One area that I have enjoyed results of integrative reviews is in management science in topics such as organisational culture and workplace bullying, for example. This is organisational management, therefore, integrative reviews can be used here. And do not forget that integrative reviews are also systematic in nature and therefore, their reproducibility is not negatively affected.

An interesting piece on ILR:Torraco (2006) , Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples. Interestingly, Littell et al (2008) underlines that SLR and meta analysis are not synononyms, SLR can include meta analysis but does not have too.

Dear Temitope Omoworare: about your question for Muhammad Aledeh , absolutely yes, I just wrote an ILR article related to business management as the post-class assignment requested by our DBA class professor.

I believe, the two approaches are exactly the opposite. A systematic review is reductionist, avoiding complexity by reducing, being linear. An integrative review is the opposite of that - studying complex relations.

Dear Davinia M Resurrección,

Thank you so much for the question. I just try to start writing an review article on my Ph.D topic. I truly believe that integrative review is based on quantitative and qualitative both the approaches but systematic review is based on qualitative approaches.

Hi Davinia Mª Resurrección,

I conducted a systematic review synthesising both quantitative and qualitative studies. I used a mixed methods synthesis utilizing results-based convergent synthesis design by Noyes et al. (2019). In this design, the following were undertaken: (i) thematic synthesis of qualitative studies, (ii) thematic synthesis of quantitative studies, and (iii) assimilated synthesis (association and juxtaposition) of findings from both methods.

I don't go with the definition of the integrative review being a review of both quantitative and qualitative studies combined because you can surely do this with systematic reviews. An integrative review is more of conducting a review from diverse data sources.

The key difference between them lies in the purpose of your review. You have to take note that Systematic Review is not just a mere discussion, summary and synthesis of findings that you gathered from primary data, but it is more of being a body of the authors' arguments from the data synthesised.

The following link from Duquesne University will probably help in differentiating s systematic versus integrative versus scoping reviews.

https://guides.library.duq.edu/c.php?g=1055475&p=7725920

I hope this helps.

Noyes J, Booth A, Moore G, Flemming K, Tunçalp Ö, Shakibazadeh E. Synthesising quantitative and qualitative evidence to inform guidelines on complex interventions: clarifying the purposes, designs and outlining some methods. BMJ Global Health. 2019;4(Suppl 1):e000893.

Think about "comprehensive review" instead.

Reviewing @Junel Padigos' contribution again brought me really closer to agreeing strongly with his position. Additionally, @Rodney Itiki's "comprehensive review" fits in likewise.

Thank you everyone for your wisdom on these important topics. I totally agree that they are often very confusing. For me, I understood integrative review as review of diverse data sources, as mentioned by Junel Padigos. Data sources here can include quantitative, qualitative including narrative papers, mixed methods studies and others like editorial, commentaries, supplements, strategies and guidelines. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Hi Tara Laabar I agree with Junel Padigos as well. The approach you outline is certainly what I understand by integrative review, and is the approach I used in my own integrative review which encompassed empirical work alongside guidelines, service improvements and commentaries etc. I followed Whittemore and Knafl's method (The integrative review: updated methodology. J Adv Nurs 2005; 52(5): 546–553).

I have more confusion. I already use the "Mixed-Methods Systematic Review" term instead of integrative review...

Great conversation. I also found this reviewer tool by JBI helpful. They describe several methods that can be used to systematically synthesize qualitative and quantitative evidence.

Thank you for your responses. They have helped me a great deal. I'm a beginner Masters student and currently working on the topic of discussion. I'm happy to learn🙏

A systematic review will include either experimental studies like randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) or qualitative studies, but not both at the same time. For a review to be termed integrative, it must include both experimental and theoretical studies. Data from both types of studies are used to draw new conclusions. In doing integrative literature review, you are making/extracting knowledge out of the literature that you are reading not just reading or citing the literature, while systematic literature review is an organized technique to write a review article based on the information already given in the previous literature. I think integrative literature review, you frame the knowledge out from what you are reading. It is actually a research methodology that is adopted and based on the knowledge which is an innovative way of framing the information.

Quick question (may be a silly question) which level of evidence would an integrative review be considered? Level I or II or higher? Thank you kindly