Introduction

Lessons 7 to 9 took the Cedar Valley evidence team from search results to included studies, completed forms, appraisal judgements and a synthesis of quantitative results. This lesson turns to three kinds of review that a health sciences student will meet often: the scoping review, the rapid review and the qualitative evidence synthesis. It ends with the evidence and gap map, a picture of where evidence exists and where it is missing. Lesson 1 introduced these review types, and this lesson shows how each is carried out.

1.1 What a Scoping Review Is For

A scoping review maps the extent, range and nature of the evidence on a topic: what kinds of evidence exist, how the topic has been studied and where the gaps lie. A systematic review of effects asks a narrower question, usually whether an intervention works and by how much. Munn and colleagues (2018) described six purposes for which a scoping review suits: to identify the types of evidence available in a field, to clarify key concepts or definitions, to examine how research on a topic has been conducted, to identify key characteristics or factors related to a concept, to serve as a precursor to a systematic review, and to identify and analyze gaps in knowledge.

The Cedar Valley question fits several of these purposes, because the planning team wants to know which types of program have been evaluated, with which outcome measures and in which groups of older adults. It also wants to know whether the programs work, and Lesson 8 showed how the team gave a provisional answer for three intervention categories while labelling that work as going beyond a typical scoping review.

Both designs start from a protocol, search systematically and select sources with explicit criteria applied by more than one person, so the label of scoping review carries the same expectation of a documented and reproducible search.

1.2 The Arksey and O'Malley Framework and the Levac Refinements

Hilary Arksey and Lisa O'Malley (2005) published the first methodological framework for what they called scoping studies, which they saw as a way to examine the extent, range and nature of research activity, to decide whether a full systematic review would be worthwhile, to summarize and disseminate findings, and to identify gaps in the literature. Their framework has the five stages shown in Figure 1.1 and an optional sixth, a consultation exercise, in which people with practical knowledge of the topic suggest sources, comment on the findings and add their perspectives. They did not assess the quality of included studies, which they saw as consistent with mapping a field.

Danielle Levac, Heather Colquhoun and Kelly O'Brien (2010) drew on three scoping studies to recommend refinements at every stage (Figure 1.1). They asked teams to link the purpose of the review to its question, to balance breadth against feasibility, to have two reviewers select studies independently, and to develop the charting form together, with two people charting the first five to ten studies. They divided the fifth stage into analysis, reporting and consideration of implications for research, practice and policy, and argued that consultation should be an essential stage with a clear purpose.

The Cedar Valley team consulted twice. In week 2 it met the planning team, two community connectors, two members of the older adults' advisory group and a member of the Indigenous health team to settle the scope (Lesson 2). In week 10 it showed the same group its descriptive summary and a draft evidence and gap map. The connectors noted that the charting form had no field for whether a program offered transport, which the team then added and charted from the program descriptions.

1.3 The JBI Method

JBI (an evidence synthesis organization based at the University of Adelaide, formerly the Joanna Briggs Institute) built on these frameworks to produce detailed guidance for scoping reviews (Peters et al., 2015; Peters et al., 2020), with later guidance on protocols (Peters et al., 2022) and on extracting, analyzing and presenting results (Pollock et al., 2023). The team registers a protocol before searching and frames its question with PCC (Population, Concept and Context) and the types of evidence source to be included (Lesson 2). The search follows three steps: a limited search of at least two databases, an analysis of the words and index terms of relevant records, and a full search with all identified terms in every database, followed by searching the reference lists of included sources. At least two reviewers select sources, appraisal is not generally required, and the analysis is mainly descriptive. The table sets out the JBI steps with the Cedar Valley decision for each.

1.4 Charting the Data

Data charting is the JBI term for extracting information in a scoping review. It is usually more descriptive than extraction for a review of effects, because the questions concern what was done, with whom and how it was measured. It is also more iterative, because a team often learns only while charting which categories its sources need, so JBI guidance asks teams to pilot the form, revise it as charting proceeds and report the changes. Every field should answer a sub-question, and every sub-question should have at least one field. The completed forms become the charting table, with one row per source and one column per field. The table shows six rows of the Cedar Valley charting table, with columns shortened for display.

The table uses closed categories where the team will count, keeps the authors' terms where readers need detail, and records missing information as "not reported", which is itself a finding for the sub-question on implementation. The identifiers link each row to its full form, appraisal and reports.

