Systematic reviews with language restrictions and no author contact have lower overall credibility: a methodology study

Autor: Wang Z, Brito JP, Tsapas A, Griebeler ML, Alahdab F, Murad MH
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2015
Předmět:
Zdroj: Clinical Epidemiology, Vol 2015, Iss default, Pp 243-247 (2015)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1179-1349
Popis: Zhen Wang,1–3 Juan P Brito,4 Apostolos Tsapas,5 Marcio L Griebeler,4 Fares Alahdab,1,3 Mohammad Hassan Murad,1,3,61Robert D and Patricia E Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery, 2Division of Health Care Policy and Research, Department of Health Sciences Research, 3Knowledge and Evaluation Research Unit, 4Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, Metabolism, and Nutrition, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA; 5Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece; 6Division of Preventive, Occupational and Aerospace Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USABackground: High-quality systematic reviews (SRs) require rigorous approaches to identify, appraise, select, and synthesize research evidence relevant to a specific question. In this study, we evaluated the association between two steps in the conduct of an SR – restricting the search to English, and author contact for missing data – and the overall credibility of a SR.Methods: All SRs cited by the Endocrine Society's Clinical Practice Guidelines published from October 2006 through January 2012 were included. The main outcome was the overall A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) score, as a surrogate of SR credibility. Nonparametric Kruskal–Wallis tests and multivariable linear regression models were used to investigate the association between language restriction, author contact for missing data, and the overall AMSTAR score.Results: In all, 69 SRs were included in the analysis. Only 31 SRs (45%) reported searching non-English literature, with an average AMSTAR score of 7.90 (standard deviation [SD] =1.64). SRs that reported language restriction received significantly lower AMSTAR scores (mean =5.25, SD =2.32) (P
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