The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions is the official document that describes in detail the process of preparing and maintaining Cochrane systematic reviews on the effects of healthcare interventions.

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Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions

Part One: The Context Of Educational Research Part Two: Planning Educational Research Part Three: Styles Of Educational Research Part Four: Strategies And Instruments For Data Collection And Researching Part Five: Data Analysis

Research Methods in Education

Protocols of systematic reviews and meta-analyses allow for planning and documentation of review methods, act as a guard against arbitrary decision making during review conduct, enable readers to assess for the presence of selective reporting against completed reviews, and, when made publicly available, reduce duplication of efforts and potentially prompt collaboration. Evidence documenting the existence of selective reporting and excessive duplication of reviews on the same or similar topics is accumulating and many calls have been made in support of the documentation and public availability of review protocols. Several efforts have emerged in recent years to rectify these problems, including development of an international register for prospective reviews (PROSPERO) and launch of the first open access journal dedicated to the exclusive publication of systematic review products, including protocols (BioMed Central's Systematic Reviews). Furthering these efforts and building on the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) guidelines, an international group of experts has created a guideline to improve the transparency, accuracy, completeness, and frequency of documented systematic review and meta-analysis protocols--PRISMA-P (for protocols) 2015. The PRISMA-P checklist contains 17 items considered to be essential and minimum components of a systematic review or meta-analysis protocol.This PRISMA-P 2015 Explanation and Elaboration paper provides readers with a full understanding of and evidence about the necessity of each item as well as a model example from an existing published protocol. This paper should be read together with the PRISMA-P 2015 statement. Systematic review authors and assessors are strongly encouraged to make use of PRISMA-P when drafting and appraising review protocols.

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Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015: elaboration and explanation.

There is a growing recognition of the value of synthesising qualitative research in the evidence base in order to facilitate effective and appropriate health care. In response to this, methods for undertaking these syntheses are currently being developed. Thematic analysis is a method that is often used to analyse data in primary qualitative research. This paper reports on the use of this type of analysis in systematic reviews to bring together and integrate the findings of multiple qualitative studies. We describe thematic synthesis, outline several steps for its conduct and illustrate the process and outcome of this approach using a completed review of health promotion research. Thematic synthesis has three stages: the coding of text 'line-by-line'; the development of 'descriptive themes'; and the generation of 'analytical themes'. While the development of descriptive themes remains 'close' to the primary studies, the analytical themes represent a stage of interpretation whereby the reviewers 'go beyond' the primary studies and generate new interpretive constructs, explanations or hypotheses. The use of computer software can facilitate this method of synthesis; detailed guidance is given on how this can be achieved. We used thematic synthesis to combine the studies of children's views and identified key themes to explore in the intervention studies. Most interventions were based in school and often combined learning about health benefits with 'hands-on' experience. The studies of children's views suggested that fruit and vegetables should be treated in different ways, and that messages should not focus on health warnings. Interventions that were in line with these suggestions tended to be more effective. Thematic synthesis enabled us to stay 'close' to the results of the primary studies, synthesising them in a transparent way, and facilitating the explicit production of new concepts and hypotheses. We compare thematic synthesis to other methods for the synthesis of qualitative research, discussing issues of context and rigour. Thematic synthesis is presented as a tried and tested method that preserves an explicit and transparent link between conclusions and the text of primary studies; as such it preserves principles that have traditionally been important to systematic reviewing.

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Methods for the thematic synthesis of qualitative research in systematic reviews

An unresolved issue in the field of implementation research is how to conceptualize and evaluate successful implementation. This paper advances the concept of “implementation outcomes” distinct from service system and clinical treatment outcomes. This paper proposes a heuristic, working “taxonomy” of eight conceptually distinct implementation outcomes—acceptability, adoption, appropriateness, feasibility, fidelity, implementation cost, penetration, and sustainability—along with their nominal definitions. We propose a two-pronged agenda for research on implementation outcomes. Conceptualizing and measuring implementation outcomes will advance understanding of implementation processes, enhance efficiency in implementation research, and pave the way for studies of the comparative effectiveness of implementation strategies.

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Outcomes for Implementation Research: Conceptual Distinctions, Measurement Challenges, and Research Agenda

Healthy futures: A consultation with children and young people in Camden and Islington about their health services

Further evidence on the early benefits and late risks does not change advice to menopausal women

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Hormone replacement therapy comes full circle.

Exploring methodological and practical issues in the systematic review of factors affecting the implementation of child injury prevention initiatives

This paper looks at changing patterns of women's employment in sociology over the last thirty years since the foundation of the British Sociological Association. Starting with an examination of early studies of the sexual division of labour in sociology, we go on to look at the adequacy or otherwise of explanations in these studies. Moving on to more recent surveys of the profession, it becomes clear that there has not been a substantial improvement in the employment prosl)ects for women in sociology, although the subjective situation of women sociologists has probably been improved through the support of the Women's Caucus and increased attention to sexism in the subject matter of sociology. Finally we suggest that improvement in women 's employment prospects in sociology would not only affect the construction of the labour market in sociology, but would be likely to go further, and would also affect the construction of knowledge. The last decade has witnessed a revival of the women's liberation movement which has fostered the efforts of feminist academics to expose the critical absence of women as both theorists and subjects (or objects) of codified knowledge. The cumulative evidence of the invisibility of women in knowledge which has been constructed primarily by men, from a male perspective and about men, makes salutary reading.2 In all the social sciences and some of the physical and natural sciences there has been documentation of the way in which women have been omitted and excluded from the production of knowledge.3 An attention to the exclusion of women from the codification of knowledge is not a new idea. As early as 19 7 2 in her paper 'My Four Revolutions', Jessie Bernard4 was asking not what sociology can do for wome n, but rather what women ( and sympathetic male colleagues) can do for sociology. It is of course significant that it is

Helen Roberts

Papers

Healthy futures: A consultation with children and young people in Camden and Islington about their health services

Hormone replacement therapy comes full circle.

Exploring methodological and practical issues in the systematic review of factors affecting the implementation of child injury prevention initiatives

Changing patterns of women's employment in sociology: 1950-80

Starting the Review: Refining the Question and Defining the Boundaries