Characteristics of the sources, evaluation, and grading of the certainty of evidence in systematic reviews in public health: A methodological study.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

To systematically explore how the sources of evidence, types of primary studies, and tools used to assess the quality of the primary studies vary across systematic reviews (SRs) in public health.

Methods

We conducted a methodological survey of SRs in public health by searching the of literature in selected journals from electronic bibliographic databases. We selected a 10% random sample of the SRs that met the explicit inclusion criteria. Two researchers independently extracted data for analysis.

Results

We selected 301 SRs for analysis: 94 (31.2%) of these were pre-registered, and 211 (70.1%) declared to have followed published reporting standard. All SRs searched for evidence in electronic bibliographic databases, and more than half (n = 180, 60.0%

SUBMITTER: Xun Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10097925 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature