Quality assessment is the data collection and analysis through which the degree of conformity to predetermined standards and criteria are exemplified. If the quality, through this process is found to be unsatisfactory, attempts are made to discover the reason for this.

Dear Alexandre,

I agree that this is observational design.

I was also struggling to find a suitable quality assessment tool to use in a systematic review with non-randomized uncontrolled studies (check here: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Risk_of_bias_in_uncontrolled_studies).

I´ve never used the tool from NIH listed. However, before you choose a tool for your review, I suggest the following:

1) Check its validation;

2) Search for other reviews using the tool – Are included studies similar to yours? How the review authors are using the tool?;

3) Verify how often the tool is being used (maybe this reference can help: Quigley et al. J Eval Clin Pract 2019;25:44–52);

4) Pilot the tool using some of the studies included in your review.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Erica

Dear Erica, Dear Kamal,

Thank you very much for your answers, it helps me a lot.

Best regards,

Alexandre

You may be interested to look in this :

Quality assessment tools for observational studies: lack of consensus,

International Journal of Evidence-Based Healthcare:

December 2010 - Volume 8 - Issue 4 - p 247

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-1609.2010.00195.x

other scoring systems are:

the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (ARHQ) methodology checklist

Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies‐2 (QUADAS‐2) tool

Oxford Quality Scoring System

For study quality assessment you must studied the quality tools which included the following : Checklists , Fishbone diagram , Control chart , Stratification , Pareto chart. , Histogram and Scatter Diagram tool