When analysing risk of bias for a systematic review using the OHAT guideline. Is there a right or wrong answer, or it is judged based on the writers perspective?
Does the selection always have to be justified to why the risk of bias was low?
Risk of bias and quality assessment in systematic reviews is arguably subjective but should be grounded on good reasoning.
In my view, there is really no hard "right" or "wrong" answer - the merit of the judgment is always on the thoroughness and detail of justification. Thus, the rationale for every risk of bias/quality assessment should always be made available to the reader (if not in the main paper, at least as part of the supplementary material). It can be, argued, however, that the justification in most cases should be in line with the convention as far as current best practices is concerned. The best starting point to learn the conventional best practice is the guideline documents. It may be OHAT in your case, and in my case it is often the Cochrane RoB tool.
All judgments, low risk, unclear risk, high risk, on bias(es) should be justified to the best of your ability. The aim really is for the reader to understand why you reached such arguably subjective decisions. Whether the reader agrees/disagrees with your judgments and decides to do risk of bias assessments of her/his own, as long as you did your assessments conscientiously and reported these transparently, should not be your immediate concern. Good luck!
In my view, it is safer to use standard and validated tools for quality assessing if feasible. This resource link may be useful.
https://wiki.jbi.global/display/MANUAL
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