Researchers

Mary Dixon-Woods, University of Leicester
Andrew Booth, University of Sheffield
David Jones, University of Leicester
Tina Miller, University of Leicester
Jonathan Smith, Birbeck College
Alex Sutton, University of Leicester
Bridget Young, University of Hull
Research Associate: Rachel Shaw
1 December 2002 - 30 November 2005

Context

Systematic review has emerged as a key methodology with a distinctive set of strengths, and has become a cornerstone of the evidencebased practice movement. However current methods fail to deal with the important types of evidence generated by qualitative research. These types of evidence may be particularly useful in ensuring implementability and sensitivity to users’ views.

Aims and Objectives

• to incorporate qualitative evidence into an existing systematic review on support for breast-feeding which is currently based solely on quantitative evidence
• to evaluate different strategies for searching for qualitative evidence
• to evaluate different strategies for appraising qualitative evidence
• to evaluate different strategies for synthesising qualitative evidence, and for synthesising qualitative and quantitative
evidence

Our project will provide a badly-needed empirical demonstration of the effects of different approaches to systematic review on the conclusions of a review in a key substantive area. It will make a crucial contribution to the development of methods for systematic review, generate guidelines for good practice and training in the conduct of systematic reviews, and help inform policy and practice for support of breast-feeding.

Research Design

We are:

• comparing four approaches to searching for qualitative evidence, ranging from a subjectbased heading approach to a "school of thought" approach
• evaluating three different approaches to appraising qualitative evidence: intuitive judgement and two "checklist" type approaches
• exploring and contrasting three approaches to synthesising qualitative evidence: narrative summary; meta-ethnography, and content analysis
• comparing two approaches to synthesising qualitative and quantitative evidence: narrative summary and Bayesian metaanalysis

Our findings will be of interest to all those who generate or use evidence to inform policy and practice. We plan to disseminate our findings through high-quality peer-reviewed publications, at conferences aimed at practitioners as well as researchers and through the internet.