Policy and Complex Systems
selected those that fit our research questions and the inclusion / exclusion criteria . Then , 133 studies were removed from the final step . Finally , we did a careful reading of the final sample ( n = 42 ), of which 7 were excluded due to inadequacy to our research purposes , and thus reaching the final number of 35 studies , which came from a variety of journals ( table 3 ) and countries , as shown in figure 1 . Figure 2 represents the PRISMA flow diagram of such results .
Data Synthesis
We used a spreadsheet to synthesize the information from all the selected papers . Since there are two major objectives in this study , first we separated descriptive ( conceptual ) studies from applied studies . Here , we considered as " applied " the studies containing models , simulations or even empirical evidence from real-world policies . In both cases , we performed individual critical appraisals of each study , based on
an assessment adapted from Mays and Pope ( 2000 ), and then we rated the studies as high ( A ) or low ( B ) quality , as shown in table 4 . The assessment of each study is presented in table 5 . Finally , we structured the studies in concept-centric matrixes ( Webster , Watson , 2002 ) and we decomposed the 2 original broad research questions into a topic-specific approach . This method enabled a more intelligible classification of the studies and allowed the researchers to focus on analyzing and discussing the data . In addition , this spreadsheet was used to summarize and combine the results of the studies , and thus provided an overall picture of the current state of complex systems for public policies .
Findings
In general , the select studies show how positive can be the connection between public policies and complexity theory . After reading the 35 studies , we did not find
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