According to the Royal Society, 'evidence synthesis' refers to the process of bringing together information from a range of sources and disciplines to inform debates and decisions on specific issues. They generally include a methodical and comprehensive literature synthesis focused on a well-formulated research question. Their aim is to identify and synthesize all of the scholarly research on a particular topic, including both published and unpublished studies. Evidence syntheses are conducted in an unbiased, reproducible way to provide evidence for practice and policy-making, as well as to identify gaps in the research. Evidence syntheses may also include a meta-analysis, a more quantitative process of synthesizing and visualizing data retrieved from various studies.
Evidence syntheses are much more time-intensive than traditional literature reviews and require a multi-person research team. See this PredicTER tool to get a sense of a systematic review timeline (one type of evidence synthesis). Before embarking on an evidence synthesis, it's important to clearly identify your reasons for conducting one. For a list of types of evidence synthesis projects, see the next tab.
*Information provided by Cornel University Library
Evaluating Websites: This video's focus is on evaluating health information found on the internet focusing on using a method that evaluates currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose, otherwise known as the CRAAP method -> https://lnkd.in/g4sDTiKm
Searching Google, Google Scholar, and the Internet: This video discusses tips for searching Google, google scholar and the internet. It includes advanced search operators and filters -> https://lnkd.in/g-2aBUUM
Grey Literature: This video discusses gray literature--what it is and what it's not, examples of producers and the types of gray literature, why you would want to be using this in your searches and in your research, how to document your searches, and we'll point you to some key helpful sites -> https://lnkd.in/g9Q2bdPH
Overview of Searching Techniques. In this video you'll learn about five common search techniques, basic searching, berry picking, citation searching, pearl growing, and concept building, and when it's valuable to use each of these techniques -> https://lnkd.in/gDzmyfue