What Are PRISMA Guidelines and How Do You Apply Them in Your Literature Review?

So your supervisor just told you your literature review needs to follow “PRISMA guidelines” — and you nodded like you knew exactly what that meant. Then you got home, typed it into Google, and fell into a rabbit hole of academic jargon so dense it could knock you out. Sound familiar?

You’re not alone. Thousands of UK students — especially those writing dissertations in nursing, health sciences, social work, psychology, and education — hit this exact wall every year. PRISMA sounds intimidating, but once you break it down, it’s actually one of the most useful frameworks you’ll ever use for a literature review.

This guide will walk you through what PRISMA guidelines are, why UK universities care so much about them, and exactly how to apply them step by step. No jargon. No fluff. Just what you need to know to get it done properly.

What Does PRISMA Actually Stand For?

PRISMA stands for Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. It’s a reporting guideline — essentially a checklist and process — designed to make systematic reviews transparent, reproducible, and credible.

The most current version is PRISMA 2020, updated in February 2021. If your university or module handbook mentions PRISMA, this is the version you should be using unless they specify otherwise.

Here’s the key thing most students miss: PRISMA doesn’t tell you how to conduct your review. It tells you how to report it. It’s about transparency — showing your reader exactly what you searched for, where you searched, how many results you got, and how you narrowed them down to the studies you actually used.

This distinction matters because a lot of students try to use PRISMA as a methodology when it’s really a reporting framework. Your methodology is the systematic review process itself; PRISMA is how you document and present that process.

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Why Do UK Universities Require PRISMA?

UK universities — particularly those with programmes in nursing, allied health, social work, and psychology — align strongly with evidence-based practice. Institutions that follow NHS research standards, NICE guidelines, or professional bodies like the NMC (Nursing and Midwifery Council) expect students to demonstrate rigorous, transparent evidence gathering.

PRISMA helps you do exactly that. When a marker reads your dissertation, they want to know:

• Where did you search? (PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Cochrane?)
• What search terms did you use?
• How many studies did you find and how many did you exclude — and why?
• What are your inclusion and exclusion criteria?

A well-executed PRISMA flow diagram answers all of this in a single, clean visual. That’s why markers love it — and why it directly impacts your grade.

💡 Pro Tip: Even if your dissertation isn’t a formal systematic review, using a PRISMA-style approach in a standard literature review shows methodological sophistication. Markers notice — and reward — that level of rigour.

The PRISMA 2020 Checklist: What’s Actually in It?

The PRISMA 2020 checklist has 27 items across seven sections. You won’t need all 27 for a standard student dissertation, but knowing what they cover helps you understand what’s expected.

For most UK undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations, you’ll focus primarily on the Methods and Results sections — specifically the search strategy, eligibility criteria, and the flow diagram.

Understanding the PRISMA Flow Diagram

The flow diagram is the most recognisable part of PRISMA — and the part most students either do brilliantly or completely mess up.

It visually shows the journey of your literature search from the initial number of records identified right down to the final studies included in your review.

The PRISMA 2020 flow diagram has four stages:

1. Identification How many records did you find across all databases? Did you search any other sources (grey literature, reference lists, websites)?

2. Screening After removing duplicates, how many records were screened by title and abstract?

3. Eligibility How many full-text articles were assessed? How many were excluded — and for what specific reasons?

4. Included How many studies made the final cut?

Each box feeds into the next with arrows, and every exclusion needs a reason. This is where students often lose marks — they exclude studies without clearly stating why.

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Step-by-Step: How to Apply PRISMA in Your Literature Review

Let’s get practical. Here’s how to actually do this.

Step 1: Define Your Research Question

Before you search a single database, you need a clear, focused research question. Most UK students in health and social sciences use the PICO framework:

• P — Population (who are you studying?)
• I — Intervention (what’s being done or examined?)
• C — Comparison (what’s it being compared to?)
• O — Outcome (what are you measuring?)

Example: In adult patients with Type 2 diabetes (P), does structured physical activity (I) compared to standard care (C) improve glycaemic control (O)?

