Methods
Guidance
For reviews to be reliable, they need to be carried out rigorously. Since 1996, CRD has provided guidance aimed at ensuring a high standard in the commissioning and conduct of reviews. This guidance is widely recommended and used both nationally and internationally.
Systematic Reviews: CRD’s guidance for undertaking reviews in health care is the latest version, published in 2009. It provides practical guidance for undertaking evidence synthesis based on a thorough understanding of systematic review methodology. It presents the core principles of systematic reviewing and in complementary chapters highlights issues that are specific to reviews of clinical tests, public health interventions, adverse effects, and economic evaluations. The final chapter discusses the incorporation of qualitative research in or alongside effectiveness reviews.
Methods Research
The growing use of systematic reviews has necessitated the ongoing development of review methods. CRD has contributed to the development of review methods and to new forms of evidence synthesis including:
- Adverse effects
- Decision-analytic modelling
- Diagnostic accuracy studies
- Evaluating non-randomised intervention studies
- False negative results
- Finding evidence for reviews of adverse effects
- Indirect comparisons of competing interventions
- Narrative synthesis: a methodology review
- Publication bias
- RCTs for policy interventions
- Systematic reviews of trials and other studies
Identifying research evidence for systematic reviews
We have compiled listings of useful resources for: finding studies for systematic reviews; finding health technology assessments and trials; health economics.
- Systematic Reviews: CRD’s guidance for undertaking reviews in health care provides information on how to conduct a thorough search to identify relevant studies, how to retrieve studies and how to document the search.
- Finding studies for systematic reviews suggests some key sources to search, and advises on information tools which may yield further sources of information when identifying studies for a systematic review.
- Health technology assessment: databases and research registers lists health technology assessment resources, including information on how to locate completed and ongoing HTA research.
- Finding trials on the internet suggests how to find details of clinical trials using information resources on the Internet.
- Information resources in health economics lists sources of information in health economics.
- InterTASC Information Specialists' Sub-Group (ISSG) Search Filter Resource records known search filters designed to retrieve research by study design.
