Research Guides: Literature Reviews (in the Health Sciences): Structure your review

Why structure a review?

A literature review section in a paper has to do a lot of work. It has to take the reader on a journey. They start not knowing anything about your topic. They end understanding the topic, the importance and relevance of this topic to the world overall and to them personally, and ready to read your brilliant research paper. It can be useful to think about how to structure your review so your reader can have a logical journey. The frames below are commonly used in scientific literature reviews and one may work for you. There are also other frameworks for structuring reviews; if these do not feel authentic to you, examine published research papers or consult guidebooks on creating reviews to see more example frameworks.

Three review structures and sample published reviews

Argumentative Frame. In this frame, you develop an argument and then suggest a solution-- your project.

Diabetes Educators’ Insights Regarding Connecting Mobile Phone– and Wearable Tracker–Collected Self-Monitoring Information to a Nationally-Used Electronic Health Record System for Diabetes Education: Descriptive Qualitative Study
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2018 Jul; 6(7): e10206.
The literature review argues that goal-setting and self-monitoring of behavioral interventions can improve health for diabetics, but diabetes educators do not have tools to track and encourage these behaviors. The authors developed an app to help diabetes educators track data about patients in an EHR.
A Mobile App for Identifying Individuals With Undiagnosed Diabetes and Prediabetes and for Promoting Behavior Change: 2-Year Prospective Study
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2018 May; 6(5): e10662.
This literature review argues that adopting mass screening techniques to identify pre-diabetics would be beneficial to world health, and that mobile phones offer significant possibilities for mass deployment of screening. The authors developed the first consumer app to screen for diabetes and tested its ability to accurately screen for pre-diabetes.

Descriptive frame. In this frame, you describe the problem and sub-topics that are related to the main problem, and how they have been investigated previously. You may highlight areas that have not been well-described/well-researched. Your research continues the investigations, and helps to fill in gaps.

Using Mobile Health to Enhance Outcomes of Noncommunicable Diseases Care in Rural Settings and Refugee Camps: Randomized Controlled Trial
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2018 Jul; 6(7): e137.
This literature review describes the prevalence of a diabetes; why/how refugees have limited access to care; that mobile phones are useful for providing health care to refugee populations; that some specific refugee groups have higher incidence of diabetes. Their project tested whether deploying mobile phone-based interventions would work to prevent diabetes with this specific refugee population.
A Novel mHealth Approach for a Patient-Centered Medication and Health Management System in Taiwan: Pilot Study
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2018 Jul; 6(7): e154.
This literature review describes the problem of medication nonadherence and its costs; why nonadherence happens; notes that mobile apps can help improve drug adherence; but the existing apps are focused on English language consumers. Their project involved developing and testing a Chinese-language app to improve drug adherence in several chronic diseases.

Historical Frame. In this frame you provide a history of a concept or idea, then show how your project fits into the gradually more sophisticated investigations of this problem.

3MD for Chronic Conditions, a Model for Motivational mHealth Design: Embedded Case Study
JMIR Serious Games. 2018 Jul-Sep; 6(3): e11631.
This review describes the history of chronic conditions and mortality; the history of consumer health informatics or tracking; the history of mobile apps for health; the history of gamification of health. For their study, they interviewed patients with chronic conditions to help design a new app including gamification to improve these patients' quality of life.
Expectancy, usage and acceptance by general practitioners and patients: exploratory results from a study in the German outpatient sector.
Digit Health. 2017 Jan-Dec; 3: 2055207617695135.
This literature review provides a history of uptake of mobile phones and use for health monitoring; history of the relationship between patients and physicians; history of how user acceptance of technology has been measured. Their study involved interviewing patients and physicians to determine how they use mobile health apps, how apps have changed the patient-provider relationship, and measures their acceptance of new technology.

Use the evidence table and chosen structure

Once you've filled out your evidence table and selected a frame, you can start writing. As you write, refer back to your evidence table. For example, if I chose the historical frame, I might start by looking at the oldest paper on my table and working my way forward in time. Or, if I were using the argumentative frame, I could use my table to identify the various methodologies that have been used to investigate my topic, to create an argument that this has not been studied enough using a specific method. If I was using the descriptive frame, I could use my evidence table to determine the most commonly-used mobile apps and the factors that people examine when considering using a mobile app, to lay a descriptive framework to introduce why my app will be used more frequently.

While writing, you may identify further gaps in knowledge or questions. It is always acceptable to search databases again to look for more specific information after you have started writing.