Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Harari, Michael B.
• Parola, Heather R.
• Hartwell, Christopher J.
• Riegelman, Amy

Titel

Literature searches in systematic reviews and meta-analyses: A review, evaluation, and recommendations

Ist Teil von

• Journal of vocational behavior, 2020-04, Vol.118, p.103377, Article 103377

Ort / Verlag

Philadelphia: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Quelle

Access via ScienceDirect (Elsevier)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The search strategy used in systematic reviews is an important consideration, as the comprehensiveness and representativeness of studies identified influences the quality of conclusions derived from the review. Despite the importance of this step, little in the way of best practice recommendations exist. In an effort to inform future reviews, we report the results of two studies. In Study 1, we outline a series of recommendations for designing comprehensive systematic literature searches. We review the search strategies used in 152 recent systematic reviews published in top applied psychology (including organizational psychology, counseling psychology, and management) journals and evaluate them against these criteria. In Study 2, we build on the findings of our review, carrying out an original meta-analysis, which we use as an opportunity to empirically demonstrate effects of database selection and inclusion of a complementary search protocol on search outcomes. Our results suggest that database selection could have a large effect on conclusions from reviews. Implications and recommendations for carrying out comprehensive literature reviews are described. •We review criteria for designing and implementing systematic reviews.•We evaluate existing literature searches against these recommendations.•Areas for improvement are identified.•We simulate the effect of database selection on findings from a meta-analysis.•Database selection had a large effect on conclusions from the meta-analysis.