Table 3.

Barriers when seeking regulatory data for use in a Cochrane review

	Requested/used regulatory data	Considered regulatory data	Not considered regulatory data
Survey question	Total no. of responses: n (% of total responses)
Are there any barriers to using regulatory data?	n = 20	n = 7	n = 133
Yes	14 (70)	6 (86)	67 (50)
No	2 (10)	0 (0)	10 (8)
Unsure	4 (20)	1 (14)	56 (42)
What were these barriers?	n = 14	n = 5	n = 60
Restricted and limited sharing of data	8	4	31
Time-constraints	6	2	17
Lack of experience (inc. statistical)	4	1	21
Identifying/searching for trials	2	1	13
Quality of data	1	0	12
Cost	0	1	1
Effort/resources required	0	0	5
Limited access for peer reviewers*	0	0	1

*This referred to peer reviewers not having access to regulatory data during the peer review stage