Best practice guidelines for abstract screening large‐evidence systematic reviews and meta‐analyses

Abstract

screening is one important aspect of conducting a high‐quality and comprehensive systematic review and meta‐analysis. Abstract screening allows the review team to conduct the tedious but vital first step to synthesize the extant literature: winnowing down the overwhelming amalgamation of citations discovered through research databases to the citations that should be “full‐text” screened and eventually included in the review. Although it is a critical process, few guidelines have been put forth since the publications of seminal systematic review textbooks. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to provide a practical set of best practice guidelines to help future review teams and managers. Each of the 10 proposed guidelines is explained using real‐world examples or illustrations from applications. We also delineate recent experiences where a team of abstract screeners double‐screened 14 923 abstracts in 89 days.

Meta-analytic reviews on the efficacy of adult and youth mental health courts

“…Without having a correlation one cannot compute a standardized mean difference between pre-post scores and consequently, a study without this information cannot be meta-analyzed (Borenstein et al, 2009). This is not an uncommon predicament for a synthesist to find oneself in (Polanin, 2012). In order to include these studies in the current meta-analysis a pre-post correlation needed to be imputed (Polanin, 2012).…”

“…This is not an uncommon predicament for a synthesist to find oneself in (Polanin, 2012). In order to include these studies in the current meta-analysis a pre-post correlation needed to be imputed (Polanin, 2012). The average correlation between pre-post scores was calculated from the studies that reported pre-post correlations and this average (.295) was used as the correlation for the other studies (Polanin, 2012).…”

“…In order to include these studies in the current meta-analysis a pre-post correlation needed to be imputed (Polanin, 2012). The average correlation between pre-post scores was calculated from the studies that reported pre-post correlations and this average (.295) was used as the correlation for the other studies (Polanin, 2012). A sensitivity analysis was then performed to compare the meta-analysis results using the average correlation against the results of the meta-analysis when a correlation o f zero was used in replace of the average correlation (Polanin, 2012).…”

“…The average correlation between pre-post scores was calculated from the studies that reported pre-post correlations and this average (.295) was used as the correlation for the other studies (Polanin, 2012). A sensitivity analysis was then performed to compare the meta-analysis results using the average correlation against the results of the meta-analysis when a correlation o f zero was used in replace of the average correlation (Polanin, 2012). If there isn't a large difference between the mean weighted effect size between the two results then it is considered acceptable to use the imputed average correlation (Polanin, 2012).…”

“…A sensitivity analysis was then performed to compare the meta-analysis results using the average correlation against the results of the meta-analysis when a correlation o f zero was used in replace of the average correlation (Polanin, 2012). If there isn't a large difference between the mean weighted effect size between the two results then it is considered acceptable to use the imputed average correlation (Polanin, 2012).…”