REA Toolkit
Planning an REA
Form an REA team: forming the team
The first stage of an REA involves clarifying who is undertaking the work, for whom and to what purpose. There are four groups of people who are involved in the REA process:
- Researchers with expertise in conducting REAs, including an information specialist/librarian (the REA team)
- Users
- Commissioners (who may be a sub group of users)
- People with knowledge of the topic area in question (may or may not be part of the REA team)
The Team carrying out the REA will need to contain, or have access to, individuals with skills and knowledge in:
- Searching for research
- Designing a coding tool
- Access to topic area knowledge
- A variety of research methods
- Understanding / interpreting research
- Project management
- Information retrieval
- Information management
- Assessing the quality of research studies
- Research analysis / synthesis
- Writing-up / communicating findings to users
Training
There are a number of courses that provide systematic reviewing and critical appraisal training that would be transferable to working REAs.
Form an REA team: involving users
