Systematic reviews of health related interventions often use alternative methods of synthesis to meta-analysis of effect estimates, methods often described as "narrative synthesis" Serious shortcomings in reviews that use "narrative synthesis" have been identified, including a lack of description of the methods used; unclear links between the included data, the synthesis, and the conclusions; and inadequate reporting of the limitations of the synthesis The Synthesis Without Meta-analysis (SWiM) guideline is a nine item checklist to promote transparent reporting for reviews of interventions that use alternative synthesis methods The SWiM items prompt users to report how studies are grouped, the standardised metric used for the synthesis, the synthesis method, how data are presented, a summary of the synthesis findings, and limitations of the synthesis The SWiM guideline has been developed using a best practice approach, involving extensive consultation and formal consensus on 11 September 2020 by guest. Protected by copyright.

This paper presents the findings from a review of the theoretical and empirical literature on the links between crime and fear of crime, the social and built environment, and health and wellbeing. A pragmatic approach was employed, with iterative stages of searching and synthesis. This produced a holistic causal framework of pathways to guide future research. The framework emphasises that crime and fear of crime may have substantial impacts on wellbeing, but the pathways are often highly indirect, mediated by environmental factors, difficult to disentangle and not always in the expected direction. The built environment, for example, may affect health via its impacts on health behaviours; via its effects on crime and fear of crime; or via the social environment. The framework also helps to identify unexpected factors which may affect intervention success, such as the risk of adverse effects from crime prevention interventions as a result of raising awareness of crime.

No abstract