Risk of bias in Cochrane systematic reviews: assessments of risk related to attrition bias are highly inconsistent

Ref ID 75
First Author A. Babic
Journal BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2019
URL https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12874-019-0717-9#citeas
Keywords • Risk of bias
• General medical
• 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 consistency of judgments and support for judgments of blinding of participants and personnel in Cochrane systematic reviews of interventions published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from July 2015 to June 2016.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings In Cochrane reviews, risk of bias assessments for blinding of participants and personnel were frequently not in line with Cochrane Handbook recommendations. From 718 included Cochrane reviews, 1,828 out of 6,918 judgments (26%) for performance bias were not in line with the Cochrane Handbook and were therefore considered inadequate. More accurate judgments were deemed possible to be made if the performance bias domain is by default split into two subdomains, for participants and personnel.
Number of systematic reviews included 718
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 955