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““The more extensive a person's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be their power of knowing what to do.” – Benjamin Disraeli
Lesson Prerequisites
Lesson Prerequisites
This lesson does not have any pre-requisites.
Lesson Materials
Lesson Materials
Intro to the Lesson
Intro to the Lesson
Evidence reviews inform our research design. Evidence reviews are broader than literature reviews in that they include policy & project reports, partner documents, and other "gray literature" outside of peer-reviewed journals.
1. Systematic reviews
1. Systematic reviews
Systematic reviews are structured, comprehensive reviews of the literature on a topic, often supplemented with meta-analysis.
2. Narrative reviews
2. Narrative reviews
Narrative reviews are more ad-hoc and seek to capture the 'big ideas' in a strand of literature. Narrative reviews are usually sufficient when the purpose of the evidence review is to inform an evaluation design.
3. Evidence review software
3. Evidence review software
Google Scholar and Zotero are useful tools for searching and managing references.
4. How to read studies
4. How to read studies
Assess a study's relevance, contribution, and methodology to determine whether & how to include it in your evidence review.
5. How to assess study quality
5. How to assess study quality
Consider using "GRADE" scoring and other external metrics of a study's quality.
Additional Resources
Additional Resources
Banner photo: Anscombe's quartet, showing how data with the same summary statistics can represent very different relationships between two variables. Accessed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet#/media/File:Anscombe's_quartet_3.svg.
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