Writing and appraising narrative reviews

Abstract

Reviews provide a condensed representation of existing literature on a particular topic. Both systematic reviews and narrative reviews have their individual merits and limitations in terms of goals, applicability, process and scope. This work aims to provide an overview of the relevance of narrative reviews in today's era of sophisticated research methodologies and to describe in detail the process involved in writing a narrative review. Narrative reviews provide a concise review of literature with the liberty to raise questions and stimulate further research. The process of writing a good narrative review involves framing a research question, deciding the most suitable methodology, going through literature, representation of evidence and preparing a draft. Some key considerations and potential pitfalls while writing narrative reviews have also been discussed.

Keywords

• evidence base
• narrative review
• research methodology
• research question
• review of literature