WHAT IS A LITERATURE REVIEW?

ELABORATE ON THE CONTEXT

OF QUANTITATIVE PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH

A literature review is one of the most important steps in the research process. It
is an account of what is already known about a particular phenomenon. The
literature review may be defined as the selection of available documents, both
published and unpublished on the topic of research interest, which contains
information, ideas, data, and evidence written from a particular standpoint to
fulfill certain views on the nature of the topic and how it is to be investigated
and the practical evaluation of these documents in relation to research being
proposed.

A literature review uses as its database reports of primary or original

scholarship and does not report new primary scholarship itself. The primary
reports used in the literature may be verbal, but in the vast majority of cases,
reports are written documents. The type of scholarship may be empirical,
theoretical, critical/analytic, or methodological in nature. Second, a literature
review seeks to describe, summarize, evaluate, clarify, and/or integrate the
content of primary reports. (H.M. Cooper,1988)

A literature review is an evaluation report of information found in the literature

related to a selected area of study. The review describes, summarizes, evaluates,
and clarifies this literature. It gives a theoretical base for research and helps to
determine the nature of research. (Queensland University,1999)
qualitative research is a formal, objective, and systematic process for generating
information about the world. Quantitative research is conducted to describe new
situations events or concepts. In a quantitative study, variables are presented
and defined by the investigator, the data is collected and quantified, and then
statistically analysed often with a view to establishing cause and effect
relationships among variables.

A literature review in quantitative research is a summary of previous knowledge

generated on the topic of study. It is believed by the researchers that research
cannot be conducted in a vacuum, bereft of the previous knowledge available.
literature review plays an important role in the development of research
projects, moreover, researchers develop greater insight into research problems
and gain information on what has been already investigated regarding a
particular topic under study, and identify the gap area to plan what new will be
studied in the present study.

Literature reviews are becoming more and more important and favored in the
evidence-based practice (EBP) of health and social care. Healthcare
professionals require updated information regarding research and development
to inform their practice. However, with such large amounts of materials being
published, it is impossible for anyone to cover every single piece of information
or evidence on any given topic. A literature review thus gives audiences the
opportunity to have summarized information on any topic
without reading all of the evidence published in that specific area. Although the
culture of the review article began more than two centuries ago, it wasn’t until
the 20th century that
an explicit method was devised to carry out review research. In addition, the
emergence of EBP instigated more rigorous and quality controlled approaches
of review articles so that the synthesized summary results could be utilized with
confidence.

Reasons for undertaking a literature review

In general, the main goal of conducting a literature review is to summarize the
existing knowledge and identify the potential gaps for future research. However,
a literature review can be undertaken for other reasons such as generating and
refining a research idea, creating awareness of the current state of knowledge in
a subject area, determining

how research fits into the wider context, etc. The bottom line is that before
beginning a review, researchers should be clear about the purpose of doing a
review as well as the expected outcome. The objective behind the initiation of
the review directs the type of review that needs to be chosen.In this article, we
describe the elements that we need to consider when we envisage conducting a
review. We then summarize the major types of reviews that are widely used by
the scientific community. We also discuss the objectives that these reviews
serve and summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each type.

Planning a review
Based on the type, a literature review can range from “just
narrative write-up” to “very organized”. A review is
usually structured according to the following steps
Planning a review
Based on the type, a literature review can range from “just narrative write-up”
to “very organized”. A review is usually structured according to the following
steps

1. Frame review question

2. Identify relevant work
3. Assess study quality
4. Summarize evidence
5. Interpret findings

Steps of conducting a systematic review.

Based on the type of the review, one or more of the above-mentioned step(s)
can be altered or removed. In general, Frame review question, Summarize
evidence and Interpret findings depends on the author’s choice or journal
requirements. However, according to the nature of the
reviews, study identification and quality assessment techniques vary. For
example, if a review aims to catalogue quantitative studies, PICOS framework
would be used for study selection, whereas if a review seeks to summarize
qualitative studies, then the appropriate tool would be
SPIDER

Elaboration of PICOS:
P: Population
I: Intervention
C: Comparison
O: Outcome
S: Study Design
Example: Virtual Reality in Stroke Rehabilitation: A
Systematic Review of its Effectiveness for Upper Limb
Motor Recovery
P: Patients with post-stroke hemiplegia
I: Immersive or non-immersive virtual reality
C: Conventional therapy or no therapy
O: Differences between groups
S: Experimental studies including randomized controlled
trials (RCTs).

