Back to: Search and Screen Your Studies

A data extraction form is a place for gathering important data from the articles you’ve selected for your systematic review.  For a detailed explanation of this form, see our extract data course.

For now, you can create this form by just collecting some of the main PICO (D) elements from the abstracts of the articles that fit your inclusion criteria. Key elements to collect include:

The population of patients in the study

The specific interventions/comparators

The study design

The sample size

You can use this initial extraction form to sort your abstracts by the PICO(D) criteria you captured and assess the scope of the studies you gathered.

For instance, if you notice that you have a reasonable number of randomized, controlled trials among your abstracts, you may no longer need to include non-randomized studies in your review.

Likewise, If you discover that your search results include many large studies, you may be able to adjust your inclusion criteria to capture only big scale research.