1.5 Summarizing the Charted Data

JBI guidance describes the analysis in most scoping reviews as descriptive (Pollock et al., 2023). A descriptive numerical summary counts sources by the characteristics charted, and basic qualitative content analysis sorts charted text into categories, such as the referral pathways of connector programs. Content analysis of this kind summarizes what sources say without the interpretation that a qualitative evidence synthesis aims for (Section 3). The table cross-tabulates the 42 Cedar Valley studies by category and design.

The other counts answer the remaining sub-questions. The studies came from the United Kingdom (11), the United States (9), Canada (6, two from British Columbia), Australia (5), the Netherlands (4), other European countries (5) and Japan (2). Of the 36 studies with quantitative outcomes, 33 measured loneliness, most often with the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (16) or a De Jong Gierveld scale (10), and less often with the three-item short scale derived from the UCLA scale (5) or a single question (2); the other 3 measured social isolation only. Gender was reported in 39 studies, living alone in 27, income or education in 18, ethnicity in 11, rural residence in 7, disability in 4 and language in 3. Nine of the 12 connector studies described referral from primary care, 2 described self-referral or community referral, and 1 did not say. The counts show that connector programs have been evaluated only with non-randomized and uncontrolled designs, and that few studies describe participants' income, ethnicity, language or disability.

1.6 Reporting with PRISMA-ScR

PRISMA-ScR (the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) was published by Andrea Tricco and colleagues (2018) after a consensus process with an expert panel. It has 20 essential items and 2 optional items, the optional ones being critical appraisal of the included sources in the methods (item 12) and results (item 16). It also changes the vocabulary of PRISMA, speaking of sources of evidence because a scoping review may include documents that are not research studies, of the data charting process in place of data extraction, and of critical appraisal in place of risk of bias. Lesson 7 adapted the flow diagram, and Lesson 12 returns to the full report.

What Carries Forward

The Cedar Valley team now has a charting table and a descriptive summary that answer its sub-questions. It produced them in twelve weeks by streamlining parts of the method, and the next section examines the rapid review shortcuts that made this possible and what each one costs.

Introduction

A full systematic review commonly takes a year or more. Decision-makers who must choose a program, a policy or a clinical approach within weeks cannot wait that long, and they often commission a rapid review instead. Lesson 1 chose a rapid scoping review for the fictional Cedar Valley project, and Lessons 2, 7 and 8 mentioned shortcuts the team considered. This section examines what the main guidance recommends, the trade-off each shortcut makes, and how a team chooses and reports its shortcuts.

2.1 What Makes a Review Rapid

Hamel and colleagues (2021) analyzed published definitions and proposed that a rapid review is a form of knowledge synthesis that speeds up the process of a systematic review by streamlining or omitting some of its methods, so that evidence can be produced with fewer resources. Two features follow from this definition. A rapid review keeps the logic of a systematic review, with a protocol, an explicit search, stated eligibility criteria and a structured synthesis. And it departs from the standard methods at identified points, which the team chooses in advance and reports.

Rapid reviews vary widely, and a scoping review of rapid review methods found many different shortcuts, often poorly described (Tricco et al., 2015). A practical guide from the World Health Organization's Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research emphasizes working closely with knowledge users, the managers, clinicians, policy-makers and community members who will act on the findings (Tricco, Langlois and Straus, 2017). For Cedar Valley, they are the planning team and, through the advisory group, the older adults the program will serve.

2.2 The Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group Guidance

Cochrane established a Rapid Reviews Methods Group to develop methods for rapid reviews. The group published interim guidance in 2020, and the journal version appeared the following year (Garritty et al., 2021). The guidance makes 26 recommendations, drawn from methodological studies of the effect of shortcuts and from the experience of rapid review producers, and it is intended mainly for rapid reviews of the effects of interventions. The table summarizes its recommendations by stage, in paraphrase.

The group updated its guidance for rapid reviews of effectiveness in 2024, reducing the recommendations to 24 (Garritty et al., 2024). The update keeps the structure of the 2021 guidance. Among its changes, it suggests that a team may move to single screening after a dual-screened sample of about 20 percent of records only when the two reviewers agree closely, it recommends narrative synthesis reported with the SWiM guideline (Lesson 9), and it asks every rapid review to describe its restricted methods and discuss their possible effect on the findings. Teams should cite the version they followed.

