Screening and Assessing Results - Systematic Searching Support

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

Selection criteria are important to determine in advance of screening records and are especially important for reviews that aim to minimize the chance of bias.

Inclusion criteria: variables that are required for an article to be eligible for inclusion in a literature review. Examples: experimental design, human subjects, English language, match of population/intervention/outcome

Exclusion criteria: variables that render an article inappropriate for inclusion. Exclusion criteria may not be as easy to identify in advance, but may become apparent with screening a test batch of records. Examples:healthy subjects (rather than patients), mixed age groups, funding from pharmaceutical industry.

Assessing Study Bias and Quality

Cochrane Handbook: Assessing Risk of Bias
Chapter 8 of the Cochrane Handbook provides an overview of the process and tools available.
Cochrane Handbook: Including Non-Randomized Studies
Chapter 13 provides specific guidance for assessing risk of bias and quality of non-randomized studies.
GRADE Working Group Tools
Resources from GRADE working group, an international collaborative that has produced a standard for grading quality of evidence and strength of recommendations.
NIH Study Quality Assesssment Tools
Tools developed for assessing quality of various study types for guidelines and systematic reviews from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Insitute and developed in collaboration with groups recognized internationally as EBP leaders.
Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument (MERSQI)
The MERSQI is a tool for measuring the quality of experimental, quasi-experimental, and observational studies in medical education.
Quality Assessment and Risk of Bias Tool Repository
Created by librarians at Duke University, this resource provides an extensive list of risk of bias or quality assessment tools for evidence synthesis projects.