Criteria questions | Assessment | Comments and concerns | |
High risk | Low risk | ||
Research governance | |||
Are there any retraction notices or expressions of concern listed on the Retraction Watch Database relating to this study? | Yes | No | |
Was the study prospectively registered (for those studies published after 2010) If not, was there a plausible reason? | No | Yes | |
When requested, did the trial authors provide/share the protocol and/or ethics approval letter? | No | Yes | |
Did the trial authors engage in communication with the Cochrane Review authors within the agreed timelines? | No | Yes | |
Did the trial authors provide IPD data upon request? If not, was there a plausible reason? | No | Yes | |
Baseline characteristics | |||
Is the study free from characteristics of the study participants that appear too similar? (e.g. distribution of the mean (SD) excessively narrow or excessively wide, as noted by Carlisle 2017) |
No | Yes | |
Feasibility | |||
Is the study free from characteristics that could be implausible? (e.g. large numbers of women with a rare condition (such as severe cholestasis in pregnancy) recruited within 12 months) | No | Yes | |
In cases with (close to) zero losses to follow‐up, is there a plausible explanation? | No | Yes | |
Results | |||
Is the study free from results that could be implausible? (e.g. massive risk reduction for main outcomes with small sample size)? | No | Yes | |
Do the numbers randomised to each group suggest that adequate randomisation methods were used (e.g. is the study free from issues such as unexpectedly even numbers of women ‘randomised’ including a mismatch between the numbers and the methods, if the authors say ‘no blocking was used’ but still end up with equal numbers, or if the authors say they used ‘blocks of 4’ but the final numbers differ by 6)? | No | Yes | |
For abstracts only: | |||
Have the study authors confirmed in writing that the data to be included in the review have come from the final analysis and will not change? | No | Yes |