title: Reviewing Literature in Bioethics Research: Increasing Rigour in Non-Systematic Reviews.
abstract: The recent interest in systematic review methods in bioethics has highlighted the need for greater transparency in all literature review processes undertaken in bioethics projects. In this article, I articulate features of a good bioethics literature review that does not aim to be systematic, but rather to capture and analyse the key ideas relevant to a research question. I call this a critical interpretive literature review. I begin by sketching and comparing three different types of literature review conducted in bioethics scholarship. Then, drawing on Dixon-Wood's concept of critical interpretive synthesis, I put forward six features of a good critical interpretive literature review in bioethics: answering a research question, capturing the key ideas relevant to the research question, analysing the literature as a whole, generating theory, not excluding papers based on rigid quality assessment criteria, and reporting the search strategy.
authors: Rosalind
authors: R
authors: McDougall
mesh_terms: D001675:Bioethics; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006801:Humans; D012107:Research Design; D058028:Research Report / Q000592:standards*; D012196:Review Literature as Topic
keywords: critical interpretive synthesis; literature review; methodology; systematic reviews