There are various ways of reporting the results of your searching. A popular method, recommended by the School of Education, is to use PRIMSA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). Information about PRISMA can be found here: http://www.prisma-statement.org/.
For a dissertation it is unlikely that you will be expected to follow all the PRISMA guidance, but you may wish to use the PRISMA flow diagram (or a simplified version of it) which can be found here. The PRISMA method provides a series of sequential steps from your search string to your final sample.
PRISMA also provide a step by step guide of the stages you should progress through when writing your review. There is some simplified guidance below.
Identification, record the number of articles found in your chosen databases
Screening, screen your articles for relevance (not all the hits you get will be relevant as databases can be quite crude tools). Screening is normally done in three phases.
First phase, remove any duplicate records and record how many you have removed (where the same record is included in more than one database).
Second phase, scan the title — if the article is clearly irrelevant discard and discard the total number removed at this stage
Third phase, scan the abstract and, if necessary, the full text. Discard anything that does not align with your inclusion criteria and make a list of the numbers excluded for different reasons i.e. publication date, methodology or demographic.
When you have done this, you almost have your final sample!
