International Journal of Epidemiology 2002;31:6-12
© International Epidemiological Association 2002
Review |
Systematic reviews in epidemiology: why are we so far behind?
Center for Clinical Trials and Evidence-based Healthcare, Department of Community Health Box G-S2, 169 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA. E-mail: Kay_Dickersin@brown.edu
Accepted 24 October 2001
The public health and biomedicine communities have long recognized the need for regular synthesis of the available literature. Given the explosion of scientific information, there is simply too much literature available for any one person to be up-to-date. Review articles, which summarize existing knowledge in an area, serve to fill this need and are published in journals (e.g. Epidemiologic Reviews, Annual Reviews of Public Health) or special volumes, often as invited papers.
There are at least two general purposes to health-related reviews—one to summarize analytical research (e.g. analyses related to possible risk factors for a disease, or the efficacy of an intervention), and the other to summarize descriptive information (e.g. disease mechanisms, incidence and prevalence of a condition) and generate hypotheses and debate. While the value of analytical reviews is mainly to guide future research and clinical practice, the value of reviews that summarize descriptive information is mainly to
Systematic Reviews in Biomedicine
Systematic Reviews of Results in Biomedicine
Systematic Reviews of Observational Studies
Where are we now?
Obstacles to systematic reviews in epidemiology
The need for methodological research
Dissemination of findings from epidemiological studies
Identifying relevant studies
Information bias and selective reporting of outcomes
The quality and heterogeneity of epidemiological research
Conclusions
References
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