Catherine,



I was just writing to you when Gill sent in her comments and I think my thoughts are along the same lines:



If you were to use the steps outlined in Pawon's 2006 text to guide the whole review process, I think you'd see that you can do everything you described in your last email and pitch it as a realist review. (i.e., no need to call the first part 'scoping' or 'RRR') 



Pawson recommends that we start with initial review questions, and then search the literature to track primary studies as well as program theories. So the scoping/RRR aspect can be subsumed under that stage. And so you can do a wider search, with a lens to capturing relevant insights to build your middle-range theory, and to gain a sense of the size of the literature, the nature of the interventions within your research scope, the quality of the papers, whether or not you will need to contact authors etc.



Having gone through that initial phase, you can then, in iterative fashion, start from the beginning again, having gained much insight that will help you shape the design of your protocols to capture and synthesize the data. You will likely already have encountered articles that you know you want to keep for synthesis. But you will also have a handle on the literature in general, and keep note of where you came across interesting theoretical insights that you will want to visit and revisit as you immerse yourself deeper into the subject. If you follow those steps (In Pawson 2006), and keep track and report every iterative decision you made along the process of running the review, it will be very strong. Does this satisfy your questions? Or does it open up new questions that you may like to share?



Justin 





Justin Jagosh, Ph.D

Senior Research Fellow

Director, Centre for Advancement in Realist Evaluation and Synthesis (CARES)

University of Liverpool, UK

www.liv.ac.uk/cares





-----Original Message-----

From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Catherine Waldron

Sent: May 29, 2015 1:25 AM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Rapid Realist Review or Scoping exercise



As part of my PhD looking at oral heath interventions for children and adolescents with disabilities, I am planning a Realist Synthesis.  This is a very wide topic and I would value your thoughts on how to determine the focus of the synthesis. I was considering doing a Rapid Realist Review of the wider topic to find out what is known about the topic and how much information is out there relative to the different types of interventions and different disabilities and based on the findings determine a much more focused topic for the realist synthesis.

My question is: Is a RRR a suitable way to determine the focus or would a scoping exercise pretty much do the same thing? My feeling is the RRR would allow me to find the studies of more relevance and serve as a useful “practice run” in developing the skills required for a realist synthesis.

Is a RRR a scoping exercise by another name?

I would very much welcome any advice or comments.

Many thanks

Catherine

Catherine Waldron RDH, MSc, MA(Health Promotion) PhD Student, Special Care Dentistry, Dublin Dental University Hospital, Trinity College, Dublin.