Contribution and Challenges
ResearchPosted on rand.org Nov 23, 2010Published In: Clinical Research in Complementary Therapies, 2nd Edition / edited by George T. Lewith, Wayne B. Jonas, Harald Walach (Edinburgh, New York : Elsevier, 2010), Ch. 6, p. 119-134
Every year more than two million articles are published in over 20,000 biomedical journals. Even in specialty areas it is impossible to keep up to date with all relevant new information. In this situation systematic reviews hold a key position to summarize the state of the current knowledge. A review is systematic if it uses predefined and explicit methods for identifying, selecting and assessing the information (typically research studies) deemed relevant to answer the particular question posed. A systematic review is called a meta-analysis if it includes an integrative statistical analysis (pooling) of the included studies. Within complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), systematic reviews are of major relevance. This chapter aims to give an introduction on how to read and how to do a systematic review or a meta-analysis, and discusses advances and limitations of this method.
This publication is part of the RAND external publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
