Objectives: To provide review authors with the knowledge and skills that they need to extract continuous data from trial reports and perform a meta-analysis of such data.

Summary: The workshop will cover the theoretical aspects: what are continuous data; standard deviations; standard errors; extracting standard deviations from trial reports (directly and indirectly from standard errors, confidence intervals and p-values); methods for pooling continuous outcomes (weighted mean difference, standardized mean difference); using change scores and final value scores; skew. If time allows, these issues will be illustrated with practical work extracting data from papers. Participants should bring calculators, highlighter pens, and a laptop if they have one (laptops should be fully charged, as there will be no power supply available at the workshop).

Level of knowledge required to attend: intermediate.