Exclusion criteria

How it is used

Common in literature reviews and empirical studies. They improve transparency by stating clearly what was omitted and why.

Example sentences

1. Our exclusion criteria removed editorials, duplicate records, and studies without a clear description of the sample.

   Here, the term names the rules for filtering out materials that would weaken consistency or relevance in the review.

2. The reviewer asked us to justify the exclusion criteria because several older studies were omitted from the final synthesis.

   In this example, exclusion criteria are the stated reasons needed to defend why certain studies were not included.

Common collocations

• apply exclusion criteria
• predefined exclusion criteria
• inclusion and exclusion criteria

Related terms

• literature reviewA critical summary of what has already been published on a topic, showing the main ideas, debates and gaps that a new study responds to.
• sampleThe smaller group of people, items or texts selected from a larger population for a study, so that conclusions can be drawn about that population.

More terms: Literature Review

• literature
• research gap
• theoretical framework
• seminal
• synthesize
• draw on
• build on
• primary source
• secondary source
• systematic review
• database
• meta-analysis