Systematic Research Review (Research Synthesis) Paper

Papers will critically review a key social work/social welfare research literature. The central problem ought to be couched in the field's most current and relevant historical-theoretical contexts.

The goal of such a review is to clarify what is known (and unknown) within an area of social work/social welfare research and practice. Therefore, this paper serves as a model for integratively reviewing social work and interdisciplinary research throughout one's career.

Criteria:

• Based on an original idea of potential clinical or policy importance;

• relevant to practice with potentially vulnerable, marginalized or oppressed people;

• critically reviews 5 to 10 related peer-reviewed studies (on a similar research question);

• results in a defensible decision, that is, you could envision using its conclusion to make an important agency-based decision;

• not more than 10 pages of text (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, APA format [not including title page, abstract, reference list and tables]);

• with an unstructured abstract of no more than 250 words;

• and a reference list of 10 to 20 peer-reviewed scholarly sources (all cited in the text).

Practical-Scholarly Objective

Throughout the course of our practice careers we often pose questions of clinical and policy importance. For example, when developing a new program to serve the needs of young women with anorexia one might wonder:

What is the prevalence of anorexia among girls and young women between the ages of 13 and 25? Or in exploring the potential effectiveness of feminist practice methods with women who have been battered one might wonder:

How relatively effective are feminist practice methods versus more traditional/standard methods such as cognitive-behavioral ones?

This course's research review project is designed to demonstrate that such questions are not posed in practical or scholarly vacuums.

It is likely that many other practitioner-researchers have posed and endeavored to answer the same or similar questions. A good research literature review allows one to systematically and validly tap into the typical wealth of national to worldwide practical-scholarly experience on clinical or policy-relevant questions.

The paper's central goal then is to validly answer such questions-to clearly identify what is known, and oftentimes more importantly, what is not known about a given issue/problem/question in a given field of practice.

Problem to be Solved (and Secondary Objective)

The basic scholarly challenge is this: If one systematically searches and finds say 5 to 10 studies relevant to a given clinical or policy question, typically their outcomes will not neatly converge on the same tidy finding. In fact, more often than not study findings will vary widely, that is, there will be quite a bit of disagreement between all of the study authors.

And without any systematic rational-empirical direction the research review process can quickly devolve into a merely political, ideology-driven self-affirming process. In other words, reviewers may cherry pick those studies that support their ideological/theoretical/methodological standpoints and take a ‘methodological tiger' approach to studies that do not support their existing worldviews, if they even "find" any such divergent studies. There is a better way-to perform a systematic research review.

A systematic review is essentially based on two pinnacles: (1) Social work and related relevant interdisciplinary research literature databases are exhaustively searched for all of the studies relevant to the research question (not merely those in support of a particular standpoint) and (2) These studies are then critically analyzed in a systematic and fair way in light of their key research methods. In the feminist-cognitive-behavioral problem noted above, for example, if the feminist reviewer were to critically focus on how small the cognitive-behavioral intervention study samples were, one would expect her/him to similarly analyze the feminist intervention samples.

In brief then, for this research methods course review paper, you are challenged to systematically and critically analyze and interpret the findings of 5 to 10 related studies in light of the research methods that produced them. Remember that this is a research methods course. A solid secondary objective of this project ought to be that you demonstrate your understanding of research methods.

Suggested Resources

• The lectures and readings associated with this course's second and third sections on statistical/practical analysis and research synthesis ought to be helpful.

As research findings are often couched in statistical language, one's fluency in that language is necessarily related to one's ability to validly interpret the findings of a single study and also to one's ability to systematically compare and synthesize a number of study outcomes.

• Published research reviews may serve as stylistic and methodological guides. Perhaps include the keyword ‘review' in a study search scheme broadly related to the field of practice most relevant to the research question you are posing (i.e., search Social Work Abstracts, Social Service Abstracts, PsychINFO, Sociological Abstracts, Medline and other relevant computerized research/study databases).

Locate and read the exemplary research reviews you identify through these searches. Such reviews have various synonymous or closely related names: systematic review, scoping review, rapid review, integrative review, quantitative literature review, meta-analysis, methodological research review and so on.