Stage 5: Assessing Quality: Resources

All Resources from Stage 5: Evaluating Data

Step 1: How to Identify Appraisal Criteria

• University of Southern Australia's webpage: List of Critical Appraisal Tools
• Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) offers a range of critical appraisal tools for health research
• A road map for how to select a common critical appraisal tool in nursing: Critical Appraisal Tools and Reporting Guidelines for Evidence‐Based Practice: Buccheri, R. K., & Sharifi, C. (2017). Worldviews on Evidence-based Nursing, 14(6), 463-472.

Step 2: How to Assess Quality of Included Studies

• Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Ch 7 Assessing risk of bias in included studies.
• Hannes K. Chapter 4: Critical appraisal of qualitative research. In: Noyes J, Booth A, Hannes K, Harden A, Harris J, Lewin S, Lockwood C (editors), Supplementary Guidance for Inclusion of Qualitative Research in Cochrane Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Version 1 (updated August 2011). Cochrane Collaboration Qualitative Methods Group, 2011.

Step 3: Assessing the Confidence in Cumulative Evidence

• GRADE Resources (from Cochrane; Handbook, software, introduction to using GRADE, common errors in GRADE)
• GRADE-CERQual: An introduction for qualitative evidence synthesis [Cochrane webinar)
• GRADE-CERQual: Applying GRADE-CERQual to qualitative evidence synthesis findings–paper 6: how to assess relevance of the data. Noyes, J., Booth, A., Lewin, S., Carlsen, B., Glenton, C., Colvin, C. J., ... & Tunςalp, Ö. (2018). Implementation Science, 13(1), 4.

GRADE provides guidance for rating the quality of evidence and the strength of recommendations in health care. A series of articles describing the GRADE approach were published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (2011, Vol 64, Issue 4).

• GRADE guidelines: 1. Introduction—GRADE evidence profiles and summary of findings tables
• GRADE guidelines: 2. Framing the question and deciding on important outcomes
• GRADE guidelines: 3. Rating the quality of evidence
• GRADE guidelines: 4. Rating the quality of evidence—study limitations (risk of bias)
• GRADE guidelines: 5. Rating the quality of evidence—publication bias
• GRADE guidelines 6. Rating the quality of evidence—imprecision
• GRADE guidelines: 7. Rating the quality of evidence—inconsistency
• GRADE guidelines: 8. Rating the quality of evidence—indirectness