Best practices for conducting a narrative synthesis in a systematic literature review involve several key steps: defining a clear review question and objectives, developing a detailed protocol, conducting a comprehensive literature search with predefined criteria, and extracting relevant data using standardized forms. Organize the data by grouping studies based on common themes, then develop a preliminary synthesis to summarize findings, highlighting similarities and differences. Explore relationships in the data considering factors such as study design and population, assess the robustness of the synthesis using tools like GRADE, and address potential biases and limitations. Write a coherent narrative that integrates the findings and provides context and interpretation, ensuring clarity and logical structure. Finally, update and refine the synthesis as new evidence emerges and consider feedback to improve the process.

Hi Maasuur, thank you for your feedback. It might be that I was too broad or perhaps unclear in my question. I am aware of the purpose and steps of conducting the review, though it is valuable to have it outlined here.

I was looking for more specific details and tools others have used, and which is best practice or most recommended as Narrative synthesis is developing, it renders a lack of clarity on how to best inform the decisions I make to complete the steps you have so deftly outlined.

Thanks again

Kind Wishes

Mel

In general, the review is based on seven important steps, which are:

The question that must be investigated is reform to be answered clearly.

Determine the types of studies that will be included in the review to answer the research question.

Conduct a comprehensive search of relevant literature.

Filter your search and find something that calls for more investigators to search.

Critically evaluate the included studies.

Results of synthesis studies.

Publication of review results.

In other words, the empirical review includes a comprehensive literature review approach and also includes documents for which the topic does not already exist, while limiting the findings and topic less. For complete simplification in framing the questions review the literature. It also clarifies the generalizable picture that can be drawn from the empirical evidence, existing gaps, and promising future research areas.