Systematic review in psychology: Challenges and guidelines

Cláudia Camilo, Margarida Vaz Garrido

Abstract


In the last decades, the scientific community has been observing an exponential increase in the dissemination of science, with new journals launched annually and thousands of research papers published in various scientific domains including Psychology. However, if on the one hand it is through the accumulation of knowledge that science advances, on the other hand, this knowledge must be integrated to inform research, practice and policy makers.

Systematic literature reviews are a valuable method for making sense of large bodies of information on a particular topic, summarizing accumulated research, and assessing the robustness of their findings. Thus, and given the importance that systematic literature reviews have in the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge, it is important that they are conducted through structured methods that allow the identification, synthesis and evaluation of all relevant studies to answer a specific question.

This article presents different perspectives and guidelines on conducting a systematic literature review in the field of Psychology, discusses the challenges associated with this method, and seeks to facilitate each step of conducting the systematic review through the presentation of instruments and recommended procedures in the literature.


Keywords


Systematic literature review, Synthesis of research outcomes, Accumulation of knowledge.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14417/ap.1546

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