The judgement of biases included in the category “other bias” in Cochrane systematic reviews of interventions: a systematic survey

Ref ID 442
First Author A. Babic
Journal BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2019
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6458756/pdf/12874_2019_Article_718.pdf
Keywords • Cochrane
• Risk of bias
• General medical
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
Checklists • Cochrane Risk of Bias
Aim To assess the types of bias and their corresponding judgements noted in the ‘other bias’ domain of Cochrane risk of bias tool Cochrane reviews of randomized controlled trials published between July 2015 to June 2016.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Insufficient and unclear reporting of the ‘other bias’ domain was very common in the Cochrane reviews analysed. 78% of included Cochrane reviews used the ‘other bias’ domain in the risk of bias assessment. The judgments of the same supporting explanations were highly inconsistent and were grouped into 31 types. There were numerous other inconsistencies in reporting of sources of other bias in Cochrane reviews.
Number of systematic reviews included 768
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 955
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description