3. Methods
• school medical
• physical examination
• health screening
• health consultation
• health assessment
• health literacy
Handsearching
The websites of a number of organisations producing systematic reviews were
also scanned for relevant reviews. All available review titles and abstracts were
examined on the following:
• UK Health Technology Assessment Programme
• Effective Public Health Practice Project
• World Health Organisation
• National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
• Economic and Social Research Council
• MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit
• Health Scotland
3.1.3 Screening
All study citations were downloaded into a specialist piece of reviewing software,
EPPI-Reviewer (Thomas, 2002). To be included in the scoping exercise, a study
citation had to:
1. include an abstract written in the English language
2. be within the scope of the life check as defined in section 3.1.1
3. describe a study focused on young people aged 10 to 14 years
4. describe a study which would help answer one or more of the scoping review
questions (effectiveness of life checks in school settings, effectiveness of life
checks in other settings, the appropriateness of life checks for young people,
optimising the uptake of life checks)
5. be published within the last 10 years
As noted above, study citations with no English language abstract were excluded,
unless the title indicated a high likelihood of the report containing information
relevant to life checks (e.g. ‘Annual physical examination for adolescents: a
reassessment’). In these cases, further searches were conducted to identify an
abstract and, where an abstract was still not available, the full report was
retrieved.
As the life check is a new concept without a precise definition, it was difficult to
achieve a shared understanding at the outset of the review. To ensure that all
reviewers applied the criteria in accordance with each other, we undertook triple
screening until all reviewers were applying criteria in same way. The remainder of
the screening was carried out by individual reviewers. Where there was
uncertainty, reports were marked for discussion. At the end of the screening
process, these reports were considered by all three reviewers, and, as a final
check, all reports selected for inclusion were rescreened.
A scoping review of the evidence relevant to life checks for young people aged 9 to 14 years
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