Criminology – Systematic Review

Eligibility criteria

In a systematic literature review, it's important to describe the selection of articles that make up the outcome.The selection criteria, including inclusion and exclusion criteria, are predetermined and based on the well-defined research question. It is crucial for these criteria to be clearly defined and documented to ensure transparency and reproducibility throughout the review process.

Inclusion criteria

Your inclusion criteria help you determine which articles to include and could be factors such as:

Exclusion criteria

Your exclusion criteria help you determine which articles to exclude and could be factors such as:

• Gender – men
• Age – children and adolescents
• Diagnosis – with diagnosis
• Substance abuse-– substance abuse
• Study design – incorrect study design

Screening procedure based on your critera

Begin by reading the titles of the articles. For those studies that appear to match your purpose, proceed to read the abstracts of the articles to determine whether you want to continue and read the full text of the article. You can, for example, ask the following questions:

• Study population: Is the same population being studied as the one you want to investigate with your research question?
• Study design: What method has been used, qualitative or quantitative? Your research question determines the study design of the articles.
• Up to date: Is the article's findings still relevant, or do you need to seek newer studies? If there isn't much published, you may need to use older studies.

From a large number of articles extracted from the comprehensive searches, you will retain a smaller subset that matches the purpose of your research question and the associated inclusion criteria.

Critical appraisal tools