Interpreting epidemiological findings [Epidemiology] Flashcards
Name 2 types of literature review.
narrative review
systematic review
What kind of review is this?
- brings published literature into single article
narrative review
What kind of review is this?
- sets out highly structured approach to searching, sifting, including and summarising literature
- underpinning basis for meta-analysis
systematic review
Name some strengths of narrative reviews.
- agile: easier + faster to write
- often more up-to-date than systematic review
- useful for areas of limited research or higher levels of variation in research approaches
- useful when bringing in work from different disciplines for less easily-answerable questions
Name some strengths of systematic reviews.
- aims to collate all available evidence
- implements highly specified protocol
- inclusion criteria
- can take many months to design
Name some limitations of narrative reviews.
- potentially bias (authors can over/under select works)
- can be over-speculative/unbalanced
- important evidence maybe omitted by chance (not-intent)
Name some limitations of systematic reviews.
- only as good as method employed
- only as good as the indices searched
- only as good as evidence incorporated
- very quickly out of date
look at search date, not publication date!
Outline the process of doing a systematic review?
What does a structured search enable?
enables transparency and future researchers to reproduce approach
What is the difference between indices and a registries
- indices: based on published research
-registries: registrations of research yet to be completed or published
Give some exampled of research indices
MedLine, Embase, PsychInfo
What diagram can be used to should the number at each stage when establishing screening/inclusion.
PRISMA diagram
Outline the process of screening/inclusion
- shows how many articles have been found in original search (1000-3000)
- how many articles removed due to duplicates
- process of screening
- full text reviews (eligibility)
- how many studied will be included?(10-30)
What is grey information?
information that is not published in scientific journals
Why do we need to be careful with grey information?
need to be more careful as not peer reviewed
Where can we find grey information?
via search engines: google scholar / open grey
What do the Cochrane Collaboration do?
bring together evidence into a more coherent batch of papers + publishes series of systematic reviews and meta-analysis and keeps them up-to-date
What is meta-analysis?
a quantitive, formal epidemiological study design used to systematically assess previous research studies to derive conclusions about that body of research.
What is this:
a quantitive, formal epidemiological study design used to systematically assess previous research studies to derive conclusions about that body of research.
meta-analysis
Meta-analysis combines the quantitive findings from separate studies into a _____
pool estimate
What does meta-analysis need from the pooled studies in order from them to be pooled?
As such, these pooled studies require ____ ____?
requires pooled studies to be sufficiently similar
critical appraisal
What word do we used to describe the difference between studies included in meta-analysis?
Heterogeneity
Define Heterogeneity in the context of meta-analysis
difference between studies included
What different sources of heterogeneity can between studies? (3)
give examples
Clinical
- patients, selection criteria
Methodological
- study design, blinding, intervention approach
Statistical
- reporting differences