Background: An increasing number of dose-response meta-analyses (DRMAs) have been published in the past several years. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system is considered to be a common, sensible and transparent approach to grading quality of evidence and strength of recommendations. The quality of evidence has four levels, high, moderate, low and very low. However, the use of GRADE system on DRMAs has not been investigated.
Objectives: To investigate GRADE evidence assessment of DRMAs published in 2019 through a cross-sectional survey.
Methods: PubMed will be searched to identify DRMAs published from January 1st, 2019, to December 31st, 2019, using the following search strategy: (meta-analysis [Title/Abstract]) AND (dose-response [Title/Abstract]) AND (‘‘2019/1/1’’ [Date - Publication]: ‘‘2019/12/31’’ [Date -Publication]). Two review authors will screen the literature, extract the baseline characteristics and collect all data in Excel 2019 independently (Microsoft, Washington). Any disagreement will be resolved by the third review author. Stata 15.0 (STATA, College Station, TX) will be used for analysis, with a P value of < 0.05 denoting significance.
Results: This study is ongoing, and will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: There was no patient or healthcare consumer in this project.