Critical Appraisal Literature Review

Running head: CRITICAL APPRAISAL LITERATURE REVIEW
CRITICAL APPRAISAL LITERATURE REVIEW
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

CRITICAL APPRAISAL LITERATURE REVIEW2
What is the review purpose, objective or
questions?
The assessment aims to critically review and
appraises a selected article, ‘The effect of
non-pharmacological sleep interventions on
depression symptoms:
A meta-analysis of randomised controlled
trials’ that was published in Sleep Medicine
Reviews. A bimonthly peer-review medical
journal particularly focuses on the aspect of
diagnosis and therapy of sleep-related
disorder or disturbance
(Journals.elsevier.com, 2020). The impact
factor of the journal is 10.517 that states that
the review was taken from an influential
journal.
Was there a published protocol for this
review? If yes-please provide the references
As per the study, the evaluation was
conducted as per the accordance with the
direction of the desired reporting factors
used for systematic reviews as well as meta-
analyses (PRISMA) statement. This
protocol was registered with the
PROSPERO registry (Gee et al., 2019).
What are the inclusion criteria for this
review?
The inclusion criteria of the systematic
review were it is published in a reputed
journal; the topic is related to depression
and sleeping intervention and needs to be

CRITICAL APPRAISAL LITERATURE REVIEW3
recent. Therefore, this article was chosen as
it was published in 2018 and the aim of the
review is to study the influence of sleep
intervention that do not include
pharmacological elements on depression
with the help of randomised controlled
trials.
What types of studies were included? The use of meta-analysis with the help of
randomised controlled trials were used in
this study.
What database/search engines were
searched?
The four electronic databases that have been
used in searching were PsycINFO,
CINAHL, Medline and Central from the
time of inception to 2018 in the month of
May.
Were the search terms suitable for the
purpose of this review?
The search terms used were sleep, insomnia,
sleep treatment, sleep disorder and
intervention, treatment, therapy, help,
hygiene, support or education and
depression or mood. The language was
English and hand search was done.
What search limits were applied? There was no search limit.
Does the PRISMA flowchart adequately
described how articles were identified,
screened, assessed for eligibility, appraised
The PRISMA flowchart was adequately
used that stated the way articles were
identified, screened, assessed, assessed and

CRITICAL APPRAISAL LITERATURE REVIEW4
and selected for inclusion in the review? designated for the presence in the article
(Sokouti & Sokouti, 2018).
What critical appraisal instrument(s)
was/were used to determine methodological
quality of the article? Were these
instruments appropriate?
The included studies were selected by two
reviewers and cross-checked for accuracy.
Various characteristics were taken into
consideration for customising the data and
in case of insufficient data were found, the
author was contacted. The quality was
assessed using the Cochrane collaboration
risk of bias tool. In the case of excluding the
studies, insufficient data was stated to be the
only reason for rejecting them; however,
due to the large number, it was listed or
given individual reason for the rejection. It
was reported that due to quality reasons,
1985 studies were rejected. After the
reviewing session, a selection of 49 articles
were selected for conducting the meta-
analysis. According to Xu et al., (2017),
Review Manager Version 5.3 was applied
for conducting the critical analysis of the
paper where standardised in term of mean
differences of depression scores and
confidence intervals were estimated to be
95% for each study. A random-effects