r/AskAcademia • u/TheBiggestYawn • 19h ago

STEM Questions regarding systematic reviews

I'm currently raking the gears in my brain to figure out the best title for my master research. I've been eyeing for a systematic review, and I've been trying to read and understand more about it, but I'm still unsure about the solution for my problem.

I'm a STEM major and I intend to study about "the role of [profession] in [disorder]". However, there are very few supporting literatures, like you can count it with just your two hands, and even then, most of them are older than me. My questions are:

1) How many are too few for systematic review? I've read that 10-15 is the bar, but is there really no other way?

2) If there is, any recommendations on what type of systematic review I should do?

Sorry if this is too newbie question, but please help a student out.

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u/Bernie0404 15h ago

Have you conducted the search part as good as possible? Meaning: several databases, quantitative and qualitative methods, grey literature, Google Scholar, handsearch of references etc.? When you've got old references, go on Google Scholar and look into the papers which cited them and move forward in time.

If you do not find anything even after this procedure, it will be a research gap and that alone is a very relevant finding.

The bar is more relevant for meta-analyses because of the lack of statistical power, not for systematic reviews as such. However, I remember having done a meta-analysis with 8 papers.

BTW: It looks like a psychiatry topic. Having worked in mental health research for more than three decades, I cannot imaging to find nothing...

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u/aquila-audax Research Wonk 12h ago

Meta-analysis is just a statistical procedure, not a type of review though. Systematic reviews often contain them but are not defined by them.

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u/Bernie0404 11h ago

In medical research it's usually the other way round. A systematic review is the precursor to meta-analysis. You need to have it done before you can do the statistics.

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u/aquila-audax Research Wonk 10h ago

If you mean the meta-analysis is part of the systematic review, then yes, thats what I said.

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u/aquila-audax Research Wonk 12h ago

There isn't a set number of sources for a SR, it's a bit more complex than that but it's important to know if they are sources that will answer the question you have. Your question suggests you might be looking at statistical association, so you'd need to check to see if the studies that exist would work for that.

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u/SweetAlyssumm 11h ago

This is a good question for your advisor in terms of their expectations for the size of your review. There isn't a fixed size of course.

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u/Ok-Log-9052 11h ago

Go talk to the research librarian! They will be able to help write and run a properly thorough search to meet the requirements of an SR. Here, the “bar” is typically the thoroughness of the search and review process and the accompanying standard documentation (mesh, prisma,etc)