Abstract: We were invited by the Dutch Scientific Organization for Research to examine the need for research on the efficacy of various treatments for nine different chronic benign pain disorders. We started with an inventory in order to assess which treatments were most frequently applied in the Netherlands. Next, we searched the literature for reviews about these treatments. The methodological quality of the retrieved reviews was assessed. If a review was qualitatively good and published recently, we adopted its conclusions. If the review was published before 1990, we additionally searched for recent trials, and examined the abstracts to decide whether this would change the conclusions. If the methodological quality of the review was poor, we suggested to perform a new systematic review when the original review had been based on many randomised clinical trials (RCTs), and to conduct a new RCT otherwise. We used a decision tree to decide on the basis of the retrieved material whether the efficacy or inefficacy of treatments was shown or further research was needed. In the latter case, we decided whether systematic reviews should be recommended on a specific topic, or new randomised clinical trials were required. This resulted in a list of treatments for which systematic reviews were recommended, and a separate list of treatments for which randomised clinical trials were required. To set priorities for research we asked the members of four expertise centres for pain research and management to rank research topics on importance. We combined this list to a final priority list for systematic reviews and a final priority list for randomised clinical trials.