Updated Method Guidelines for Systematic Reviews in the Cochrane Collaboration Back Review Group
Bibliographic record
Abstract
STUDY DESIGN: Descriptive method guidelines. OBJECTIVES: To help reviewers design, conduct, and report reviews of trials in the field of back and neck pain. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: In 1997, the Cochrane Collaboration Back Review Group published method guidelines for systematic reviews. Since its publication, new methodologic evidence emerged and more experience was acquired in conducting reviews. METHODS: All reviews and protocols of the Back Review Group were assessed for compliance with the 1997 method guidelines. Also, the most recent version of the Cochrane Handbook (4.1) was checked for new recommendations. In addition, some important topics that were not addressed in the 1997 method guidelines were included (e.g., methods for qualitative analysis, reporting of conclusions, and discussion of clinical relevance of the results). In May 2002, preliminary results were presented and discussed in a workshop. In two rounds, a list of all possible recommendations and the final draft were circulated for comments among the editors of the Back Review Group. RESULTS: The recommendations are divided in five categories: literature search, inclusion criteria, methodologic quality assessment, data extraction, and data analysis. Each recommendation is classified in minimum criteria and further guidance. Additional recommendations are included regarding assessment of clinical relevance, and reporting of results and conclusions. CONCLUSIONS: Systematic reviews need to be conducted as carefully as the trials they report and, to achieve full impact, systematic reviews need to meet high methodologic standards.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.288 | 0.557 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.014 | 0.018 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.038 | 0.047 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.012 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.008 | 0.013 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.063 | 0.024 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".