Getting this right before you search saves you enormous time. If your research question is too broad, you’ll drown in results. Too narrow, and you’ll find nothing.

Step 2: Select Your Databases

Your university library gives you access to several academic databases. Choose the ones most relevant to your field:

• PubMed / MEDLINE — biomedical and health sciences
• CINAHL — nursing and allied health
• PsycINFO — psychology and mental health
• Cochrane Library — systematic reviews and RCTs
• ERIC — education
• Web of Science / Scopus — multidisciplinary

Record every database you search. This is a PRISMA requirement. Don’t skip a database and then quietly leave it off your list — that’s a transparency issue that markers will pick up on.

Step 3: Build Your Search Strategy

This is where most students underestimate the effort involved. A good search strategy uses:

• Boolean operators — AND, OR, NOT
• MeSH terms (Medical Subject Headings) for PubMed and CINAHL
• Synonyms and alternate spellings — “physical activity” OR “exercise” OR “sport”
• Truncation — e.g., “nurs*” will find nurse, nursing, nurses

Write your full search string for each database and save it exactly as you ran it. PRISMA-S (the PRISMA extension for searching) requires you to report searches copied and pasted precisely as run.

⚠️ Common Mistake to Avoid: Don’t run your search, get 3,000 results, panic, and then change your terms to get fewer. Refine your strategy before running the final search, not after. Changing your terms mid-process introduces bias and undermines the integrity of your review.

Step 4: Set Your Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

Before screening, decide what’s in and what’s out — and write it down. Common criteria include:

Inclusion Criteria:

• Published within a specific date range (e.g., 2015–2025)
• Peer-reviewed studies only
• English language
• Specific study designs (RCTs, qualitative studies, cohort studies)
• Specific population characteristics

Exclusion Criteria:

• Conference abstracts or grey literature (if not relevant)
• Studies outside your geographic scope
• Studies not meeting your PICO criteria
• Duplicate publications

Be consistent. If you decide to exclude studies published before 2015, you exclude all of them — not just the ones that don’t suit your argument.

Step 5: Screen Your Results

This happens in two rounds:

Round 1 — Title and Abstract Screening: Go through every record from your database searches. Remove anything that clearly doesn’t meet your criteria just from the title and abstract alone.

Round 2 — Full-Text Screening: For everything that survived round one, read the full text and apply your inclusion/exclusion criteria properly. Record why each excluded study didn’t make the cut.

Keep a spreadsheet. Seriously. Use Excel or Google Sheets to track each study, your screening decision, and the reason for exclusion. You’ll need this when building your flow diagram.

Step 6: Build Your PRISMA Flow Diagram

Now take your numbers and plug them into the PRISMA 2020 flow diagram template. You can download the official template from the PRISMA website (prisma-statement.org) in Word or PDF format.

Your completed diagram should show:

• Total records identified (per database)
• Records removed after deduplication
• Records screened
• Records excluded at title/abstract stage
• Full texts assessed
• Full texts excluded (with reasons)
• Final studies included

This diagram goes in your Methods section — usually just before or after you describe your search strategy.

Step 7: Report Your Findings Transparently

In your results section, describe the included studies — their designs, samples, settings, and key findings. Then in your discussion, interpret what the body of evidence says in relation to your research question.

Always acknowledge limitations. Did you only search English-language studies? Did you have access to all databases? These aren’t weaknesses — they’re honest, expected disclosures that demonstrate academic integrity.

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PRISMA for Different Types of UK Dissertations

Not every dissertation uses a full systematic review. Here’s a quick guide:

If you’re unsure which category your dissertation falls into, check out our guide on Systematic Review vs. Literature Review: Which is Right for a UK Dissertation? — it breaks down the differences clearly.

Referencing PRISMA Correctly

In the UK, most universities use Harvard or APA referencing. Here’s how to cite the PRISMA 2020 statement:

APA 7th: Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., … Moher, D. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, n71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71

Harvard: Page, M.J. et al. (2021) ‘The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews’, BMJ, 372, p. n71. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71

If you’re struggling with referencing consistency throughout your dissertation, our editing and proofreading service checks referencing style alongside grammar, structure, and academic tone.

