Few systematic reviews exist documenting the extent of bias: a systematic review

Ref ID 382
First Author A. C. Tricco
Journal JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2008
URL https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(07)00405-2/fulltext
Keywords • Cochrane
• General medical
Problem(s) • Inflexible methods to complex questions
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Canada
Checklists • OQAQ
Aim To assess the evidence concerning bias and confounding in conducting systematic reviews from systematic review articles indexed in the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, PsycINFO until November 2006.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Few systematic reviews documented the extent of biases (or range of biases) that can occur while conducting a systematic review. The risk of bias in the systematic themselves varied greatly. Broadly, biases identified problems from the included systematic reviews related to: identifying studies and obtaining accurate data. Whilst bias can also occur in data synthesis, no systematic reviews were identified that covered issues with combining studies.
Number of systematic reviews included 10
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 3733
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description