| Ref ID | 499 |
| First Author | K. Pussegoda |
| Journal | SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS |
| Year Of Publishing | 2017 |
| URL | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5516390/pdf/13643_2017_Article_527.pdf |
| Keywords |
• General medical • Protocols • Grey literature • External validity • Publication bias • Low reporting quality • Searching • Low methodological quality • Single reviewer • Risk of bias • Overviews/Umbrella Reviews • Disclosure • Error |
| Problem(s) |
• No registered or published protocol • Single reviewer / lack of double checking • No quality assessment undertaken or reported • Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed • Limited quality assessment or no risk of bias • Low reporting (PRISMA) quality • Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality • Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing • Lack of guidance or consistency in systematic overview / umbrella / review of systematic reviews • Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review • Funding or sponsor of systematic review not reported • Ignores setting or context of included studies which limits review applicability • Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided • Lack of prespecification in eligibility criteria • Grey literature excluded • Search strategy not provided • Insufficient literature searches • Poor consideration of publication bias • Errors in effect estimate calculations or data synthesis • Individual study characteristics not reported sufficiently |
| Article Type | Empirical |
| Article Subtype | Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review |
| First Author Country | Canada |
| Checklists |
• PRISMA 2009 • AMSTAR 1 • QUOROM • OQAQ |
| Aim | To assess systematic review adherence to the Quality of Reporting of Meta-analyses (QUOROM) and PRISMA reporting guidelines and the A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) and Overview Quality Assessment Questionnaire (OQAQ) quality assessment tools as evaluated in methodological overviews published between 1990 to 2014 in the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, and EMBASE. |
| Level of Investigation | Descriptive |
| Summary of Findings | Many deficits of methodological and reporting quality were identified of which a few are listed here. Of the reviews using PRISMA, less than 6% provided protocol information and only 30% reported the risk of bias assessment across studies. For reports using QUOROM, only 9% of reviews provided a trial flow diagram and only 46% of reviews described the selection criteria and described the characteristics of included studies. Of reports using AMSTAR, 30% used duplicate study selection and data extraction and only 39% stated conflicts of interest. For reviews using OQAQ, 37% of the reviews assessed risk of bias (validity) in the included studies. |
| Number of systematic reviews included | 5371 |
| Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed | 20765 |