Table 3.
Quality assessment applied to the identified reviews
| Paper | 1. Is the review based on a focused question that is adequately formulated and described? | 2. Were eligibility criteria for included and excluded studies predefined and specified? | 3. Did the literature search strategy use a comprehensive systematic approach? | 4. Were titles, abstracts, and full-text articles dually and independently reviewed for inclusion and exclusion to minimize bias? | 5. Was the quality of each included study rated independently by two or more reviewers using a standard method to appraise its internal validity? | 6. Were the included studies listed along with important characteristics and results of each study? | 7. Was publication bias assessed | 8. Was heterogeneity assessed? (this question only applies to meta-analyses) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carabin et al. (2008) [17] | N | N | N | NR | N | N | N | NA |
| Clayson et al. (2006) [4] | Y | N | NR | NR | N | N | N | NA |
| Colautti et al. (2006) [18] | Y | N | N | NR | N | N | N | NA |
| Davis & Pathak (2001) [19] | Y | N | NR | N | N | N | N | NA |
| Drewes et al. (2013) [3] | Y | Y | N | N | N | N | N | NA |
| Gakhar et al. (2013) [12] | Y | N | NR | NR | N | N | N | NA |
| Robberstad & Olsen (2010) [13] | Y | Y | N | NR | N | N | N | NA |
| Simpson et al. (2013) [11] | Y | Y | N | NR | N | Y | N | NA |
| Skevington & O’Connell (2003) [20] | N | N | N | NR | N | N | N | NA |
| Wu et al. (2013) [10] | Y | Y | N | NR | N | Y | N | NA |
Y yes; N No; NA not applicable; NR not reported