5.2.10.3 Interpreting the results from your systematic review
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. Textual evidence synthesis 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 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 (which may comprise content or methodology experts) give consideration to whether the findings can be reported under the outcomes/phenomenon of interest 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 conclusion. JBI SUMARI sorts the textual data into an evidence synthesis flowchart, when allocation of categories to synthesized findings (a set of statements that adequately represent the data) is completed (see SUMARI Figure above). These statements can be used as a basis for evidence-based practice.