2.3 Two Kinds of Shortcut

The recommendations contain two kinds of shortcut, and the distinction helps a team judge their risks. Some shortcuts narrow what the review can find: a narrower question, fewer databases, date and language limits, and less grey literature. Their risk is that relevant studies never enter the review, and the risk is larger when the missing studies differ systematically from those found, for example when negative results are more often published in reports or in other languages. Other shortcuts reduce independent checking: single screening, single extraction and single appraisal, each with some verification. Their risk is that the team makes errors in handling studies it has found, such as excluding an eligible study or copying a number incorrectly. Figure 2.1 sets out where each kind of shortcut falls.

2.4 The Trade-off Each Shortcut Makes

Methodological studies have tested several shortcuts by applying them to completed systematic reviews and asking whether the conclusions would have changed, or by comparing reviewers in controlled experiments. The accordion summarizes what is known, in general terms.

Decision-makers differ in how much uncertainty they will accept for speed. In an international survey, guideline developers and policy-makers reported that they would accept some loss of certainty in exchange for a faster answer, within limits (Wagner et al., 2017). A team should therefore ask its knowledge users which errors would matter most to them. A planning team choosing between program models might accept missing an older trial of a model it has already ruled out, but would be poorly served by missing a recent evaluation of the model it intends to launch.

2.5 Worked Example: The Cedar Valley Shortcuts

The Cedar Valley protocol (Lesson 2) stated its shortcuts in advance, and the team amended two of them as the work proceeded. The table compares the protocol with the 2021 guidance and with what the team did.

The screening amendment illustrates how a team can test a shortcut against its own numbers. The calculation below counts screening decisions, treating each reading of a record by one reviewer as one decision. In the first 374 records, which both reviewers screened as the protocol planned, 345 (92 percent) were excluded, and the calculation assumes that the same proportion would be excluded among the remaining records. The final count bore this out: 1,725 of the 1,870 records (92 percent) were excluded at title and abstract.

The comparison shows why the team amended its plan. When nine records in ten are excluded, checking every exclusion costs almost as much as screening every record twice, so the protocol's shortcut saved little. Larger savings would have required single screening without a check, which carries the risk documented by Gartlehner and colleagues (2020). With 1,870 records, the team judged that the extra 116 decisions were affordable, and on 20 February 2026, at the end of week 5, it amended its protocol to screen every remaining record in duplicate. A second amendment in week 7 had the results fields of the 24 comparative studies charted twice, for the reason Lesson 8 gives. At the full-text stage the arithmetic differs, because a larger share of reports is included. Of the 142 full-text reports, 40 (describing 38 studies) were included, so checking only the 102 exclusions would have saved 40 of 142 second readings, or about 28 percent.

2.6 Reporting a Rapid Review

A rapid review is reported with PRISMA 2020 for a review of effects or PRISMA-ScR for a rapid scoping review. The title or abstract should identify the review as rapid, the methods should state each shortcut where it occurs (for example, "one reviewer screened 80 percent of titles and abstracts after dual screening of a 20 percent sample"), and the flow diagram keeps the standard boxes (Lesson 7). The limitations should explain the likely effect of each shortcut, and the protocol and amendments should be available, so that a decision-maker can weigh speed against certainty.

What Carries Forward

The Cedar Valley review is now complete in its quantitative and descriptive parts. Nine of its sources, the 6 qualitative studies and the qualitative strands of the 3 mixed-methods studies, describe what older adults and providers experienced. The next section shows how a team synthesizes such evidence and judges how much confidence each finding deserves.

Introduction

Decision-makers need to know how people experience a program, why some take part and others do not, and what makes it feasible to deliver. A qualitative evidence synthesis brings together the findings of several qualitative studies, which analyze data such as interviews and focus groups, to give an account that no single study could give. This section introduces thematic synthesis, framework synthesis and meta-ethnography, and the GRADE-CERQual approach for judging confidence in the findings. HSCI 841 Lesson 2 builds on this section for graduate students, adding critical interpretive synthesis, qualitative meta-summary, the choice of method with the RETREAT criteria and a worked GRADE-CERQual assessment.

