PH 755: Urban Health and Society Library Research Assignment

Narrative reviews are vulnerable to the selection bias of the author; it is all to easy to review only articles that support a particular outcome or perspective. Systematic reviews attempt to control this threat of bias by using a documented and reproducible method for selecting articles that are relevant to a specific question or problem. Systematic reviews aim for thoroughness and are time-consuming and labor-intensive enterprises that are usual carried out by research teams. This assignment will not produce what you could call a systematic review, but it will introduce you to some systematic searching methods and citation management technologies that are essential for carrying out more rigorous literature research. The requirements of this assignment are informed by the guidelines for systematic reviews found in the Cochrane Handbook, the PRISMA statement, and other standard references for systematic review methodology.

These are the documents you will need to participate in class sessions and to complete the library research assignment.  Please make use of the detailed grading rubric.

This assignment exercises knowledge and skills required to produce the following outcomes:

1. Develop and analyze a research question that extends or refines existing published knowledge
2. Investigate the scope of databases of scholarly reports that are relevant to the topic of a research question
3. Construct and implement sensitive search strategies using Boolean logic and controlled vocabulary terms
4. Document and apply criteria for evaluating search results
5. Extract, record and manage search results using citation management software
6. Summarize and synthesize evidence from gathered sources
7. Accurately cite sources using AMA style.