How to conduct evidence appraisal using Gradepro

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This resource is a tutorial created for a course on how to grade evidence using the Gradepro app.

• Format Lessons, Websites
• Language/s English
• Target Audience Further education, Researchers, Self-directed learning
• EBM Stage 3 - Appraising evidence
• Duration 5-15 mins
• Difficulty Intermediate

Key Concepts addressed

• Check the evidence from treatment comparisons
• Don’t be misled by unreliable summaries of treatment comparisons
• Make well-informed treatment choices

Details

This resource is a step by step instructions on how to conduct grading of evidence using the Gradepro app. The Gradepro App is a web app freely available from the GRADE website. It enables a researcher to add studies and study descriptions and conduct appraisal of evidence in simple step by step manner.

In order to use Gradepro, the researcher (or the student) needs to identify one or more studies, and input evidence appraisal information in the form of answering questions that are PICO (population or patients or people, intervention, comparator, and outcomes). Following input of the question, the researcher will need to define the set of outcomes in terms of naming the outcome or outcomes, the nature of the outcomes, the way the outcomes were measured. Following this, the researcher would need to compile either one study or a set of studies and extract or abstract information to identify the quality of evidence and summary of findings. In the end, the researcher will create a set of decisions for each outcome in terms of how much confidence one can have about the quality of the appraised evidence: high, medium, low, or very low. Such appraisal depends on a number of different factors including study design and appraisal of the risk of bias.

However, while gradepro is a powerful app, available for free, and extensive documentation and papers exist for GRADE as a process, relatively little information or guidance is available as to how to use it for a relatively newcomer to the field. Gradepro and GRADE have several tutorials but those are mainly guided towards the more advanced and well-informed users. This tutorial, the author hopes, will meet the needs of those students and practitioner who need to use Gradepro but find it difficult to get started with.

In this tutorial, the author has taken up a Cochrane review, identified studies and taken apart the studies by filling in the framework to make it easy for relatively newcomers to use GRADE. There are also explanations for each step of the process starting with framing questions using PICO format, through searching of Medline and filling in the Gradepro study sheets.