3.1 What Qualitative Evidence Synthesis Adds

Cochrane guidance describes several roles for qualitative evidence in reviews of interventions (Noyes et al., 2019). A synthesis can explore how people experience an intervention, how acceptable and feasible it is, how it is implemented, and why it may work for some groups and not for others, and it can identify outcomes that matter to participants but were not measured in trials.

A scoping review usually stops at the basic content analysis described in Section 1. In week 8, the Cedar Valley planning team asked what older adults and the people who deliver programs say helps or hinders connection. The team amended its protocol, with the date and reason recorded, to add a brief thematic synthesis of its 9 qualitative sources (the 6 qualitative studies and the qualitative strands of the 3 mixed-methods studies), assessed with GRADE-CERQual and labelled as going beyond a standard scoping review. The sources include about 150 older adults and about 40 volunteers, connectors and program staff.

3.2 Three Methods Compared

Methods of qualitative evidence synthesis differ in how much they interpret, how far they rely on an existing framework, and how much time and expertise they need. The tabs compare the three methods named in this lesson.

Other methods exist, including JBI's meta-aggregation, which groups findings into categories and synthesized findings that can guide action without reinterpreting the primary studies (Lockwood, Munn and Porritt, 2015). Booth and colleagues (2018) proposed seven criteria for choosing a method, known as RETREAT: the review question, epistemology, time, resources, expertise, audience and purpose, and type of data. The Cedar Valley team chose thematic synthesis because its audience needed practical implications within four weeks, its sources were mostly short evaluations with modest depth, and its members had general qualitative training.

3.3 Thematic Synthesis in Practice

Thomas and Harden (2008) treated the text of each study's results or findings section, including participants' quotations and the authors' interpretations, as the data for synthesis. The Cedar Valley team followed their three stages.

Stage 1: line-by-line coding. The intern and the evidence officer coded the same two sources, agreed on a shared approach, then divided the remaining seven and checked each other's coding. Each code describes the meaning of a passage, such as "same volunteer every week", and the nine sources produced 71 codes.

Stage 2: descriptive themes. The reviewers grouped related codes and named each group, producing six descriptive themes that stay close to what the studies reported: a consistent and trusted person, programs that end, practical barriers to getting there, being accompanied at the start, roles that let people contribute, and interests before labels.

Stage 3: analytical themes. The reviewers then asked what the descriptive themes meant for the planning team's question about program design. This step goes beyond the content of the studies, and Thomas and Harden described it as the hardest stage to describe and the one most dependent on the reviewers' judgement and insight. It produced three analytical themes, each with an implication for the Cedar Valley program, as Figure 3.1 shows.

The analytical themes suggest design choices: keeping the same connector with each person and planning how contact ends, budgeting for transport and accompaniment to a first activity, and framing referrals around interests and roles in which older adults help others. These are hypotheses for the program to test, because they rest on experiences in other programs.

3.4 Framework Synthesis and the Best Fit Approach

Framework synthesis starts from a framework chosen or built before coding. Its stages follow framework analysis (Ritchie and Spencer, 1994): familiarization, identifying a framework, indexing the findings against it, charting them in a matrix, and mapping and interpretation. In best fit framework synthesis, the team codes findings against the published model closest to its question and analyzes the findings that do not fit to create new themes, producing a revised framework (Carroll, Booth and Cooper, 2011; Carroll et al., 2013).

To compare the methods, the intern coded the same 71 codes against a published classification of loneliness interventions. Masi and colleagues (2011), in a meta-analysis of interventions to reduce loneliness, grouped them by four strategies: improving social skills, enhancing social support, increasing opportunities for social contact, and addressing maladaptive social cognition (the habitual negative thoughts about social relationships that can sustain loneliness). The table shows how the Cedar Valley findings fitted.

The framework organized the findings quickly and linked them to established research, yet about a third of the codes did not fit. They concerned access and identity, matters of delivery that a classification of intervention strategies was not designed to capture, and a team that indexed only against the framework would have lost the findings most useful to the planning team. The best fit approach guards against this by requiring the team to analyze what does not fit.

3.5 Meta-ethnography

Meta-ethnography is the most interpretive of the three methods, and its central task is to translate the concepts of one study into the terms of another (Noblit and Hare, 1988). Britten and colleagues (2002), in a worked example on how people take medicines, distinguished first-order constructs (participants' own understandings), second-order constructs (the study authors' interpretations) and third-order constructs (the reviewers' new interpretations). The accordion lists Noblit and Hare's seven phases.

