Background: This paper presents the results of systematic reviews of the effectiveness, applicability, other effects, economic impact, and barriers to use of selected population-based interventions intended to improve vaccination coverage. The related systematic reviews are linked by a common conceptual approach. These reviews form the basis for recommendations by the Task Force on Community Pr...

This paper reviews the difficulties associated with being a statistical reviewer for a medical journal. As background, I consider first the use of statistical reviewers by medical journals, medical journals' policies on statistical peer review, and the limited evidence of its effectiveness. The assessment of a manuscript is considered under the headings of design, methods of analysis, presentat...

STUDY OBJECTIVE There is little guidance on how to select the best available evidence of health effects of social interventions. The aim of this paper was to assess the implications of setting particular inclusion criteria for evidence synthesis. DESIGN Analysis of all relevant studies for one systematic review, followed by sensitivity analysis of the effects of selecting studies based on a t...

BACKGROUND Selective allocation of patients into the compared groups of a randomised trial may cause allocation bias, but the mechanisms behind the bias and its directionality are incompletely understood. We therefore analysed the mechanisms and directionality of allocation bias in randomised clinical trials. METHODS Two systematic reviews and a theoretical analysis. We conducted one systemat...

NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) offers Discovery Grants averaging Can$30,000 to about 70% of its applicants. If the total budget for these grants were evenly divided amongst the 10,000 people qualified to apply, the average grant size would be Can$41,000. The additional costs of writing and reviewing grant applications in our previous analysis only serve to a...

Peer reviews is one possible solution in scaling assessment of open-ended assignment in massive online open courses. However, the amount of data from peer review process is huge and it becomes difficult to explore and understand. In this paper, we present Peereviz, an exploration tool for largescale peer review that helps course instructors to understand and gain insights from the peer review a...

Nancy K. Lowe, Editor Reviews of the literature play an important role in the advancement of nursing and biomedical science by combining the results of systematically chosen studies to come to conclusions about a body of research. The research literature on most topics pertinent to the care of women, infants, and their families is broad and interdisciplinary in origin and focus. The evolution o...

BACKGROUND Understanding variations in the incidence of schizophrenia is a crucial step in unravelling the aetiology of this group of disorders. The aims of this review are to systematically identify studies related to the incidence of schizophrenia, to describe the key features of these studies, and to explore the distribution of rates derived from these studies. METHODS Studies with origina...

Title: Applying systematic review search methods to the grey literature: A case study examining guidelines for school-based breakfast programs in Canada Authors: Katelyn Godin ([email protected]) Jackie Stapleton ([email protected]) Sharon Kirkpatrick ([email protected]) Rhona Hanning ([email protected]) Scott Leatherdale ([email protected]) Version: 1 Date: 1...