Developing the Review Question and Inclusion Criteria
Abstract
In Brief Overview This article is the second in a new series on the systematic review from the Joanna Briggs Institute, an international collaborative supporting evidence-based practice in nursing, medicine, and allied health fields. The purpose of the series is to show nurses how to conduct a systematic review—one step at a time. This article details the process of articulating a review question to guide the search for relevant studies and discusses how to define inclusion criteria for the study-selection phase of the review. This second article in a series from the Joanna Briggs Institute describes how to construct a well-built clinical question for a systematic review.
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Ensuring that the review question is well formed is of the utmost importance as question design has the most significant impact on the conduct of a systematic review as the subsequent inclusion criteria are drawn from the question and provide the operational framework for the review.
“Ensuring that the review question is well formed is of the utmost importance as question design has the most significant impact on the conduct of a systematic review as the subsequent inclusion criteria are drawn from the question and provide the operational framework for the review [23].”
From What kind of systematic review should I conduct? A proposed typology and guidance for systematic reviewers in the medical and health sciences (2018) · cites this paper as [23]
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- Authors
- Stern, C., Jordan, Z., & McArthur, A.
- Affiliations
- Cochrane Canada (CA)
- Venue
- AJN, American Journal of Nursing
- Published
- 2014-04
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 53-56
- ISSN
- 0002-936X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2014143330
- Cited by
- 629
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2026: 85 · 2025: 96 · 2024: 116 · 2023: 102 · 2022: 76 · 2021: 60 · 2020: 34 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 3
- FWCI
- 7.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- AJN American Journal of Nursing (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Adelaide Research & Scholarship (AR&S) (University of Adelaide) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Sciences Research and Education
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Health Information Management › Methodologies in Health Research and Practice
- Keywords
- systematic reviews, inclusion criteria, study selection, Joanna Briggs Institute, evidence-based practice
- MeSH terms
- United States, Evidence-Based Nursing
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