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Systematic reviews are becoming more frequent in the scientific literature, which contributes to an increase in the transparency and quality of literature reviews. The present curricular unit is expected to promote the acquisition of knowledge and the development of competences that are essential for interpretating and performing systematic reviews, namely: identification of potentially eligible studies in different sources and efficient management of the searches; assessment of the quality of the studies; data extraction from the original reports; different strategies for data synthesis, including meta-analysis.

At the end of the course the participants should be able to perform a critical appraisal of systematic reviews, and to conduct research using these methodologies.

Systematic reviews are becoming more frequent in the scientific literature, which contributes to an increase in the transparency and quality of literature reviews. The present curricular unit is expected to promote the acquisition of knowledge and the development of competences that are essential for interpretating and performing systematic reviews, namely: identification of potentially eligible studies in different sources and efficient management of the searches; assessment of the quality of the studies; data extraction from the original reports; different strategies for data synthesis, including meta-analysis.

At the end of the course the participants should be able to perform a critical appraisal of systematic reviews, and to conduct research using these methodologies.

Scope, potential and limitations of the techniques for systematic review and meta-analysis

Anatomy of a systematic review

Formatting of research questions and development of protocols for systematic reviews

Search in electronic databases and other strategies for identification of relevant literature

Bias in systematic review: typology and detection

Management of searches conducted using different sources

Data extraction and synthesis (meta-analysis and other methods)

Evaluation of the quality of studies included in the systematic review

Practical exercises

The curricular unit (3 ECTS) will include theoretical and theoretical-practical sessions, and autonomous work, supervised by the teacher.

It is estimated that the Curricular Unit requires a total of 81 hours of work from the student, from which 24 hours are contact hours, distributed as follows:

- Theoretical classes (T): 12 h

- Theoretical-practical classes (TP): 12 h

The evaluation will include a group work and a final exam; each one will receive a classification between 0 and 20. The final classification will be the weighted average of the classification obtained in each component.