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Literature searching

Establish your inclusion and exclusion criteria

What are inclusion and exclusion criteria?

These are the boundaries that decide exactly what information you want to find in your literature search and allow you to decide which studies to include or exclude in your results.

How to establish your inclusion and exclusion criteria

To establish your criteria you will need to define each concept of your research question very clearly to clarify exactly what you wish to focus on and consider if there are any variations you also wish to explore. 

Example: To what extent does social background effect the drop out rates of University students?

From our question we would need to clarify its main concepts and, for each of these, decide what aspects we are most interested in. 

For this question the main concepts are:

Social background: Are we interested in socio-economic, ethnic or cultural aspects? Or all three?
Drop out rates: Do we want to cover drop out rates after the first year of study or any year?
University students: Do we want to focus on all types of university students or just one type such as undergraduates?

 

  • The aspects of your question you decide to focus on will be your Inclusion criteria.
  • The aspects you don't wish to include will be your Exclusion criteria.

Other things to consider

  • location and context – what communities will you focus on? Will your study be restricted to a specific geographical area? 
  • publication date – how far back do you wish to search for information? 
  • study design – will your search focus on quantitative or qualitative studies, a mixture of both or a specific type of study?
  • scope of studies – will you use studies which only address part of your question?; will you use studies that focus on other interventions as well as your own?