Writing a Systematised Review in Social Sciences

When you have done this, you are finally ready to start your write up. A good systematised review will use a theoretical framework to synthesise articles into an original framework.

Synthesis: Analyses the results of studies “to investigate what they mean as a collective body of knowledge” (Gough et al., 2017, 182)

There are many different methods of synthesis you can use in your review. This guide, however, focuses on the most common kind — narrative (or thematic) synthesis.

Thematic synthesis is a technique that “emphasises the development of theory from a starting point of open questions and few secure initial concepts” and “enlightens decision making through the creation of new theory” (Gough et al., 2017)

The process develops through coding where similar themes are coded across studies and connections made across studies. Coding is often employed to analyse themes in primary data, but it is a recognised technique for analysing secondary data. The coding process is threefold:

Stage one:

Individual texts are read with key to identify key themes or concepts. This can be done manually or using software such as Nvivo. This process is usually iterative with themes changing and refining themselves until a stable number is reached.

Stage Two:

When you have developed core themes, the next step involves making connections between themes or, put another way, “the aim is to develop and articulate relationships between the themes and associate conceptually similar themes with one another” (Gough et al., 2017, 192).

Gough et al., 2017 provide the below example:

“In a review about healthy eating, one code might be: “eating friends makes me break my diet” and another “I want to eat what I see advertised”. These themes may be organised under an umbrella heading “influences affecting food choice” (193).

Stage Three:

The final stage in your coding process is the analytical stage. This takes your understanding and development to the next level offering new “conceptualisations and explanations” (Gough et al., 2017, 193). Here you move away from description to a higher level of analysis. This is the most innovative level of coding and it’s where the originality of your review lies.

A really good example of a systematised review that uses and explains the thematic process can be seen below: 

Purssell, E. and Gould, D. (2021) Undertaking qualitative reviews in nursing and education-A method of thematic analysis for students and clinicians. International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances, 3 100036. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnsa.2021.100036 [accessed 8th February 2024]

And a really detailed explanation of the thematic process can be found here: 

Thomas, J. and Harden, A. (2008) Methods for the thematic synthesis of qualitative research in systematic reviews. BMC medical research methodology, 8 1-10. Available from https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2288-8-45 [accessed 8th February]