Evidence Synthesis Methods Interest Group

Hi, all

 

Has anyone utilized the help of a graduate assistant in conducting a scoping review or systematic review? If so, what roles or tasks have they successfully employed?

 

I ask because I had tried being a guide on the side for a GA on a scoping review (which was more work than it was worth) and now I'm jumping midstream into a systematic review that has been floundering for a year where the GA did a phenomenal amount of work that wasn't useful. Now am being asked to utilize this same GA in my search strategy work and am having difficulty identify something that would be a productive use of his and my time.

 

Any comments/thoughts welcome!

 

Best,

Anita

 

Anita Kuiken, MSLIS, AHIP (queue-ken)
(Pronouns: she/her/hers)
Librarian for Falk College of Sport & Human Dynamics
Research Impact Team
Syracuse University Libraries
Tel: 315-443-9766

akuiken@syr.edu
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Could the GA help with deduplication of search results and finding full text articles when you're at that stage?

Yes, that's one area I thought they'd be most useful, Megan. Thanks for reminder on next phase. I'm just hard-pressed to roll them in during the search strategy development phase. So far, I've been simply sharing my process, so he knows how I'm thinking about this and how it's different from the work that he tried to do himself and asking him to do small things, like, talk to all members of the team to establish a central and accessible folder where all docs live (in a basic team information management approach). I'm stepping into this project after it's been floundering, so I'm helping team building/inclusivity along.

Best,

Anita

 

I've been lucky to work with some really fantastic GA. One has become the meta-analyst on several projects, and several have served as the defacto PI in keeping projects on task and on focus. Often they ask the critical questions during conceptualizing stages, whereas the faculty researchers can tend to wander down rabbit holes. Some specific tasks they often do well are helping to draft and register the protocols, taking ownership of verifying methods and reporting against the guidelines, including the checklists, and doing data management. And as Amy mentions, doing deduplication and the FT retrieval are natural steps. I've also seen the GAs take ownership of the screening process, including training and validation.