What is the procedure of choosing an appropriate topic for systematic review?
If you are in the field of medicine, you may adopt the PICO framework to enhance the quality of generating an appropriate topic for systematic review. Here are the description of PICO:
P: Patient, problem or population
I: Intervention (a cause, prognostic factor, treatment, etc)
C: Comparison, control or comparator
O: Outcomes
While reading the literature, you may base on the mentioned points to identify the research/knowledge gap. For example, current literature suggests that replacing conventional or high-glycemic index food with low-glycemic index food would be useful for glycemic control of diabetes patients (http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/26/8/2261.short) . Would that be true for gestational diabetes patients? In this case, the P of PICO framework has been changed to identify a new research topic.
Here are more information about PICO framework:
1) PubMed Health: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMHT0029906/
2) Information from the Ohio State University library: http://hslguides.osu.edu/nursing/pico_framework
3) Information from NYU library:
https://guides.nyu.edu/c.php?g=276561&p=1847897
4) Information from University of Canberra:
https://canberra.libguides.com/c.php?g=599346&p=4149722
Hope my answer is useful to you. Thanks.
Yes I fully agree with Martin in addition you may get yourself enrolled with cocrane group and undergo training http://training.cochrane.org/
Systematic reviews are often proposed by speciality specific subject matter experts who are aware of the current body of evidence or the lack of it (knowledge gap).
Your ideal starting point in your quest for a potential SR topic would be
- a subject matter expert or
- a systematic review which has summarized the knowledge gaps in your field of interest.
These starting points would help you refine a topic for review.
Hi Muddasar
I would suggest something related to your area of study. If you are passionate about metabolic syndrome try to identify a gap in the literature. Also, from previous experience narrow your review as much as possible while keeping it relevant to your field. Maybe prevalence studies of risk factors among bus drivers would be a great fit. Remember that the articles you review will become part of your pool of knowledge so choose wisely.
Looking forward to reading your work
Juan
An important question... Preferably one with clinical implications such as "Is drug A effective in the treatment of X disease?" or "Is exposure A is associated with outcome Y?"
YCK
Check out this: http://meta-evidence.co.uk/formulating-research-question/
I believe most of the answers pertain to the anatomy of a research question as opposed to the OP's question of how should one choose a topic for review. IMHO the answer lies within the basic rationale of doing any kind of research i.e. There should be a gap in evidence, or presence of conflicting evidence or new perspectives worth exploring that might have risen from advancement in methods and may add additional value to existing body of knowledge in that problem. Again relevancy must always be a consideration.
Based on my humble experience in systematic reviews I offer few criteria for deciding a research question fro SR:
1. My interest: if I am typically looking for an answer to a clinical question
2. Feasibility: of suffocoent evidence is available to review
3. Novel: no obsolete intervention to be included in protocol
4. Appropriate: addressing current gaps in literature
5. Relevant: SR should hold particular impact in your domain
6. No repitition: unless significant new data added to the topic
The topic of interest should be answerable. Or the topic shouldn't be time consuming to understand PICO (T) for clinical topics
It depends on the question you wish to answer in your specialty. If there are any current topics that do not have a clear answer yet. For example, in orthodontic specialty, it is still unclear (and controversial) if mini-screw assisted rapid palatal expansion has an effect on airway. So we decided to undertake a systematic review on this topic to answer this question.
You have to design the question in the PICO format - Patient, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome. Often times once you have a question in mind, doing an extensive search in the literature would help you in understanding that topic much better. This would help you in forming a better PICO question. I have attached a systematic review from our group below which might help.
Article Does Mini Screw Assisted Rapid Palatal Expansion (MARPE) hav...
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