Mapping and systematic appraisal of umbrella reviews in epidemiological research: a protocol for a meta-epidemiological study

Systematic Reviews

Protocol

Robin D Brooker¹  Lazaros Belbasis²  John PA Ioannidis³  Emmanuel Zavalis⁴  Cathrine Axfors⁵  Angelo Maria Pezzullo⁶ 

[1] Department of Sociology, University of Essex, Colchester, UK;Meta-Research Innovation Center Berlin, QUEST Center, Berlin Institute of Health, Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany;Clinical Trials and Epidemiological Studies Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK;Meta-Research Innovation Center Berlin, QUEST Center, Berlin Institute of Health, Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany;Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford, Stanford University, Stanford, USA;Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA;Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA;Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA;Department of Statistics, Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford, CA, USA;Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford, Stanford University, Stanford, USA;Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford, Stanford University, Stanford, USA;Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden;Section of Hygiene, Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy;

关键词: Critical appraisal;    Meta-analysis;    Meta-research;    Systematic review;    Umbrella review;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13643-023-02265-7

 received in 2022-06-24, accepted in 2023-06-01,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

IntroductionUmbrella review is one of the terms used to describe an overview of systematic reviews. During the last years, a rapid increase in the number of umbrella reviews on epidemiological studies has been observed, but there is no systematic assessment of their methodological and reporting characteristics. Our study aims to fill this gap by performing a systematic mapping of umbrella reviews in epidemiological research.MethodsWe will perform a meta-epidemiological study including a systematic review in MEDLINE and EMBASE to identify all the umbrella reviews that focused on systematic reviews of epidemiological studies and were published from inception until December 31, 2022. We will consider eligible any research article which was designed as an umbrella review and summarized systematic reviews and meta-analyses of epidemiological studies. From each eligible article, we will extract information about the research topic, the methodological characteristics, and the reporting characteristics. We will examine whether the umbrella reviews assessed the strength of the available evidence and the rigor of the included systematic reviews. We will also examine whether these characteristics change across time.DiscussionOur study will systematically appraise the methodological and reporting characteristics of published umbrella reviews in epidemiological literature. The findings of our study can be used to improve the design and conduct of future umbrella reviews, to derive a standardized set of reporting and methodological guidelines for umbrella reviews, and to allow further meta-epidemiological work.Systematic review registrationosf.io/sxzc6

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2023