The Cedar Valley findings show how the three forms would apply. Two studies described "a familiar face" and "someone who remembers my week", which a reciprocal translation would express as continuity of a known person. One study described participants who welcomed a group openly aimed at loneliness while three described reluctance to be labelled lonely, a contradiction that a refutational synthesis would try to explain. Studies of referral, first attendance, staying involved and endings each covered part of a person's path through a program, which a lines-of-argument synthesis would assemble into a model. The team judged its sources too thin and its time too short for a full meta-ethnography.

3.6 How Much Confidence? GRADE-CERQual

A finding from a qualitative evidence synthesis also needs a statement of how much confidence a reader can place in it. GRADE-CERQual (Confidence in the Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative research) was developed by Simon Lewin and colleagues for this purpose (Lewin et al., 2015; Lewin et al., 2018). It assesses each review finding separately, as GRADE assesses each outcome (Lesson 8), and it asks whether the finding is a reasonable representation of the phenomenon of interest. The flip cards describe its four components.

For each component, the reviewers judge whether there are no or very minor, minor, moderate or serious concerns. They then judge overall confidence, starting from the assumption that the finding is a reasonable representation of the phenomenon and moving down as concerns accumulate. The four levels are high (it is highly likely that the finding is a reasonable representation), moderate (likely), low (possible) and very low (it is not clear whether it is). The developers have also discussed dissemination bias as a possible further component. The results are presented in a summary of qualitative findings table, of which the Cedar Valley version follows.

Confidence differs between findings from the same synthesis, so each finding needs its own rating. The findings also complement Lesson 8, which found with low certainty that group programs may reduce loneliness slightly and one-to-one programs may reduce it; the qualitative evidence suggests, with moderate confidence, that continuity and practical access shape whether people take part and stay. Syntheses can be reported with ENTREQ, Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative Research (Tong et al., 2012).

What Carries Forward

The Cedar Valley team now has a descriptive summary, a record of its rapid methods and four rated qualitative findings. Section 4 turns the charting table into an evidence and gap map.

Introduction

A charting table holds everything a scoping review found, but a planning team cannot easily see the pattern in 42 rows and 30 columns. An evidence and gap map presents the same information as a picture: a grid in which each cell shows how much evidence exists for one combination of intervention and outcome. Decision-makers use maps to see where evidence is concentrated and where it is missing, and research funders use them to set priorities. This section explains what a map is, how one is built, and how the Cedar Valley team built and read its own.

4.1 What an Evidence and Gap Map Is

The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) developed evidence and gap maps to show the evidence on development programs (Snilstveit et al., 2016). A map is usually a matrix with interventions as rows and outcomes as columns, built from a systematic search and coding of studies, and it shows in each cell the number of studies, often with an indication of their design or of the confidence that can be placed in them. The Campbell Collaboration has since published guidance for producing evidence and gap maps (White et al., 2020), and maps are now common in health, social welfare and education. Related products go by other names. Miake-Lye and colleagues (2016) reviewed published evidence maps in health and found wide variation in methods, with a systematic search and a visual display, often a bubble plot, as common features. In environmental research, systematic maps follow guidance from the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (James, Randall and Haddaway, 2016).

A map differs from a systematic review in what it reports. A systematic review synthesizes findings to say what the evidence shows. A map describes where evidence exists and leaves the findings to reviews, so a large bubble means that many studies exist, whatever they found. A map is close in purpose to a scoping review, and many scoping reviews, including the Cedar Valley review, present a map as one of their main figures.

4.2 The Parts of a Map

Many Campbell maps include both systematic reviews and primary studies, and rate the confidence that can be placed in each review, for example with the AMSTAR 2 tool, showing the rating by colour. A map of primary studies alone, like the Cedar Valley map, can show absolute gaps but cannot show synthesis gaps, so the team listed the relevant existing reviews beside its map instead.

4.3 Building a Map

The steps for building a map follow those of a scoping review, with particular attention to the framework and to coding. The accordion describes each step.

