The Scoping Review Protocol Kit

What it's for

A scoping review stalls in two places: an undocumented search and counts nobody kept. This keeps both from the first day.

What's inside

1. Is a scoping review the right type? — Five review types compared, what each answers and what it requires — decided before you search.
2. Frame the question — Population, concept and context, with the central concept defined before anything is retrieved.
3. Protocol and registration — Ten sections, what each must contain, and where a scoping protocol can be registered.
4. Eligibility and source types — Criteria by element, the source types to decide on explicitly, and limits with justifications.
5. Build the search — Concept-to-term grid, the three-step procedure, and the tests to run before the full search.
6. Document the search — A record per source and a grey-literature log — reproducible enough for a reader to judge.
7. Run, de-duplicate, count — Every number the flow diagram needs, recorded at the moment it exists.
8. Screen and select — Calibration first, then one recorded reason for every excluded full text.
9. Build and pilot the charting form — Fields that each answer an objective, piloted on five to ten sources before you trust them.
10. Collate and categorise — Counts by dimension, categories defined and checked, and the coverage they reveal.
11. Map the evidence and the gaps — A map that shows empty cells as empty, and gap statements that stay within the evidence.
12. Report and defend — The reporting essentials and the questions this review type always attracts.

Swipe cards — the rules, formulas and phrasings worth keeping beside you, on one page to cut out.

The Search, Screening & Charting workbook (Excel / Google Sheets)

• Search Log: one row per source, with the string exactly as run
• Flow Numbers: every count, with a check that the stages reconcile
• Screening Log: decisions with one exclusion reason each, and a tally per reason
• Charting Form: one row per included source, against your objectives
• Category Matrix: counts by dimension — the input to the evidence map
• Reporting: the reporting items, with what is still unaddressed

Look inside

Low-resolution, watermarked previews of four of the 16 pages.

Who it's for

• Students and researchers running a scoping review, alone or in a small team.
• Anyone whose supervisor has suggested “start with a scoping review” and wants a defensible protocol first.

It reproduces no checklist or flow diagram from the published guidance — it routes you to the current versions and keeps your work against them.

From the author

Companion to The Scoping Review Workbook (Mastering Research Series), by Dr. Rafiq Muhammad, MD, PhD.

The kit is the worksheet layer; the workbook adds the method, the worked examples and the field notes behind each step.

Licence and refunds

One purchaser, personal academic use: print and annotate freely; please don't share, resell or upload the files to shared drives or course sites. Refund on request within 14 days if the files cannot be downloaded or opened. Full terms.

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Other kits

• Sample-Size Justification — a computed sample size, a sourced effect size and the justification paragraph.
• Data Cleaning & Codebook — a cleaning log, a missing-data record and a codebook for an analysis-ready dataset.
• Abstract, Title & Keyword — a word budget, title scoring and a keyword map for the 250 words that matter.

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