Systematic reviews in the social sciences: a review

This section of Evidence & Policy has two main objectives: to inform readers about the development of evidence-informed policy and practice, as reflected in the literature; and to provide practical advice on the sources that policy makers, practitioners and researchers can exploit in their search for evidence.The section begins with a review by Julia Littell of the practical guide to systematic reviewing in the social sciences by Mark Petticrew and Helen Roberts, published by Blackwell in 2005.We follow with a brief look at the Google phenomenon, with some simple advice on how to get more out of this search engine, and the section concludes as usual with some of the recent literature of relevance to evidencebased policy and practice.