Since the concept of a
systematic review was formalized in the 1970s, a basic division among types of reviews is the dichotomy of narrative reviews versus systematic reviews. The main types of narrative reviews are
evaluative,
exploratory, and
instrumental. A fourth type of review of literature (the
scientific literature) is the
systematic review but it is not called a
literature review, which absent further specification, conventionally refers to narrative reviews. A systematic review focuses on a specific research question to identify, appraise, select, and synthesize all high-quality research evidence and arguments relevant to that question. A
meta-analysis is typically a systematic review using statistical methods to effectively combine the data used on all selected studies to produce a more reliable result. Torraco (2016) describes an integrative literature review. The purpose of an integrative literature review is to generate new knowledge on a topic through the process of review, critique, and synthesis of the literature under investigation. George et al (2023) offer an extensive overview of review approaches. They also propose a model for selecting an approach by looking at the purpose, object, subject, community, and practices of the review. They describe six different types of review, each with their own unique purposes: •
Exploratory or
scoping reviews focus on breadth as opposed to depth •
Systematic or
integrative reviews integrate empirical studies on a topic •
Meta-narrative reviews are qualitative and use literature to compare research or practice communities •
Problematizing or
critical reviews propose new perspectives on a concept by association with other literature •
Meta-analyses and
meta-regressions integrate quantitative studies and identify moderators •
Mixed research syntheses combine other review approaches in the same paper ==Process and product==