Thursday May 27th

Scoping reviews in social and behaviroal research: what, why, and how

Tiago Jesus, PhD

Scoping reviews are increasingly published in the health, social, and behavioral research literature. The amount of published material is increasingly colossal; hence, knowledge synthesis approaches, including scoping reviews, are beyond needed – to help us stay abreast of what has been found, done, and not done in the literature, for major topics of interest. Sometimes taken as a suboptimal or easier forms of systematic review, scoping reviews rather have rigorous standards of conduct and reporting, and even may be daunting. Overall, scoping review are different from other review approaches in the nature of their purpose – and hence in the conduct; yet, its scientific rigour and transparency might be equivalent to that of other systematic review approaches.

Learning objectives:

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Elaborate on the role of scoping reviews for social and behavioral research.
• Differentiate scoping reviews from other knowledge synthesis approaches, within the broader family of systematic reviews.
• Identify research questions appropriate and not appropriate for scoping reviews.
• Identify and being able to apply the current “best practice guidelines” for the design, conduct, and reporting of scoping reviews.