The Internet in Medical Education: A Worked Example of a Realist Review

Abstract

When human agency plays an important role in producing outcomes in health service interventions, making sense of the literature base can be challenging. Any review method that is going to make sense of such interventions needs to have some means of taking account of the influence of context on human decision-making. One review method that has been developed specifically for, and rises up to, the challenges of making sense of human agency mediated interventions is realist review. In this chapter, a "walk-through" of the realist review method is provided using the example of a review of the use of the Internet in medical education.