Appraising Research Reports
Assessing and interpreting research reports involves examination of individual studies as well as summaries of many studies. Summaries may be conveyed in narrative reviews or, more typically, in meta-analyses. This chapter reviews how researchers conduct a meta-analysis and report the results, especially by means of forest plots, which incorporate measures of effect size and their confidence intervals. A meta-analysis may also use moderator analyses or meta-regressions to identify important influences on the results. Critical appraisal of a study requires careful attention to the details of the sample used, the independent variable (treatment), dependent variable (outcome measure), the comparison groups, and the relation between the stated conclusions and the actual results. The CONSORT flow diagram provides a context for interpreting the sample and comparison groups. Finally, users must be alert to possible artifacts of publication bias.