Peer Reviewed: Quality of Systematic Reviews of Observational Nontherapeutic Studies

Ref ID 226
First Author T. Shamliyan
Journal PREVENTING CHRONIC DISEASE
Year Of Publishing 2010
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2995597/
Keywords • Observational studies
• Epidemiology
• Low methodological quality
• Risk of bias
• Low reporting quality
• Grey literature
Problem(s) • Low reporting or methodological quality (OTHER GUIDANCE)
• Grey literature excluded
• No quality assessment undertaken or reported
• Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country United States
Aim To assess the general conduct/quality of systematic reviews of observational studies of non-therapeutic interventions conducted between 2005-2008.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Of the 145 included systematic reviews of observational studies of non-therapeutic interventions conducted between 2005-2008, fewer than half met each quality criterion; 49% reported study flow, 27% assessed grey literature, 2% abstracted sponsorship of individual studies, and none abstracted the disclosure of conflict of interest by the authors of individual studies. Planned, formal internal quality evaluation of included studies was reported in 37% of systematic reviews. The journal of publication, topic of review, sponsorship, and conflict of interest were not associated with better quality.
Number of systematic reviews included 145
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 1053
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description