Assessing the Risk of Bias of Individual Studies in Systematic Reviews of Health Care Interventions

By M. Viswanathan, M. Ansari, N. Berkman, Stephanie M. Chang, L. Hartling, M. McPheeters, P. Santaguida, Tatyana A. Shamliyan, Kavita Singh, A. Tsertsvadze and 1 more. 2012

712 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Comparative Effectiveness Reviews are systematic reviews of existing research on the effectiveness, comparative effectiveness, and harms of different health care interventions. They provide syntheses of relevant evidence to inform real-world health care decisions for patients, providers, and policymakers. Strong methodologic approaches to systematic review improve the transparency, consistency, and scientific rigor of these reports. Through a collaborative effort of the Effective Health Care (EHC) Program, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the EHC Program Scientific Resource Center, and the AHRQ Evidence-based Practice Centers have developed a Methods Guide for Effectiveness and Comparative Effectiveness Reviews. This Guide presents issues key to the development of Comparative Effectiveness Reviews and describes recommended approaches for addressing difficult, frequently encountered methodological issues. The Methods Guide for Comparative Effectiveness Reviews is a living document, and will be updated as further empiric evidence develops and our understanding of better methods improves. Comments and suggestions on the Methods Guide for Effectiveness and Comparative Effectiveness Reviews and the Effective Health Care Program can be made at www.effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov. The findings and conclusions in this document are those of the authors, who are responsible for its contents; the findings and conclusions do not necessarily represent the view of AHRQ or the Veterans Health Administration. Acknowledgments The authors gratefully acknowledge the following individuals for their contributions to this project: • The task of assessing the risk of bias of individual studies is part of assessing the strength of a body of evidence. In preparation for evaluating the overall strength of evidence, reviewers should separate criteria for assessing risk of bias of individual studies from those that assess precision, directness, and applicability. • EPCs may choose to use the terms " assessment of risk of bias " or " quality assessment. " EPCs should define clearly the term used in their systematic review (SR) and comparative effectiveness review (CER) protocols and describe the constructs included as part of the assessment. • We recommend that AHRQ reviews: o Opt for tools that are specifically designed for use in systematic reviews; have demonstrated acceptable validity and reliability; specifically address items related to methodological quality (internal validity) and preferably are based on empirical evidence of bias; where available, are specific to the study designs being evaluated; and avoid the presentation of risk of bias assessment as a composite score. o Do not use study design labels (e.g., RCT, cohort, case-control) as a proxy for …

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions, Statistics and Probability

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Citations in the corpus

Psychological treatments for adults with posttraumatic stress disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis. (2016, methodology): “To assess the risk of bias of studies, we used predefined criteria based on the AHRQ Methods Guide for Comparative Effectiveness Reviews,(Viswanathan et al., 2012) rating studies as low, medium, or high risk of bias.”
The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) version 2018 for information professionals and researchers (2018, neutral): “Currently in the literature, it is discouraged to calculate an overall score from the ratings of each criterion (Herbison et al., 2006; Higgins & Green, 2008; Viswanathan et al., 2012).”
Effects of dance movement therapy and dance on health-related psychological outcomes: A meta-analysis (2014, neutral): “no consensus on the best approach (Viswanathan et al., 2012).”
The Use of Google Trends in Health Care Research: A Systematic Review (2014, methodology): “[ 10,11] Therefore, we attempted to address the two primary sources of potential bias within these studies: the search strategy and the validation of surveillance studies.”