Citation

Haq. Int. J. Health Promot. Educ. 2008; 46(4): 139-141.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Institute of Health Education)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Systematic reviews are considered the best source of evidence of health care interventions. The review however can only be as good as the studies included in it. All reviewers must therefore assess the quality of the primary studies included in their review to increase the validity of the results of their review and hence the conclusions drawn from it. There are broadly two approaches to assessment of study quality: the component approach and the composite approach. The former relies on assessment of individual domains pertaining to the conduct or methodology of the clinical trial such as allocation concealment, blinding of participants and assessments etc. The latter relies on a numerical composite score derived from scoring of these individual domains. Both approaches have been used by reviewers though the former is the more flexible in its approach to assessing study quality and is the recommended style of the Cochrane Collaboration.