REA Toolkit
How to do an REA
Screening and selecting studies: how will it be rapid?
Searching electronically for studies can produce many non relevant studies (meaning the search is low on specificity). Screening out these non-relevant studies using abstracts can be very labour intensive. Once this process is complete, screening full reports take a considerable length of time.
Tips for keeping screening rapid
- Invest some time in piloting the screening criteria to ensure the validity and reliability of their application and to ensure that members of the REA team are clear about how to apply it. This will save time in the long run and reduce bias.
- Work closely with your librarian/information specialist. Obtaining full studies can be time consuming and the earlier they are involved in your REA and aware of the type of information you will need the better. It can take substantial resources for librarians to order papers, particularly if you are requesting large numbers, so agreeing the process for doing this in advance is essential.
- Include a time limit in your inclusion criteria for receiving full articles. Any that you receive after this time should not be included in the study.
- Consider using one person to screen abstracts (rather than two people screening each reference). If you adopt this approach it is important to ensure, to begin with, that the team will be including and excluding studies in the same way – and thus, screening should be carried out as a team activity until it has demonstrated the necessary degree of consistency across individuals to begin to screen independently.
How to do an REA index
