How can systematic reviews incorporate qualitative research? A critical perspective

By M. Dixon-Woods, S. Bonas, Andrew Booth, David R. Jones, Tina Miller, A. Sutton, Rachel L. Shaw, Jonathan A. Smith, B. Young. 2006

895 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Systematic review has developed as a specific methodology for searching for, appraising and synthesizing findings of primary studies, and has rapidly become a cornerstone of the evidence-based practice and policy movement. Qualitative research has traditionally been excluded from systematic reviews, and much effort is now being invested in resolving the daunting methodological and epistemological challenges associated with trying to move towards more inclusive forms of review. We describe our experiences, as a very diverse multidisciplinary group, in attempting to incorporate qualitative research in a systematic review of support for breastfeeding. We show how every stage of the review process, from asking the review question through to searching for and sampling the evidence, appraising the evidence and producing a synthesis, provoked profound questions about whether a review that includes qualitative research can remain consistent with the frame offered by current systematic review methodology. We conclude that more debate and dialogue between the different communities that wish to develop review methodology is needed, and that attempts to impose dominant views about the appropriate means of conducting reviews of qualitative research should be resisted so that innovation can be fostered.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5fb72ae7b1444370bada06c4eadd471fa7cc8c27

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In General Health Professions

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Collaboration and Internationalization of SMEs: Insights and Recommendations from a Systematic Review (2020, background): “Analysis and synthesis To avoid an undue emphasis on one study over others (Dixon-Woods et al. 2006; Mulrow and Cook 1998; Tranfield et al. 2003), a transparent process of synthesis is required to investigate and combine findings from the 105 studies.”
Synthesizing information systems knowledge: A typology of literature reviews (2015, background): “Importantly, critical reviews may provide explanations as to how the review process was conducted, but they rarely assess the quality of the studies selected, especially when confronted with qualitative research for which no hierarchy of study designs exists [38].”
Inclusion in Physical Education: Teacher Attitudes and Student Experiences. A Systematic Review (2019, background): “Some researchers have pointed out that there is an uneasy fit between the framework offered by traditional systematic review methodology and the kinds of epistemological assumptions and research practices associated with qualitative research (Dixon-Woods et al., 2006).”
Qualitative research methods: when to use them and how to judge them. (2016, methodology): “However, research using qualitative methods can be evaluated (Dixon-Woods et al., 2006; Young et al., 2014) and there are some generic guidelines for assessing qualitative research (Kitto et al., 2008).”
The Future of Empirical Methods in Software Engineering Research (2007, background): “General introductions to metaanalysis are provided in [90, 114], while the question of how systematic reviews can incorporate qualitative research is addressed in [36, 37, 127].”
Qualitative methods overview (2011, neutral): “development of systems for the inclusion of qualitative research in systematic reviews (Dixon-Woods et al. 2006; Fisher et al. 2006) (see Rutter 2011) has been particularly important in achieving greater acceptance of qualitative methods as offering a distinct and complementary alternative to quanti”
Adaptive Comanagement: a Systematic Review and Analysis (2012, background): “Although, historically, systematic reviews have tended to be quantitative in nature, qualitative systematic reviews have emerged as a similarly useful methodology (Dixon-Woods et al. 2006, Hughes et al. 2009, O’Connell and Downe 2009).”
Self-regulation and music learning: A systematic review (2016, background): “Dos Santos and Hentschke (2011) provide numerous instances of advanced musicians’ task strategies including the harmonic reduction of pieces to better understand a piece’s structure, writing in fingerings and intense repetition of motoric patterns.”
Conceptualising engagement with digital behaviour change interventions: a systematic review using principles from critical interpretive synthesis (2016, methodology): “CIS does not propose a formal method for critically appraising the quality and methodological rigour of included studies but recognises that the critical evaluation and integration of disparate forms of evidence is essentially a product of the Bauthorial voice^ [33].”
Improving response rates using a monetary incentive for patient completion of questionnaires: an observational study (2007, neutral): “Methods for reviewing qualitative research in a systematic way are still emerging, and there is much ongoing development and debate [11-14].”