I am working on a systematic review and at the stage of appraising selected literature, which is mostly nonrandomised. I find the ROBINS-I appraisal tool to be relevant. After reading the 53 paged guideline and the 11 page tool I am finding it a bit complex. Before I give it up I would appreciate tips from those that have previously used it and your experience.
There might be others less complex, any recommendations will be grately appreciated.
Thanks, Nellie
Thanks for the encouragement, I was hoping to get some suggestions from those that have had experience using it.
I have used it for a review of complex interventions and found it time consuming and not easy to reach agreements with. Some questions are rather unclear.
If you have any specific queries do tell and I will try answering. For example, what designs of NRS are you including. In my experience the tool does not fit well with case-control or uncontrolled before after studies well. And if you are including only prospective studies with a concurrent control I would stick to the RoB tool from Cochrane (incorporated in RevMan), with any review specific domains added. The Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) Group criteria is good for assessing ITS designs.
For Robins-I... if you are familiar with Access database have you tried using the template provided on the tool's web page:
https://sites.google.com/site/riskofbiastool/welcome/home/resources
Also, the developers are improving and consolidating it. feel free to write to them with your questions as they probably have more tips and would appreciate feedback.
Hi Sharea,
Thanks for sharing your experience in using ROBINS-I tool; this is of great help. All the selected papers are prospective- cross sectional and pre-and post intervention. I have tried to use the template which I found complex and time consuming as you indicated above; therefore wanted to hear from somebody who's used it before.