Risk of bias assessments for selective reporting were inadequate in the majority of Cochrane reviews

Ref ID 347
First Author F. Saric
Journal JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2019
URL https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(18)31135-1/fulltext
Keywords • General medical
• Risk of bias
• Cochrane
Problem(s) • Flawed risk of bias undertaken
• Weaknesses identified in some Cochrane reviews
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Croatia
Aim To assess adequacy of risk of bias judgments for selective reporting in Cochrane systematic reviews published from July 2015 to June 2016.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings At least 60% of judgments for risk of selective reporting bias of trials in analysed Cochrane reviews were not in line with the Cochrane Handbook. Few Cochrane authors mentioned the trial protocol as a source of data for assessing selective reporting. Most of the inadequate judgments were made among trials that were judged with low risk of selective reporting bias; more than 90%. In 9% of analysed risk of bias tables, Cochrane authors did not use this risk of bias domain at all.
Number of systematic reviews included 729
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 729
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description