PRISMA Checklist for Students: Quick Reference

Before you submit, run through this:

• Research question defined using PICO or similar framework
• All databases searched and recorded
• Full search strings saved (exactly as run)
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria documented before screening
• Duplicate removal recorded with numbers
• Title/abstract screening completed and numbers noted
• Full-text screening completed with exclusion reasons
• PRISMA 2020 flow diagram completed and included
• Methods section reports all of the above transparently
• PRISMA 2020 statement cited correctly in your referencing style

Common Mistakes UK Students Make with PRISMA

1. Using an outdated flow diagram PRISMA was significantly updated in 2020. If you’re using the old 2009 version, update it. The 2020 version has a different structure and your markers will notice.

2. Inventing numbers Your flow diagram numbers need to be real and traceable. Don’t estimate or round. Every number should come from your actual documented search process.

3. Forgetting grey literature PRISMA 2020 asks whether you searched sources beyond databases — government reports, NHS publications, charity websites, clinical guidelines. If you didn’t, that’s fine, but you need to acknowledge it as a limitation.

4. Treating PRISMA as a methodology As mentioned earlier — PRISMA is a reporting framework, not a research method. In your Methods section, you should reference your methodological approach (e.g., “a systematic search of the literature was conducted”) and use PRISMA to report how that search was carried out.

5. Screening bias If you’re doing this solo (which most students are), acknowledge in your limitations that screening was done by a single reviewer. In professional reviews, two reviewers screen independently to reduce bias.

💡 Pro Tip: If you want to see what a top-quality PRISMA-compliant literature review looks like in practice, look up published systematic reviews in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews or BMJ Open. These are freely accessible and provide excellent real-world examples.

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Getting Your Literature Review Right the First Time

A solid PRISMA-compliant literature review takes time — usually far more than students expect. Between building a proper search strategy, managing hundreds of records, and documenting every step transparently, it’s a serious piece of academic work.

If you’re finding it overwhelming, you’re not the only one. Our dissertation writing help supports UK students at every stage — from research question development to final submission. Whether you need help with the methodology chapter, the literature review, or the whole thing, we’ve got experienced UK-based academic writers who understand exactly what your university expects.

It’s also worth knowing that many students now use AI tools to help draft sections of their work — which is why understanding AI detection has become just as important as the writing itself. Our AI and plagiarism check service gives you a full report before submission, so you’re not caught off guard by Turnitin’s AI detector.

And if you want to understand the broader landscape of AI in academic work before your dissertation, our blog on AI vs. Plagiarism: Is Using AI Considered Plagiarizing in 2026? is worth a read.

Final Thoughts

PRISMA guidelines aren’t as scary as they sound. Once you understand that it’s essentially a transparent, structured way of documenting your literature search, the whole thing becomes a lot more manageable.

The key points to take away:

• PRISMA 2020 is the current version — use it, not the 2009 edition
• It’s a reporting framework, not a methodology
• The flow diagram is non-negotiable for systematic reviews and strongly recommended for literature reviews
• Document everything — databases, search strings, screening decisions, exclusion reasons
• Acknowledge your limitations honestly

You’ve got this. Start with a clear research question, build your search systematically, keep records as you go, and let the PRISMA framework guide how you present it all. Your dissertation is closer to done than you think.

Need help getting your literature review right? Whether it’s structuring your methodology, checking your PRISMA flow diagram, or reviewing your full dissertation — Academic Universe has expert UK writers ready to help. Message us on WhatsApp today and get a free quote within the hour.

Related Reading:

• How to Write a Literature Review for a Dissertation: A Step-by-Step UK Guide (2026)
• Systematic Review vs. Literature Review: Which is Right for a UK Dissertation?
• How Many References Should a Dissertation Have? UK University Universal Quick Guide

Frequently Asked Questions UK Students Are Actually Asking (2026)