虽然无可争议的重要,以及定义上的任何系统审查(SR)的一部分,评估纳入研究中的偏倚风险是进行SR最耗时的部分之一.在本文中,我们描述了一个案例研究,该案例研究包括对以前发表的综述(CRD42021236047)中的偏倚风险(RoB)和报告质量(RQ)评估的广泛分析.它包括动物和人类研究,纳入的研究将基线患病受试者与对照进行了比较,评估了研究性治疗的效果,或者两者兼而有之。我们比较了不同类型纳入的主要研究之间的RoB和RQ。我们还评估了元研究人员每个单独元素的“信息价值”,基于这样的观点,即报告中的差异可能比始终高/低或报告/未报告的分数更有趣。总的来说,对实验细节的报告较低.这导致经常不清楚的偏见风险评分。我们在动物和人类研究以及疾病控制比较和实验治疗研究中都观察到了这一点。图和探索性卡方检验表明,对于研究性治疗的人类研究,报告比其他研究类型略好。有了报告的证据,系统评价的偏倚风险评估除了反复表明在各种体内研究中需要改进实验细节报告外,其信息价值较低.特别是对于不直接告知治疗决定的审查,对纳入研究的质量进行彻底但部分的评估可能是有效的,所包含出版物的随机子集或相对信息要素的子集,包括,例如,道德评估,利益冲突声明,研究局限性,基线特征,和分析单位。该出版物提出了几种潜在的程序。
While undisputedly important, and part of any systematic review (SR) by definition, evaluation of the risk of
bias within the included studies is one of the most time-consuming parts of performing an SR. In this paper, we describe a
case study comprising an extensive analysis of risk of
bias (RoB) and reporting quality (RQ) assessment from a previously published review (CRD42021236047). It included both animal and human studies, and the included studies compared baseline diseased subjects with controls, assessed the effects of investigational treatments, or both. We compared RoB and RQ between the different types of included primary studies. We also assessed the \"informative value\" of each of the separate elements for meta-researchers, based on the notion that variation in reporting may be more interesting for the meta-researcher than consistently high/low or reported/non-reported scores. In general, reporting of experimental details was low. This resulted in frequent unclear risk-of-
bias scores. We observed this both for animal and for human studies and both for disease-control comparisons and investigations of experimental treatments. Plots and explorative chi-square tests showed that reporting was slightly better for human studies of investigational treatments than for the other study types. With the evidence reported as is, risk-of-
bias assessments for systematic reviews have low informative value other than repeatedly showing that reporting of experimental details needs to improve in all kinds of in vivo research. Particularly for reviews that do not directly inform treatment decisions, it could be efficient to perform a thorough but partial assessment of the quality of the included studies, either of a random subset of the included publications or of a subset of relatively informative elements, comprising, e.g. ethics evaluation, conflicts of interest statements, study limitations, baseline characteristics, and the unit of analysis. This publication suggests several potential procedures.