PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP II: DEVELOPING A PROTOCOL FOR A COCHRANE SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND INTRODUCTION TO THE COCHRANE SYSTEMATIC REVIEW SOFTWARE

The Cochrane Collaboration, established in 1993, is an international, non-profit, independent organisation, established to ensure that up-to-date information about the effects of healthcare interventions is readily available worldwide. The Collaboration aims to introduce scientific rigour to minimise bias into the systematic review process by utilising an explicit and reproducible methodology. Cochrane reviews are particularly relevant and useful to public policy making. The purpose of this workshop is to introduce the Cochrane review process and tool, giving participants the opportunity to begin developing their own review question and Cochrane review protocol, and to encourage researchers to progress to undertaking a full Cochrane review. Specific learning objectives are:

• To understand the rationale and status of Cochrane reviews, especially with regard to public policy making
• To understand the rationale and format of a protocol for Cochrane systematic review
• To be able to develop a Cochrane review protocol, covering the following components: Formulation of the background and the question; Locating and selecting appropriate studies; Appraising trial quality; and Planning the methods of the review
• To understand how to interact with and navigate the Cochrane review manager software, “Revman”, with a focus on Cochrane risk of bias assessment.

NB This workshop will not cover meta-analytic methods.