Article type
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Abstract
Background: Overviews of reviews (overviews) compile data from multiple systematic reviews to provide a single synthesis of relevant evidence for clinical and policy decision-making. Despite their increasing popularity, there is limited methodological guidance available for researchers wishing to conduct overviews.
Objectives: To identify and collate all published and unpublished documents containing methodological guidance for the conduct or reporting of overviews. Our aim was to provide a map of existing guidance documents and identify similarities, differences, and gaps in guidance.
Methods: We conducted a database search supplemented by iterative snowball searching, handsearched conference proceedings and relevant websites, and contacted overview authors and Cochrane Review Groups. Guidance statements across included documents were grouped by stage of the overview process and analyzed within each stage.
Results: We identified 48 guidance documents produced by 20 author groups: 29 contained explicit methodological guidance; 10 were peer-review checklists or reporting guidelines; and nine described the challenges an author group faced when conducting one or more published overviews. Overall, 79% of these documents were written by authors affiliated with Cochrane. General guidance was available for the following steps: deciding whether to conduct an overview, specifying the scope, searching, screening, and inclusion. This guidance was mostly consistent, though there were some minor discrepancies across included documents. There was limited or conflicting guidance on extraction and analysis of results data, methodological quality assessment, and grading the quality of evidence. Most documents identified additional challenges in conducting overviews for which they did not provide guidance.
Conclusions: Compiling existing methodological guidance for overviews provides a valuable resource for overview authors. The results of this project will inform our research on overview methods and are being used to update the overviews chapter for the next edition of the Cochrane Handbook.
Objectives: To identify and collate all published and unpublished documents containing methodological guidance for the conduct or reporting of overviews. Our aim was to provide a map of existing guidance documents and identify similarities, differences, and gaps in guidance.
Methods: We conducted a database search supplemented by iterative snowball searching, handsearched conference proceedings and relevant websites, and contacted overview authors and Cochrane Review Groups. Guidance statements across included documents were grouped by stage of the overview process and analyzed within each stage.
Results: We identified 48 guidance documents produced by 20 author groups: 29 contained explicit methodological guidance; 10 were peer-review checklists or reporting guidelines; and nine described the challenges an author group faced when conducting one or more published overviews. Overall, 79% of these documents were written by authors affiliated with Cochrane. General guidance was available for the following steps: deciding whether to conduct an overview, specifying the scope, searching, screening, and inclusion. This guidance was mostly consistent, though there were some minor discrepancies across included documents. There was limited or conflicting guidance on extraction and analysis of results data, methodological quality assessment, and grading the quality of evidence. Most documents identified additional challenges in conducting overviews for which they did not provide guidance.
Conclusions: Compiling existing methodological guidance for overviews provides a valuable resource for overview authors. The results of this project will inform our research on overview methods and are being used to update the overviews chapter for the next edition of the Cochrane Handbook.