How to Do a Systematic Review: A Best Practice Guide for Conducting and Reporting Narrative Reviews, Meta-Analyses, and Meta-Syntheses

TLDR

Systematic reviews employ a methodical, replicable approach that includes comprehensive searches, systematic integration of results, critical appraisal of evidence, and synthesis to link theory and evidence. This guide outlines how to plan, conduct, organize, and present systematic reviews—both quantitative and qualitative—by detailing core standards, principles, common problems, and advocating their use to clarify replication and inconsistencies in research. The authors describe a step‑by‑step framework for systematic reviews, covering search strategy, data extraction, quality assessment, synthesis, and reporting, and highlight typical methodological challenges. The authors contend that systematic reviews are essential for determining whether findings replicate, explaining inconsistencies, and addressing the replication crisis.

Abstract

Systematic reviews are characterized by a methodical and replicable methodology and presentation. They involve a comprehensive search to locate all relevant published and unpublished work on a subject; a systematic integration of search results; and a critique of the extent, nature, and quality of evidence in relation to a particular research question. The best reviews synthesize studies to draw broad theoretical conclusions about what a literature means, linking theory to evidence and evidence to theory. This guide describes how to plan, conduct, organize, and present a systematic review of quantitative (meta-analysis) or qualitative (narrative review, meta-synthesis) information. We outline core standards and principles and describe commonly encountered problems. Although this guide targets psychological scientists, its high level of abstraction makes it potentially relevant to any subject area or discipline. We argue that systematic reviews are a key methodology for clarifying whether and how research findings replicate and for explaining possible inconsistencies, and we call for researchers to conduct systematic reviews to help elucidate whether there is a replication crisis.