A scoping review of rapid review methods

By Andrea C. Tricco, J. Antony, Wasifa Zarin, L. Strifler, M. Ghassemi, J. Ivory, Laure Perrier, B. Hutton, David Moher, Sharon E. Straus. BMC Medicine, 2015

962 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BackgroundRapid reviews are a form of knowledge synthesis in which components of the systematic review process are simplified or omitted to produce information in a timely manner. Although numerous centers are conducting rapid reviews internationally, few studies have examined the methodological characteristics of rapid reviews. We aimed to examine articles, books, and reports that evaluated, compared, used or described rapid reviews or methods through a scoping review.MethodsMEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, internet websites of rapid review producers, and reference lists were searched to identify articles for inclusion. Two reviewers independently screened literature search results and abstracted data from included studies. Descriptive analysis was conducted.ResultsWe included 100 articles plus one companion report that were published between 1997 and 2013. The studies were categorized as 84 application papers, seven development papers, six impact papers, and four comparison papers (one was included in two categories). The rapid reviews were conducted between 1 and 12 months, predominantly in Europe (58 %) and North America (20 %). The included studies failed to report 6 % to 73 % of the specific systematic review steps examined. Fifty unique rapid review methods were identified; 16 methods occurred more than once. Streamlined methods that were used in the 82 rapid reviews included limiting the literature search to published literature (24 %) or one database (2 %), limiting inclusion criteria by date (68 %) or language (49 %), having one person screen and another verify or screen excluded studies (6 %), having one person abstract data and another verify (23 %), not conducting risk of bias/quality appraisal (7 %) or having only one reviewer conduct the quality appraisal (7 %), and presenting results as a narrative summary (78 %). Four case studies were identified that compared the results of rapid reviews to systematic reviews. Three studies found that the conclusions between rapid reviews and systematic reviews were congruent.ConclusionsNumerous rapid review approaches were identified and few were used consistently in the literature. Poor quality of reporting was observed. A prospective study comparing the results from rapid reviews to those obtained through systematic reviews is warranted.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4749cb8f24ee2e86671a8edcf75ab34b29da795f

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In General Health Professions

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Citations in the corpus

World guidelines for falls prevention and management for older adults: a global initiative (2022, neutral): “Ten ad hoc expert groups performed additional rapid reviews [29] of clinical areas not covered by the WGs.”
A scoping review on the conduct and reporting of scoping reviews (2016, methodology): “The consultation exercise has proven to be useful to members of our research team when we have conducted previous scoping reviews [25].”
Review: Consumption-stage food waste reduction interventions – What works and how to design better interventions (2019, methodology): “Methods The methodology for rapid reviews has emerged as a streamlined approach to synthesizing evidence in a timely manner – rather than using a more in-depth and time-consuming systematic review (Khangura et al., 2012; Tricco et al., 2015).”
Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group offers evidence-informed guidance to conduct rapid reviews (2020, neutral): “Although published descriptions of RRs date back nearly a decade [6,7], a standard or consensus deﬁnition does not exist.”
Rapid Systematic Review: The Impact of Social Isolation and Loneliness on the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents in the Context of COVID-19 (2020, methodology): “9,10 It uses “abbreviated” systematic review methodology, including limiting search criteria, faster data extraction, and using narrative synthesis methods.(11,12)”