Covidence

Once all reviewers have completed the full-text screening and resolved conflicts, and have also completed the Data Extraction, you are ready to move on to Quality Assessment. During the quality assessment phase, the authors appraise the methodological quality of each study selected for inclusion. 

Go to the Quality Assessment Template.

On the Quality Assessment Template, you can either:

• Use the provided quality assessment tool (Cochrane Risk of Bias version 1*) without making modifications to the template.
• Edit the provided quality assessment tool (Cochrane Risk of Bias version 1*) and add/edit domains.
• Start from scratch and create a custom quality assessment template.

*Version 2 of the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool has been released so we recommend editing the Covidence template to reflect RoB-2.

Each study design will be appraised using a separate tool. For example, you may use Cochrane RoB-2 to appraise your included RCTs, and JBI Cohort Checklist to appraise the included cohort studies. That said, you can only create one Quality Assessment form. Therefore, if you have a mix of study designs (e.g. experimental and observational) then you could add multiple quality assessment tools to one form. To differentiate the domains of each tool, add the study design or name of the tool to the domain labels. Here is guidance on creating a template with multiple risk of bias tools.

For help in deciding which Risk of Bias / Quality Assessment tool(s) to use, consult one of the following sites:

• LATITUDES Network
• JBI Critical Appraisal Tools
• OSF Quality Assessment and Risk of Bias Tool Repository: download the spreadsheet named, "Repository of Quality Assessment and Risk of Bias Tools OSF" and use the Study Type/Intended Use dropdown menu in column F to find recommended tools based on study design.