Lin 2018.

Study characteristics
Methods	Cluster‐RCT
Participants	N = 105 (66F/39M) People with dementia with symptoms of agitation or depression Mean MMSE 14.9 (SD 3.7) Age 79.5 (SD 7.7) Long‐term care institutions
Interventions	Cognitive stimulation (N = 30) Reminiscence therapy (N = 43) Treatment‐as‐usual control (N = 32)
Outcomes	Cognition: MMSE Quality of Life: QoL‐AD Three‐month follow‐up
Notes	50 minutes, once a week for 10 weeks; cognitive stimulation versus control was relevant comparison for this review. Analysable data requested ‐ not received
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Long‐term care institutions randomly assigned into the different groups through a randomised block technique ‐ but no information about block size and sequence
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Insufficient information regarding concealment
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	No mention of blinding
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	High risk	Participants excluded if attended < 70% of sessions i.e. per protocol analysis ‐ 13% of cognitive stimulation group excluded at post‐test; 15% excluded at follow‐up
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All outcome measures mentioned in Methods were reported.
Other bias ‐ training and supervision	Low risk	Researcher attended a training course in CST.
Other bias ‐ treatment manual	Low risk	Clear structure ‐ followed CST manual, but fewer sessions and adapted content to make more culturally relevant