Systematic review guide

Before you progress further into your review and start writing your protocol you must be sure of your eligibility (also called inclusion and exclusion) criteria.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion and exclusion criteria relate the standards you will use to decide if a study is relevant to your review and would be eligible for inclusion in the analysis. Having your inclusion and exclusion criteria well developed at this stage is essential as they will form part of the decision-making involved in creating search strategies and deciding on your screening and synthesis methods, all of which must be detailed in your review protocol.

Research protocol

A protocol should be prepared before a full review is started and then used as your roadmap in carrying out the review. It describes the rationale, hypothesis, and planned methods of the systematic review. Planning and specifying all your methods in advance reduces the risk of introducing bias into the review as it is conducted.
Protocols should be registered on PROSPERO or another appropriate registry and updated as necessary.

The following sub-sections in this chapter will further detail how to develop inclusion/exclusion criteria and provide resources for writing and registering a protocol.