Major type of literature review in cotexct quantitative public health research

Literature review

The term “literature review” is broad in scope and difficult to isolate from other
types of review articles. However, it is a general summary of published
literature on any topic without requiring a systematic search for literature, and a
rigorous inclusion/exclusion procedure. A literature review provides a good
source of summarized knowledge, but due to the lack of methodological rigour,
it can be biased by reflecting the author’s own point of view.

Critical review
A critical review is not just a summary of the literature; rather, it demonstrates
extensive research and quality evaluation. Authors of critical reviews do not
need to mention every single element from the source literature, but instead
extract the most important ideas from the sources
cited. Generally, the findings of critical reviews are typically hypotheses or
models.

Scoping review
A scoping review focuses on identifying the nature and extent of literature
available on any specific topic. It is similar to a systematic review with the
exception that it provides a quality assessment of primary literature. This
type of review unveils the scope of future research and may lead to conducting a
systematic review on the topic to gain more specific knowledge.
Systematic review

A systematic review follows an arduous protocol (which may or may not be

peer-reviewed), rendering it replicable by any other researcher15. Therefore,
systematic reviews are considered to be key elements of evidence-based
healthcare information and are thus regarded as the strongest form of medical
evidence

Meta-analysis

A Meta-analysis is not actually a standalone type of review article, but is rather

commonly used in conjunction with systematic review. A meta-analysis is
basically a statistical method of aggregating sufficiently similar articles to
compare the outcomes from different sources. Metaanalytic
compilations are good resources for decision makers, as they reduce the time
required to review scattered individual
studies.

Qualitative systematic review

Qualitative studies have gained considerable importance in current medical and

social science literature. A qualitative systematic review is an approach used to
integrate and compare the findings from qualitative literature on a specific

Realist review

A realist review arose from the need to deal with complex interventions and
heterogeneity of study design, study settings, context, outcome measures etc.
Systematic reviews are ideal for simple and single interventions, however, in
reality, healthcare professionals and policy
makers usually deal with multiple interventions in complex scenarios. Instead of
a straightforward answer to a question, a realist review will provide a rich,
detailed and practical understanding of complex social interventions.

Review of reviews
A review of reviews generally compiles evidence from multiple reviews into
one single document. In many disciplines, decision makers are overwhelmed
with numerous systematic reviews of varying quality and scope. This situation
has triggered the need for a systematic review of
reviews where the quality of every review is assessed and the results are
compared. Therefore, the decision-maker is
better able to understand the interventions identified in
different reviews
55
56
Closing Remarks
Depending on the needs and
approaches, different genres of
reviews have arisen. The typology of
reviews presented in
this article is a brief description of
major types of reviews.
With increasing focus on
synthesizing evidence through a
systematic review for generating
direction and recommen-
dations for best practice, healthcare
researchers need to have
a clear understanding of the steps
required for conducting
appropriate reviews. In this
manuscript we have provided a
brief step-by-step explanation of the
basic principles and
typology of literature reviews
Closing Remarks

Depending on the needs and approaches, different genres of

reviews have arisen With an increasing focus on synthesizing evidence through
a systematic review for generating direction and recommendations-dating for
best practice, healthcare researchers need to have a clear understanding of the
steps required for conducting
appropriate reviews.
Different referencing styles

References may be written using the American Psychological Association,

modern language association, Chicago manual of style format, Campbell,
Vancouver, and Harvard styles. However, in health science, the Vancouver style
of reference is commonly used.

1.Vancouver style of reference writing

It is based on an American national standard institute standard adapted by

national library of medicine for data base., such as medline. It was devoloped in
Vancouver in 1978 by editors of medical journal editors.

Indicating the relevant reference in the text: a number in super script format ,
for example (1) or [26], placed in text of the essay indicates the relevant
reference. The Vancouver system, also known as the Vancouver reference
style or the author–number system, is a citation style that uses numbers within
the text that refer to numbered entries in the reference list. It is popular in the 
physical sciences  and is one of two referencing systems normally used in
medicine, the other being the author date or Harvard ,system  Vancouver style is
used by MEDLINE and PUBMED.

2. American psychological association style of referencing

The APA referencing style is an "author-date" style, so the citation in the

text consists of the author(s) and the year of publication given wholly or partly
in round brackets. The guidelines were developed to aid reading comprehension
in the social and behavioral sciences, for clarity of communication, and for
"word choice that best reduces bias in language . APA style is widely used,
either entirely or with modifications, by hundreds of other  scientific journals
(including medical and other public health journals), in many textbooks, and in
academia (for papers written in classes). The current edition is its seventh
revision.

more rigorous and quality controlled approaches of review

articles so that the synthesized summary results could be
utilized with confiden