Social Work Commons^™

The Campbell Collaboration’S Systematic Review Of School-Based Anti-Bullying Interventions Does Not Meet Mandatory Methodological Standards, Julia H. Littell, Dennis M. Gorman

Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research Faculty Research and Scholarship

Background

Many published reviews do not meet the widely accepted PRISMA standards for systematic reviews and meta-analysis. Campbell Collaboration and Cochrane reviews are expected to meet even more rigorous standards, but their adherence to these standards is uneven. For example, a newly updated Campbell systematic review of school-based anti-bullying interventions does not appear to meet many of the Campbell Collaboration’s mandatory methodological standards.

Issues

In this commentary, we document methodological problems in the Campbell Collaboration's new school-based anti-bullying interventions review, including (1) unexplained deviations from the protocol; (2) inadequate documentation of search strategies; (3) inconsistent reports on the number of …

Making Sense Of Meta-Analysis: A Critique Of "Effectiveness Of Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy", Julia H. Littell, Aron Shlonsky

Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research Faculty Research and Scholarship

Evidence-based practice depends in part on knowledge derived from relevant research. For any given topic, there are likely to be many, potentially relevant studies; a careful appraisal and synthesis of the results of these studies is needed to understand the state of the empirical evidence. Meta-analysis is widely used to combine results of quantitative studies; yet this method is unfamiliar to many people and, as a result, meta-analyses are often uncritically accepted. In this article, we argue that meta-analysis is only one component of a good research synthesis. We critique a recent meta-analysis on the effectiveness of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy, …

Evidence-Based Or Biased? The Quality Of Published Reviews Of Evidence-Based Practices, Julia H. Littell

Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research Faculty Research and Scholarship

Objective

To assess methods used to identify, analyze, and synthesize results of empirical research on intervention effects, and determine whether published reviews are vulnerable to various sources and types of bias.

Methods

Study 1 examined the methods, sources, and conclusions of 37 published reviews of research on effects of a model program. Study 2 compared findings of one published trial with summaries of results of that trial that appeared in published reviews.

Results

Study 1: Published reviews varied in terms of the transparency of inclusion criteria, strategies for locating relevant published and unpublished data, standards used to evaluate evidence, and …