4.4 Worked Example: The Cedar Valley Evidence and Gap Map

The Cedar Valley map has five rows for the intervention categories and six columns for the outcome domains. The protocol's outcome groups were merged slightly for display: mental health and well-being form one column, and implementation outcomes (uptake, cost and acceptability) and participants' experiences form another. In each cell, the left bubble counts randomized trials, the centre bubble counts non-randomized controlled studies, and the right bubble counts other designs, meaning uncontrolled before-and-after, qualitative and mixed-methods studies. Figure 4.1 shows the map, and the table that follows gives the same counts in text form.

R, randomized trials; N, non-randomized controlled studies; O, other designs (before-and-after, qualitative and mixed methods). Each study has one row, and it appears in every column for which it reports an outcome.

Before interpreting the map, the team checked that its counts reconciled with the charting table. Three checks were made. First, the row totals in the label column must match the cross-tabulation in Section 1 (14, 8, 12, 4 and 4 studies, totalling 42). Second, the eligibility criteria required every study to report loneliness or social isolation, so every study must appear in at least one of the first two columns. The loneliness column holds 39 studies, and the 3 studies outside it (one before-and-after study each in the group, one-to-one and intergenerational rows) all appear in the social isolation column, which accounts for all 42. Third, the counts within a row can exceed the row total, because studies report several outcomes. The connector row has 12 studies and 41 entries across its six cells, three or four outcome domains per study, which matches the charting table.

4.5 Reading the Map Carefully

The map shows several patterns the planning team can use. Evidence clusters in the loneliness column for group activities (13 studies, 8 of them randomized) and one-to-one programs (7 studies, 6 randomized), which are the bodies of evidence rated in Lesson 8. Community connector programs, the model the health authority intends to launch, have 12 studies and no randomized trial; their evidence for loneliness comes from 5 non-randomized controlled studies and 7 studies of other designs. Connector studies measured health service use more often (5 of 12) than studies of one-to-one programs (2 of 8), and no study of group activities measured it, which reflects the interest of primary care in whether referral reduces visits. Physical health and function and health service use are absolute gaps for intergenerational and technology-based programs, health service use is also an absolute gap for group activities, and the intergenerational row as a whole is thin. Most evidence on uptake and experience comes from other designs: 13 of the 19 entries in that column are before-and-after, qualitative or mixed-methods studies, which suits questions about experience and acceptability.

The team drew three implications for the planning team, which the evidence brief in Lesson 12 develops. The connector program should be launched with an evaluation built in, a recommendation that the very low certainty rating in Lesson 8 and the absence of randomized trials in this map both support. The evaluation should measure loneliness with a widely used scale, such as the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale or the De Jong Gierveld scale, so that its results can be compared with the 26 included studies that used one of those two scales. And it should record the equity characteristics of participants, uptake and experience, together with health service use, since these are the outcomes primary care partners will ask about and those on which the existing evidence is weakest. The map also helped the planning team decide what it did not need to commission: further evidence on group programs and loneliness already exists and is summarized in existing reviews.

Bringing It All Together

This lesson followed the fictional Cedar Valley evidence team through three kinds of review and the map that brings them together. As a scoping review, the project mapped the extent, range and nature of the evidence, following the stages of Arksey and O'Malley (2005), the refinements of Levac, Colquhoun and O'Brien (2010) and the JBI method. Its charting table and descriptive summary answered the sub-questions, and PRISMA-ScR set out what the report must contain, with critical appraisal as an optional addition.

As a rapid review, the project streamlined parts of the method under the Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group guidance (Garritty et al., 2021). Some shortcuts narrow what a review can find and others reduce independent checking, and the team's own arithmetic showed that checking every excluded record saved little when nine records in ten were excluded, which led it to dual screen everything. As a qualitative evidence synthesis, a brief thematic synthesis of 9 sources produced analytical themes about continuity, access and contribution, and GRADE-CERQual showed how much confidence each finding deserves. The evidence and gap map then displayed all 42 studies by intervention and outcome, showing clusters of randomized evidence for group and one-to-one programs, no randomized trials of community connector programs, and absolute gaps for some outcomes.

The final reflection asks you to explain to a decision-maker how much weight to place on a rapid scoping review, drawing on all four sections.

Final Knowledge Assessment

These terms, tools and people appear in this lesson on scoping reviews, rapid reviews, qualitative evidence synthesis and evidence and gap maps.