Catalogue of Child Literacy Reviews
Systematic Review Methods

Overview

What are reviews of research and how can they help you?
Research findings are reported in individual articles. A review is a survey of findings from many articles. As you start searching for research evidence, reviews save you time by providing a list of references and an overview of findings that address an issue. Conclusions are based on accumulated evidence, not by just on the findings of one individual study. Conclusions also reflect the expertise and opinions of the review's author(s).

What are CCKM Catalogues of Research Reviews?
Reviews save time by presenting the results of many studies in one document. Catalogues save time by presenting many reviews in one document. CCKM creates Catalogues of Reviews for practitioners, policy analysts, researchers, and others who need quick and easy access to research resources. CCKM Catalogues provide plain language summaries about individual reviews, overviews of findings across reviews, and a landscape of review characteristics and methods.

To find out more about CCKM Catalogues of Research Reviews click here. To request more information about CCKM Catalogue construction including time and costs, contact Kathleen Bloom at kbloom@cckm.ca

Systematic Identification and Extraction of Relevant Reviews

Step 1 - Created CCKM Concept Map

WHAT

WHO

HOW

WHEN & WHERE

Literacy

( early literac*, early reading, emerg* literac*, literac*, literac* program*, literac* skill*, read*, read* development, read* level, read* program*, word know*, word concept )

Children

(child*, early child* educat*, elementary educat*, infan*, preschool child*, preschool, primary education, toddler, young child*)

Literature Review

(literature review*, meta-analy*, narrative review*, research review*, systematic review*)

Earliest to July, 2006

All industrialized nations

English and French

Step 2 - Identified All English Language Databases that Index Child Literacy Research Reviews

Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (OVID)

ERIC (OVID)

Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (CSA)

Medline (OVID)

Modern Language Association International Bibliography (OVID)

PsycINFO (OVID)

Step 3 - Established Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria

	INCLUSION	EXCLUSION
Population	Children Birth through elementary school (0-12) Normally developing or disabled Industrialized nations English
Intervention	No restrictions	No restrictions
Method	Peer-reviewed journal articles Reviews Narrative reviews Systematic reviews	Dissertations Books Introductions to journal articles Reviews of 2 or fewer studies Author cites own studies only Primary research studies
Outcome	Emergent literacy Literacy Skilled reading	Language development only Writing only Second language only Math Science

Step 4 - Identified Citations for Catalogue

Used CCKM Concept Map to Develop Search Strategies for Each Database
Activity	Resultant Number of Citations
Applied search strategies to each database	344
Removed duplicate citations	321
Applied Inclusion/Exclusion criteria to titles and abstracts	123
Applied Inclusion/Exclusion criteria to full-text	64

Step 5 - Created Spreadsheet of Characteristics and Findings for 64 Reviews

Next (Steps 6-8)