Benefits of a systematic review
For HDR candidates, conducting a systematic review provides several benefits:
- It fulfils the request made by your supervisor to conduct the systematic review.
- It contributes to your thesis.
- The paper can be published.
- It contributes to your research knowledge of the topic.
More generally, a systematic review has additional advantages:
- It is considered the highest level in the hierarchy of literature evidence.
- It provides a definitive answer to a question, commonly about therapy, prevention, and causes of disease or harm.
- The methods used to find and select studies reduce bias and are more likely to produce reliable and accurate conclusions.
- It summarises findings from multiple studies, reducing bias when drawing conclusions and making the findings more reliable.
- Findings might be applied to everyday practice or to inform policy.
- It identifies knowledge gaps that call for more research.
Image: “File:Evidence-based Medicine (EBM).png” by Tingjoh is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0