We are pleased to announce the re-schedule of the 2019 Methods Symposium, which was postponed due to the cancelled 2019 Cochrane Colloquium, as a free interactive webinar on Wednesday 5 February, 2020.
Cochrane Reviews are becoming increasingly complex as methods evolve, as data sources become more diverse, and as we increasingly recognize that health outcomes are the products of many interlinked elements. Cochrane pioneered the publication of protocols before undertaking systematic reviews, partly to help ensure that the many decisions we make along the way are objective and not based on the results of the identified studies.
This year’s Methods Symposium will examine whether our protocols continue to provide the road map we need to navigate a modern Cochrane Review. We will explore how much can reasonably be anticipated about the decisions we need to make. Speakers will address several aspects of pre-specification from diverse methodological perspectives, showcasing updated material in the new Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Version 6). Issues for discussion include deciding what syntheses are to be performed, deciding which data to extract and analyse, and dealing with issues of complexity in interventions and study contexts. We will discuss the extent to which issues can be overcome with careful review planning, and aim to determine whether refinements are needed in our current guidance for writing protocols.
The Symposium is intended for the wider Cochrane community. The session will be particularly useful for Cochrane Review Group editors, methodologists and others involved in review production, as well as those who are interested in understanding considerations for developing robust Cochrane Review protocols with increasingly diverse evidence.