RAMESES publication standards: meta‐narrative reviews

Abstract

Background: Meta-narrative review is one of an emerging menu of new approaches to qualitative and mixedmethod systematic review. A meta-narrative review seeks to illuminate a heterogeneous topic area by highlighting the contrasting and complementary ways in which researchers have studied the same or a similar topic. No previous publication standards exist for the reporting of meta-narrative reviews. This publication standard was developed as part of the RAMESES (Realist And MEta-narrative Evidence Syntheses: Evolving Standards) project. The project's aim is to produce preliminary publication standards for meta-narrative reviews. Methods: We (a) collated and summarized existing literature on the principles of good practice in meta-narrative reviews; (b) considered the extent to which these principles had been followed by published reviews, thereby identifying how rigor may be lost and how existing methods could be improved; (c) used a three-round online Delphi method with an interdisciplinary panel of national and international experts in evidence synthesis, metanarrative reviews, policy and/or publishing to produce and iteratively refine a draft set of methodological steps and publication standards; (d) provided real-time support to ongoing meta-narrative reviews and the open-access RAMESES online discussion list so as to capture problems and questions as they arose; and (e) synthesized expert input, evidence review and real-time problem analysis into a definitive set of standards.

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“…This includes selecting search terms and appropriate databases, and deciding on criteria for the inclusion and exclusion of literature. This is important as, independent of the type of approach, the quality of the literature is dependent on, among other aspects, what literature is included and how it was selected (Tranfield, Denyer, and Smart 2003;Wong et al 2013;Liberati et al 2009;Torraco 2005). Thus, the authors must be transparent in a way that enables the reader to understand how the literature was identified, analyzed, synthesized, and reported.…”

“…There are a number of standards and guidelines that explicitly address how literature reviews should be reported and structured. For example, PRISMA, developed for systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses (see Liberati et al 2009); RAMSES, developed for systematic narrative reviews (see Wong et al 2013); and guidelines for integrative reviews (see Torraco 2005). However, some generalizations can be made.…”

“…The semi-systematic or narrative review approach is designed for topics that have been conceptualized differently and studied by different groups of researchers and within different disciplines that hinder a full systematic review process (Wong et al 2013). Besides the aim of overviewing a topic, a semi-systematic review often looks at how research within the selected area has developed over time.…”

“…In the following, I present the basic steps in this process and some of the important choices to consider in the process, as summarized in Figure 5. This process was developed in relation to the practical experience of designing and conducting the reviews included in this thesis, and is influenced by various standards and guidelines suggested for literature reviews (e.g., Liberati et al 2009;Wong et al 2013;Torraco 2005;Tranfield, Denyer, and Smart 2003).…”

“…Besides the aim of overviewing a topic, a semi-systematic review often looks at how research within the selected area has developed over time. In general, the review seeks to identify and understand all potentially relevant research traditions that have implications for the studied topic, and to synthesize them using meta-narratives instead of measuring effect size (Wong et al 2013). This provides an understanding of complex areas.…”