Can We Systematically Review Studies That Evaluate Complex Interventions
Sasha Shepperd,Simon Lewin,Sharon E. Straus,Mike Clarke,Mike Clarke,Martin P Eccles,Ray Fitzpatrick,Geoff Wong,Aziz Sheikh,Aziz Sheikh +9 more
TLDR
In three Viewpoints, Sasha Shepperd and colleagues, Geoff Wong, and Aziz Sheikh explore various approaches to help systematic reviewers who wish to review complex health interventions.Abstract:
Background to the debate
The UK Medical Research Council defines complex interventions as those comprising “a number of separate elements which seem essential to the proper functioning of the interventions although the ‘active ingredient’ of the intervention that is effective is difficult to specify.” A typical example is specialist care on a stroke unit, which involves a wide range of health professionals delivering a variety of treatments. Michelle Campbell and colleagues have argued that there are “specific difficulties in defining, developing, documenting, and reproducing complex interventions that are subject to more variation than a drug” [10]. These difficulties are one of the reasons why it is challenging for researchers to systematically review complex interventions and synthesize data from separate studies. This PLoS Medicine Debate considers the challenges facing systematic reviewers and suggests several ways of addressing them.read more
Citations
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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Developing and evaluating complex interventions: The new Medical Research Council guidance
TL;DR: The Medical Research Council's evaluation framework (2000) brought welcome clarity to the task and now the council has updated its guidance.
Book
Users' Guides to the Medical Literature
Gordon H. Guyatt,Drummond Rennie +1 more
TL;DR: Without a way of critically appraising the information they receive, clinicians are relatively helpless in deciding what new information to learn and decide how to modify their practice.
Journal ArticleDOI
Framework for design and evaluation of complex interventions to improve health
Michelle Campbell,Ray Fitzpatrick,Andy Haines,Ann Louise Kinmonth,Peter Sandercock,David Spiegelhalter,Peter Tyrer +6 more
TL;DR: The design and execution of research required to address the additional problems resulting from evaluation of complex interventions, those “made up of various interconnecting parts,” are examined.
Journal ArticleDOI
Realist review - a new method of systematic review designed for complex policy interventions
TL;DR: A model of research synthesis designed to work with complex social interventions or programmes, and which is based on the emerging ‘realist’ approach to evaluation is offered, to enable decision-makers to reach a deeper understanding of the intervention and how it can be made to work most effectively.
Journal ArticleDOI
Improving the reporting quality of nonrandomized evaluations of behavioral and public health interventions: the TREND statement.
TL;DR: Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Nonrandomized Designs (TREND) as discussed by the authors is a set of guidelines for transparent reporting of randomized clinical trials that emphasize the reporting of theories used and descriptions of intervention and comparison conditions, research design, and methods of adjusting for possible biases in evaluation studies that use nonrandomized designs.