Qualitätsbewertung in systematischen Übersichtsarbeiten normativer Literatur. Eine Problemanalyse

After developing a pragmatic definition for “normative literature”, a typology of different types of systematic reviews of normative literature is presented. Based on existing approaches for quality appraisal, this paper identifies three possible strategies for solving the problem of quality appraisal of normative literature, and discusses their respective strength and weaknesses relative to the different types of systematic reviews. It becomes apparent that none of the existing approaches is able to solve the problem of quality appraisal in a general and convincing way. The paper concludes with stating minimal conditions regarding the elaboration of future strategies, and outlines a promising strategy that is theoretically acceptable and practically feasible.