ABSTRACT

The aims of the review should set out what the study intends to accomplish, and their achievement should mean that the study question is answered. The tasks of writing the question, aims and objectives for a review often sound as if they should be quite an easy part of the study. Avoid having a review question that is vaguely worded or too broad. As well as being clear and focused, your review question needs to be answerable, and within the scope of the resources that are available to you, including time. Your review question should usually only address one issue, because otherwise there is a risk that the study will become unwieldy and you will not achieve adequate rigour in any one area. One well-established framework that can be used both for refining questions and developing strategies for searching the literature is known as PICO.