Characteristics of the sources, evaluation, and grading of the certainty of evidence in systematic reviews in public health: A methodological study.
Front Public Health
; 11: 998588, 2023.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37064677
ABSTRACT
Objectives:
To systematically explore how the sources of evidence, types of primary studies, and tools used to assess the quality of the primary studies vary across systematic reviews (SRs) in public health.Methods:
We conducted a methodological survey of SRs in public health by searching the of literature in selected journals from electronic bibliographic databases. We selected a 10% random sample of the SRs that met the explicit inclusion criteria. Two researchers independently extracted data for analysis.Results:
We selected 301 SRs foranalysis:
94 (31.2%) of these were pre-registered, and 211 (70.1%) declared to have followed published reporting standard. All SRs searched for evidence in electronic bibliographic databases, and more than half (n = 180, 60.0%) searched also the references of the included studies. The common types of primary studies included in the SRs were primarily cross-sectional studies (n = 132, 43.8%), cohort studies (n = 126, 41.9%), randomized controlled trials (RCTs, n = 89, 29.6%), quasi-experimental studies (n = 83, 27.6%), case-control studies (n = 58, 19.3%) qualitative studies (n = 38, 12.6%) and mixed-methods studies (n = 32, 10.6%). The most frequently used quality assessment tools were the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (used for 50.0% of cohort studies and 55.6% of case-control studies), Cochrane Collaboration's Risk of Bias tool (50.7% of RCTs) and Critical Appraisal Skills Program (38.5% of qualitative studies). Only 20 (6.6%) of the SRs assessed the certainty of the body of evidence, of which 19 (95.0%) used the GRADE approach. More than 65% of the evidence in the SRs using GRADE was of low or very low certainty.Conclusions:
SRs should always assess the quality both at the individual study level and the body of evidence for outcomes, which will benefit patients, health care practitioners, and policymakers.Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Projetos de Pesquisa
/
Saúde Pública
Tipo de estudo:
Clinical_trials
/
Observational_studies
/
Prevalence_studies
/
Qualitative_research
/
Risk_factors_studies
/
Systematic_reviews
Limite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2023
Tipo de documento:
Article