Literature Review and Evidence Synthesis

A narrative literature review is an integrated analysis of the existing literature used to summarize a body of literature, draw conclusions about a topic, and identify research gaps.  By understanding the current state of the literature, you can show how new research fits into the larger research landscape.  

A narrative literature review is NOT: 

• Just a summary of sources
• A review of everything written on a particular topic
• A research paper arguing for a specific viewpoint - a lit review should avoid bias and highlight areas of disagreements
• A systematic review

Purposes of a narrative literature review:

• Explain the background of research on a topic
• Demonstrate the importance of a topic
• Suggest new areas of research
• Identify major themes, concepts, and researchers in a topic
• Identify critical gaps, points of disagreement, or flawed approaches for a research topic

1. Choose a topic & create a research question

• Use a narrow research question for more focused search results
• Use a question framework such as PICO to develop your research question
• Breakdown your research question into searchable concepts and keywords
• Research skills tutorials: How to choose a topic
• Ask a librarian for assistance

2. Select the sources for searching & develop a search strategy

• Identify databases to search for articles relevant to your topic
• Ask a librarian for recommended databases
• Develop a comprehensive search strategy using keywords, controlled vocabularies and Boolean operators
• Research skills tutorials: How to develop a search strategy

3. Conduct the search

• Use a consistent search strategy between databases
• Document the strategies employed to keep track of which are more successful
• Use a citation manager to organize your search results
• Ask a librarian for help or refer to the Research skills tutorials

4. Review the references

• Review the search results for relevant articles that answer your research question
• Review the bibliography of all relevant articles for additional sources
• Consider developing subfolders in the citation manager to organize sources by topic
• Use interlibrary loan for any articles without full text access

5. Summarize findings

• Synthesize the findings from the articles into a final paper
• The final paper should cover the themes identified in the research, explain any conflicts or disagreements, identify research gaps and potential future research areas, explain how this narrative review fits within the existing research and answer the research question. 

For additional information: 

• Hempel. (2020). Conducting your literature review. American Psychological Association.

• Buchholz, & Dickins, K. A. (2023). Literature review and synthesis : a guide for nurses and other healthcare professionals. Springer Publishing Company, LLC.
• Coughlan, Michael, and Patricia Cronin. Doing a Literature Review in Nursing, Health and Social Care. 2nd edition., SAGE, 2017.
• Nundy, S., Kakar, A., Bhutta, Z.A. (2022). How to Do a Review of the Literature?. In: How to Practice Academic Medicine and Publish from Developing Countries?. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5248-6_18