Literature Overviews: A Comprehensive Exploration
Scoping Reviews, a broad and systematic methodology, serve as a crucial tool in the research process, particularly in rapidly evolving fields. This approach aims to provide a comprehensive overview of a topic, clarify concepts, and identify research gaps, often paving the way for more focused studies.
Key Features of Scoping Reviews
Unlike systematic reviews that answer narrowly defined clinical questions, Scoping Reviews offer a broad overview of a general topic. They include various types of evidence and study designs, ensuring transparency and replicability in methodology. The focus is on mapping concepts, clarifying definitions, and identifying gaps, rather than assessing study quality or synthesizing findings quantitatively.
The Scoping Review Process
- Pre-Review Preparation: A protocol is developed outlining the rationale, objectives, eligibility criteria, search strategy, and tools. A review team is formed, and the protocol may be registered if applicable.
- Define Research Questions & Objectives: Clear aims and questions are identified, often using frameworks like Population-Concept-Context (PCC) to guide the scope.
- Develop a Protocol: The methods, including screening criteria, databases to search, and data charting plans, are documented for transparency.
- Conduct Systematic Literature Search: A comprehensive search of multiple databases and grey literature sources is performed systematically.
- Screen and Select Studies: Articles are screened using eligibility criteria, ideally by multiple reviewers to ensure reliability.
- Extract and Chart Data: Relevant information from included studies is collected, focusing on key characteristics, concepts, and evidence types.
- Analyze and Summarize Evidence: The evidence is mapped descriptively to identify patterns, gaps, and conceptual clarity without formal quality appraisal.
- Report and Present Findings: Results are presented transparently, offering an overview of the literature landscape and research gaps identified.
These steps emphasize systematic and transparent methods that enable replicability and comprehensive coverage of the topic. The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Manual is a widely accepted guideline for such reviews, and scoping review teams often use citation management software and follow defined protocols to manage complexity.
In summary, Scoping Reviews rigorously map broad evidence with the intent to clarify concepts, identify research gaps, and inform future research priorities through a multi-step, systematic process. They play a significant role in guiding researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in making informed decisions and identifying key areas for future research.
- To support researchers in the field of software and education-and-self-development, particularly in the rapidly evolving online-education sector, a Scoping Review could be conducted to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic, clarify concepts, and identify research gaps in learning strategies and various types of associated evidence.
- scoping reviews are beneficial in a variety of fields, including software, education-and-self-development, and online-education, as they enable learners to map the landscape of learning opportunities, clarify concepts related to learning, and identify gaps in the current body of knowledge.
