Thanks for your suggestion, Julius. I would like to analyze the effects of intervention, so some of the criteria are a) case-control studies, b) n>= 10 in all the groups, c) outcome variables regarding memory (not MMSE, MoCA,...).

Dear Javier,

I personally use Oxford center for evidence based medicine checklists.

http://www.cebm.net/index.aspx?o=1157

However for case control studies I use STROBE checklists

http://www.strobe-statement.org/PDF%20hochladen/index.php?id=available-checklists

Hopefully this will help

RAmin

Sorry

The correct address is

http://www.strobe-statement.org/index.php?id=available-checklists

Dear Ramin, very valuable suggestions. I think I will use the STROBE checklist for case-control studies.

Thank you very much!

Javi

Dear Javi, In addition to the strobe checklist

( http://www.strobe-statement.org/index.php?id=available-checklists )

for meta analysis, you may wish to investigate use of the comprehensive meta analysis software

( http://www.meta-analysis.com/index.php).

Hope this helps.

Dear Javi,

I agree that the STROBE is a good choice in your case. I would suggest not to use the quality rating for inclusion/exclusion purposes. Rather, I think it is better to include this information in a moderator analysis (if you have enough studies to do it)

Dear Gianluca,

Thanks for your suggestions. What I am doing is selecting articles based on some criteria (outcomes, case-control, sample sizes, etc). Among those included, I check individually each of the points, for them to be compared a posteriori ans give details about the quality of studies.

Thank you very much again!

Javi

Dear Javier,

For reviews of RCTs: The Cochrane Collaboration has an excellent handbook available online (http://www.cochrane.org/training/cochrane-handbook) which I can recommend. Cochrane has their own rating scale for RCTs looking at internal and external validity, see their handbook. They also provide RevMan5, free software for preparing and doing a review (http://tech.cochrane.org/revman). Another rating scale is the PEDro scale, developed by the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (http://www.pedro.org.au/english/downloads/pedro-scale/).

Dear Morten, thank you a lot for your recommendations. I have reading about Cochrane collaboration handbook and RevMan, but you can not use it unless you are registered and have an account in Cochrane. I read about PEDro scale long ago, and totally forgot. I will take a look at it again. I am collecting all these scales to find which one fits the best in my research. Thank you very much for your help!

I agree that either the Cochrane Risk of Bias or the Strobe cheklist are good choices. However, if you want another option you can consider the Down´s and Black checklist:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1756728/pdf/v052p00377.pdf

is a strong and valid tool. One of the disavantages is that it´s very long but is a much flexible checkclist (i mean that can be used in different study designs).

Finally, the PEDro Scale could be usefull also, it´s "smaller" (11 items), is valid and avaliable in different languages:

http://www.pedro.org.au/english/downloads/pedro-scale/

however, is more adequate to health and medicine areaas (RCTS...). Depends on the kinds of studies you have.

Keep in mind that the STROBE checklist is a reporting checklist and what you want in meta-analysis is a risk-of-bias (methodological quality) checklist so STROBE is not suitable. There is a paper that may be helpful: Sanderson S, Tatt ID, Higgins JP. Tools for assessing quality and

susceptibility to bias in observational studies in epidemiology: a systematic

review and annotated bibliography. Int J Epidemiol. 2007 Jun;36(3):666-76. Epub

2007 Apr 30. Review. PubMed PMID: 17470488.

Try AMSTAR. See my paper entitled, "Meta review of systematic and meta analytic reviews on movement differences, effect of movement based interventions, and the underlying neural mechanisms in autism spectrum disorder." for reference.

The choice of your assessment tool will strongly depend on the studies included in your review. Have a look at the EQUATOR network (http://www.equator-network.org/), since they provide a summary of most available tools to assess methodological quality of included studies.

I´m with Miyahara. Been looking more into it and since AMSTAR is specific for systematic reviews, probably a better choice for you.