A critical evaluation of systematic reviews assessing the effect of chronic physical activity on academic achievement, cognition and the brain in children and adolescents: a systematic review

Ref ID 221
First Author T. M. Wassenaar
Journal INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL NUTRITION & PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Year Of Publishing 2020
URL https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12966-020-00959-y.pdf
Keywords • Cognition
• Paediatrics
• Public health
Problem(s) • No registered or published protocol
• Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided
• Limited quality assessment or no risk of bias
• Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
• Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review
• Inconclusive or lack of recommendations
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country United Kingdom
Aim To assess the methodological quality (AMSTAR 2) for systematic reviews of the effects of chronic physical activity on academic achievement, cognitive performance and the brain in children and adolescents published up to February 2019.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Of the 19 included systematic reviews of the effects of chronic physical activity in children and adolescents: one was high-quality and eighteen were (critically) low-quality reviews. Low quality reviews suggested physical activity-related brain changes, but lacked an interpretation of these findings. Only 26% of included reviews had an a-priori design, 16% included an overview of excluded studies, 72% assessed risk of bias, but only 15% reviews considered quality information in their evidence synthesis.
Number of systematic reviews included 19
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 908
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description