If you have been completing all of the exercises in this section you should have:

1. a complete list of articles that have met your selection and quality criteria
2. a complete bibliography database
3. pdf or hard copies of all of the papers 

The next step is to extract information from each of these papers.  You will need either to produce an extraction form for every study included in the review or store additional data in your bibliography database.  The data extraction forms generally address a series of interrelated questions but the specific data collected may vary from study to study. The following basic data extraction for was adapted from Wallace and Wray (2006), Solesbury (2001) and the EPPI Centre:

Basic data extraction form	Comments
Reviewer
Date
Details of publication: Author Title Source Year
Your purpose: What are you seeking to understand or decide by reading this paper?
Type of study: Philosophical/discursive/conceptual, literature review, survey, case study, evaluation, experiment/quasi experiment etc
Author’s purpose: What are the broad aims of the study?  What are the study research questions and/or hypotheses? What are the authors trying to achieve in writing this paper?
Theory: Is any theory referred to in the research? How is the study informed by, or linked to, an existing body of empirical and/or theoretical research?
Study Context: Study context (country, sector and organisational setting etc.) Study participants (age, sex, ethnicity, occupation, role etc)
Methods: What methods of data collection are employed? What is the sample Is there a pilot? What is the sample selection procedure?
Findings: What are the key findings? What are the key ideas, models, concepts, arguments and assumptions How relevant are the findings to what we are seeking to understand or decide?
Reliability and validity How reliable/convincing is it - how well-founded theoretically/empirically is this (regardless of method)?
Generalisability How representative is this of the population/context that concerns us?
Conclusion In conclusion, what use can I make of this?

 To download and use this document – click  here

Many systematic reviews employ two or more independent reviewers to extract data from studies.  When the interpretations and findings of reviewers are compared it is possible to minimise errors, resolve any differences and produce a more robust data set.  The aim of using data extraction forms is to provide an audit trail from the claims made in the review to the underlying evidence.

 

References

Solesbury, W. (2001) 'Evidence Based Policy: whence it came and where it's going'. ESRC UK Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice, UK.

Wallace, M. and Wray, A. (2006) 'Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates', London: SAGE Publications.

The text on this page was created by Professor David Denyer, Professor of Organizational Change, Cranfield School of Management.