There is no standardized international approach to structuring how the findings of systematic reviews of textual or non-research evidence should be reported. The audience for the review should be considered when structuring and writing up the findings. Meta-Aggregative Flowcharts represent a specific item of analysis that can be incorporated into the results section of a review. However, the results are more than the Meta-Aggregative Flowcharts, and whether it is structured based on the intervention of interest, or some other structure, the content of this section needs to present the results with clarity using the available tools supported by textual descriptions.
Given there is no clear international standard or agreement on the structure or key components of this section of a review report, and the level of variation evident in published systematic reviews, the parameters described in this section should be considered as guidance for consideration rather than a prescription.
The results section then focuses on providing a detailed description of the results of the review. For clarity and consistency of presentation, JBI recommends that the reviewers, in discussion with their review panel give consideration to whether the findings can be reported under the outcomes specified in the protocol.
Where a systematic review seeks to address multiple questions, the results may be structured in such a way that particular outcomes are presented under specific questions.
When all conclusions and supporting illustrative data have been identified, the reviewer needs to read all of the conclusions and identify similarities that can then be used to create categories of more than one finding.
Categorization is the first step in aggregating conclusions and moves from a focus on individual papers to consideration of all conclusions for all papers included in the review. Categorization is based on similarity in meaning as determined by the reviewers. Once categories have been established, they are read and re-read in light of the findings, their illustrations and in discussion between reviewers to establish synthesized findings. JBI SUMARI sorts the data into a meta-aggregative flowchart, when allocation of categories to synthesized findings (a set of statements that adequately represent the data) is completed. (see Figure 4.2) These statements can be used as a basis for evidence-based practice.
Figure 4.2: Example of a meta-aggregative flowchart (Stephen et al, 2014)