Bio: Dr. Robinder (Rob) P. Bedi joined UBC and the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education on August 1, 2015 as a tenure track Assistant Professor in Counselling Psychology. He previously held a position as an Associate Professor of Psychology at Western Washington.  He is a registered psychologist in British Columbia

Abstract: This presentation provides a critical examination of the way South Asian knowledge is mobilized in systematic reviews (including meta-analyses). To be valid, systematic reviews require a thorough, objective, and replicable search of relevant literature. These characteristics are needed to identify as many relevant research studies as possible and make valid conclusions (Higgins & Green, 2011). It is this transparent comprehensiveness that separates systematic reviews from narrative and more informal literature reviews (Liberati et al., 2009). Therefore, it is important to scrutinize search strategies in systematic reviews to identify any significant omissions or systematic biases that can call the study’s conclusions into question.

We have come across many systematic reviews (e.g., Ahmed et al., 2007; Giebel et al., 2015; Horne et al., 2017; Regmi et al., 2016) that generalize their conclusions to South Asians or (Asian) Indians as a whole but that only utilize Western electronic bibliographic databases. While many South Asian journals are indexed in popular Western databases, many, if not most, are not. By excluding South Asian databases, much relevant research is potentially missed. This claim is based on our own systematic review research experiences and on discussions with colleagues in India.