Formulating questions and locating primary studies for inclusion in systematic reviews
Formulating questions and locating primary studies for inclusion in systematic reviews
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DOI：
10.7326/0003-4819-127-5-199709010-00008
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发表时间：
1997-09-01
影响因子：
39.2
通讯作者：
Counsell, C
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Counsell, C
许多时间和精力都花在设计初步研究上。在规划系统审查时也必须给予类似的注意。审查应基于与患者护理相关的重要的、重点明确的问题。通过适当地提出这个问题，初步研究必须满足的标准才能纳入审查，这一点变得清晰起来。这些标准包括受试者类型、暴露、对照组、结果和感兴趣的研究设计，然后可以对其进行细化，使其具有临床相关性、合理性和可操作性。太窄的纳入标准将限制综述中的数据量，从而增加偶然结果的风险，并使综述对读者的有用性降低。评论应该包括那些设计对被问到的问题提供最小偏差答案的研究。为了最大限度地利用现有数据并降低偏倚风险，需要尽可能多地识别相关研究，无论其发表状态或语言如何。因此，应该使用多个重叠的搜索策略，并且必须仔细规划。策略包括搜索许多可用的电子数据库（在仔细考虑要输入哪些术语之后），手动搜索期刊和会议记录，搜索文章的参考书目，搜索现有的研究注册，以及联系公司或研究人员。充分地提出问题和进行适当的搜索所花费的时间将增加产生高质量、有意义的审查的机会。
Much time and effort are spent on designing primary research studies. Similar care must be given to planning systematic reviews. The review should be based on an important, well-focused question that is relevant to patient care. By formulating the question properly, the criteria that primary studies must meet to be included in the review become clear. These criteria, which comprise the types of persons involved, exposure, control group, outcomes, and study designs of interest, can then be refined so that they are clinically relevant, sensible, and workable. Inclusion criteria that are too narrow will limit the amount of data in the review, thereby increasing the risk for chance results and making the review less useful for the reader. Reviews should include studies whose designs offer the least biased answer to the question being asked. To maximize available data and reduce the risk for bias, as many relevant studies as possible need to be identified, regardless of publication status or language. Multiple overlapping search strategies should therefore be used and must be carefully planned. Strategies include searching the many electronic databases available (after careful consideration of which terms to enter), manually searching journals and conference proceedings, searching bibliographies of articles, searching existing registers of studies, and contacting companies or researchers. The time taken to formulate the question adequately and develop appropriate searches will increase the chance of producing a high-quality, meaningful review.