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A systematic review is an attempt to collate all empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria in order to answer a specific research question. As its name suggests, a systematic review uses explicit, systematic methods that are selected with a view to minimizing bias, thus providing more reliable findings from which to draw conclusions and make decisions.

The key characteristics of a systematic review are:

• a clearly stated set of objectives with pre-defined eligibility criteria for studies;
• an explicit, reproducible methodology;
• a systematic search that attempts to identify all studies that would meet the eligibility criteria;
• an assessment of the validity of the findings of the included studies, for example through the assessment of risk of bias; and
• a systematic presentation, and synthesis, of the characteristics and findings of the included studies.

Many systematic reviews contain a meta-analysis, which is the use of statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analyses can (a) provide more precise estimates of the effects of health care than those derived from the individual studies included within a review, and (b) facilitate investigations of the consistency of evidence across studies, as well as the nature of differences across studies.

-- Adapted from Higgins JPT, Green S (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions Version 5.1.0 [updated March 2011]. The Cochrane Collaboration, 2011. Available from www.handbook.cochrane.org.

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The following guides provide help on conducting a systematic review: