Searching clinical trial registries is an essential tool to improve the value of systematic reviews. This is a resource review on a paper that describes whether and how this is done in published systematic reviews of pharmacotherapy and assesses their quantitative impact on meta-analysis.
What is data dredging, how does it affect the p-value and what is its impact on the world around us?
Charlotte and Sophie, final year medical students, discuss a recent Cochrane review assessing the effectiveness of interventions for medical students that aim to improve interpersonal communication in medical consultations.
What is grey literature, when would you use it, what are its advantages and disadvantages, and how can you find it?
Chris set up a student journal club in his first year of Physical Therapy training. In this blog, he describes how he started the club, how it has changed and expanded throughout his studies, and provides tips and suggested papers to get you started.
Conducting successful research requires choosing the appropriate study design. This article describes the most common types of designs conducted by researchers.
Carrying out a literature search can feel daunting when faced with the task. This blog introduces you to the main databases available to enable a comprehensive search of the medical literature.
What are adverse events? Why is the recording and reporting of adverse events necessary?
The PROGRESS acronym is designed to remind researchers, and others, to consider the factors which may affect health opportunities and outcomes.
This page provides a brief introduction to Cochrane and highlights some of the Cochrane platforms you can participate in, connect with, and learn from. Participate in Cochrane’s mission to produce and promote trusted health evidence.
In this blog, Tessa provides her own summary of a 2019 Cochrane Systematic Review, “Lifestyle changes for treating psoriasis”.
Participants in clinical trials may exit the study prior to having their results collated; in this case, what do we do with their results?
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A beginner’s guide to standard deviation and standard error: what are they, how are they different and how do you calculate them?
When you see a claim that a treatment or intervention has no effect, it is important to examine the evidence as this may be a misleading statement.
This blog provides a detailed overview of the concept of ‘blinding’ in randomised controlled trials (RCTs). It covers what blinding is, common methods of blinding, why blinding is important, and what researchers might do when blinding is not possible. It also explains the concept of allocation concealment.