Summary of findings 3. Individual level expressive‐writing versus control‐writing.
| Controlled before and after study | |||||
| Patient or population: employees Setting: New South Wales and Queensland, Australia Intervention: expressive writing, at the individual level Comparison: control writing | |||||
| Outcomes | Absolute effects* (95% CI) | № of participants (studies) | Quality of the evidence (GRADE) | Comments | |
| Risk with Control writing | Risk with Expressive‐Writing | ||||
| Self‐reported frequency of incivility victimisation. Follow up: 2 weeks | Mean number of incivility victimisations was 26 | Mean incivility victimisation in the intervention group was 3.3 fewer occurrences (5.4 fewer to 1.2 fewer) | 46 (1 study) | ⊕⊝⊝⊝1 VERY LOW | |
| Self‐reported frequency of incivility perpetration. Follow up: 2 weeks | Mean number of incivility perpetrations was 23 | Mean incivility perpetration in the intervention group was 3.5 fewer occurrences (6.2 fewer to 0.8 fewer) | 46 (1 study) | ⊕⊝⊝⊝1 VERY LOW | |
| *The risk in the intervention group (and its 95% confidence interval) is based on the assumed risk in the comparison group and the relative effect of the intervention (and its 95% CI). CI: Confidence interval | |||||
| GRADE Working Group grades of evidence High quality: We are very confident that the true effect lies close to that of the estimate of the effect Moderate quality: We are moderately confident in the effect estimate: The true effect is likely to be close to the estimate of the effect, but there is a possibility that it is substantially different Low quality: Our confidence in the effect estimate is limited: The true effect may be substantially different from the estimate of the effect Very low quality: We have very little confidence in the effect estimate: The true effect is likely to be substantially different from the estimate of effect | |||||
1. We would have downgraded the quality of evidence twice due to high risk of bias caused by study limitations (lack of randomisation and blinding, and use of self‐reporting instrument) and once due to imprecision (small sample size). However once was enough to reach very low quality evidence as we started at low quality evidence because the included studies used a controlled before‐after design. We found no reason to upgrade the quality of the evidence.