Posted on 2 September 2019 by Ella Flemyng (Methods Implementation Coordinator)

The Cochrane Methods Executive is delighted to invite you to the ‘2019 Methods Symposium: Developing robust review protocols with increasingly diverse evidence’ on Monday 21 October 2019 in Santiago, Chile (day before the Colloquium proper). There is no fee for attending this event. All are welcome, but attendees must register beforehand. 

This year the Methods Symposium is dedicated to protocols and pre-specification and highlights material in the new Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Full details are below, with details on all the pre-Colloquium Satellites and Meetings here.

To register, please log-in to your Colloquium account and go to the Additional Registration page, select the Symposium, and select "Save" at the bottom.

Methods Symposium: Developing robust review protocols with increasingly diverse evidence

Monday, October 21, 2019
14:00-17:00, CasaPiedra
Cochrane reviews are becoming increasingly complex as methods evolve, as data sources become more diverse, and as we increasingly recognize that health outcomes are the products of many interlinked elements. Cochrane pioneered the publication of protocols before undertaking systematic reviews, partly to help ensure that the many decisions we make along the way are objective and not based on the results of the identified studies.
This year’s Methods Symposium will examine whether our protocols continue to provide the road map we need to navigate a modern Cochrane review. We will explore how much can reasonably be anticipated about the decisions we need to make. Speakers will address several aspects of pre-specification from diverse methodological perspectives, showcasing updated material in the new Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Version 6). Issues for discussion include deciding what syntheses are to be performed, deciding which data to extract and analyse, and dealing with issues of complexity in interventions and study contexts. We will discuss the extent to which issues can be overcome with careful review planning, and aim to determine whether refinements are needed in our current guidance for writing protocols.