Background: With the increase in the number of systematic reviews available, a logical next step to provide the best evidence for decision makers in health care is the conduct of overviews of existing systematic reviews.

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to describe the work of a methodological working group of the Joanna Briggs Institute to develop guidance for the conduct of an 'umbrella' review.

Methods: The working group consisted of six participants who corresponded via teleconference, email and face to face meetings during a six month development period. Discussion and testing elements of methods for the conduct of an umbrella review were held over this period and culminated in a practical workshop. Workshop participants, review authors and methodologists provided further testing, critique and feedback on the proposed methodology.

Results: Details are provided regarding the essential elements of an umbrella review, including presentation of the review question in a PICO (population, intervention, comparator, outcomes) format, nuances of the inclusion criteria and search strategy. Relevant details to extract from included reviews and how to best present the findings of both quantitative and qualitative systematic reviews in a user-friendly format are provided. Presentation of results includes an easy to use, informative, summary of evidence table.

Conclusions: Umbrella reviews provide a ready means for decision makers in health care to gain a better and more rapid understanding of a broad topic area. The umbrella review methodology described here is the first to consider reviews that report evidence other than quantitative evidence.