Table 3 Next steps by systematic review framework step
Framework step | Next steps (final products: handbook and reporting guidelines) |
|---|---|
Specify research question | • Improvement of research question formulation |
Protocol | • Template for protocols for systematic reviews of studies of prevalence of exposure • Publication of protocols in a peer-reviewed journal |
Systematic search | • Development of standard search strings and specialized search filters • Identification and development of specific academic and grey literature databases to search • Guidance on including modelling versus empirical data • Automated updating of searches |
Defining eligibility criteria and screening studies | • Guidance to help reviewers produce eligibility criteria that are sufficiently detailed on exposure measurements and methods |
Data extraction | • Template for extracting data from studies of prevalence of exposure • Guidance to include information on specific types of bias for which to extract data (e.g., numerator-denominator bias) |
Risk of bias assessment | • Testing and further development of RoB-SPEO (more details in [10]) |
Synthesis | • Guidance on what evidence should be pooled and what should not (quantitative meta-analysis versus narrative synthesis) • Guidance on how to pool skewed data, with ceiling and floor (0 and 100% exposed), including which software to use • Guidance on interpreting pooled prevalence estimates, including model heterogeneity and skewed pooled confidence intervals |
Certainty of body of evidence assessment | • Testing and further development of QoE-SPEO (more details in [8]) |