Examining the state, quality and strength of the evidence in the research on built environments and physical activity among adults: An overview of reviews from high income countries

Ref ID 902
First Author S.A. Prince
Journal HEALTH & PLACE
Year Of Publishing 2022
URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1353829222001356?via%3Dihub
Keywords • Environment
• Protocols
• Public health
• Low methodological quality
• Single reviewer
• Disclosure
• Risk of bias
Problem(s) • Undocumented or unjustified deviations to the review protocol
• Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed
• No registered or published protocol
• Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review
• Single reviewer / lack of double checking
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Canada
Checklists • AMSTAR 2
• GRADE
Aim To examine and describe the current state, strength and quality of research investigating the associations between built environments and PA domains of active living (i.e., leisure, transportation, occupational) and total PA among adults (≥18 years) from high-income OECD countries.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings From 116 included systematic reviews of associations between built environments and physical activity domains of active living indexed across 6 databases from January 2000 to May 2020. Most (75/116) reviews were assessed as being of critically low methodological quality, 18 were assessed as low quality using AMSTAR-2 criteria. Items which were not reported by a high proportion of systematic reviews were the availability or deviations from a pre-registered protocol; and reporting on the sources of funding for the studies included in the review. Other items which many reviews did not adhere to were performing study selection in duplicate, performing data extraction in duplicate, and accounting for Risk of Bias in individual studies when interpreting/ discussing the results of the review.
Number of systematic reviews included 116
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 2112
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description