A Response to "A Critical Appraisal of the Review Study to Improve Its Reporting Quality"

Abstract

314 © 2019 Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow Dear Editor,Our paper on “Challenges of Family Caregivers of Patients with Mental Disorders in Iran: A Narrative Review”[1] has recently been published in the Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research. This is a response to concerns raised about methodology of our paper.In the context of the first concern of the appropriateness of using the term of “systematic review” for our study, it is worth noting that the first point of distinction between systematic and traditional narrative review goes back to the research question. A systematic literature review starts with a well‑formulated research question that helps researcher to decide and determine which articles to include in the review. Another point of differences is about data analysis in which included studies are grouped together based on their methodological similarities[2] and concerns about measuring the strength of the relationship between two variables and the magnitude of the intervention effect.[3] Nonetheless, in our study, we have been mainly concerned with whether the included studies focused on the challenge or problem in Iranian family caregivers of mental health disorders rather than focusing on methodological similarities or not.