Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Research can be understood as systematic investigation to develop theories, establish evidence and solve problems. We can either undertake new research or we can learn from what others have already studied. How, then, do we go about finding out what has already been studied, how it has been studied, and what this research has found out? A common method is to undertake a review of the research literature or to consult already completed literature reviews. For policy-makers, practitioners and people in general making personal decisions, engaging with mountains of individual research reports, even if they could find them, would be an impossible task. Instead, they rely on researchers to keep abreast of the growing
Gough et al. (Sun,) studied this question.