Abstract
BackgroundSystematic reviews are important for decision-makers. They offer many potential benefits but are often written in technical language, are too long, and do not contain contextual details which makes them hard to use for decision-making. There are many organizations that develop and disseminate derivative products, such as evidence summaries, from systematic reviews for different populations or subsets of decision-makers. This systematic review will assess the effectiveness of systematic review summaries on increasing policymakers’ use of systematic review evidence and to identify the components or features of these summaries that are most effective.Methods/designWe will include studies of policy-makers at all levels as well as health-system managers. We will include studies examining any type of “evidence summary,” “policy brief,” or other products derived from systematic reviews that present evidence in a summarized form. The primary outcomes are the following: (1) use of systematic review summaries decision-making (e.g., self-reported use of the evidence in policy-making, decision-making) and (2) policy-maker understanding, knowledge, and/or beliefs (e.g., changes in knowledge scores about the topic included in the summary). We will conduct a systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), non-randomized controlled trials (NRCTs), controlled before-after studies (CBA), and interrupted time series (ITS) studies.DiscussionThe results of this review will inform the development of future systematic review summaries to ensure that systematic review evidence is accessible to and used by policy-makers making health-related decisions.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13643-015-0116-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The results of this review will inform the development of future systematic review summaries to ensure that systematic review evidence is accessible to and used by policy-makers making health-related decisions
A needs assessment conducted by Evidence Aid staff found that systematic review summaries could improve understanding of users (i.e., Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), health care providers) so that they can make decisions on the applicability of the findings to their local setting [6]
Types of interventions We will include studies examining any type of “friendly front end,” “evidence summary,” or “policy brief” or other product derived from systematic reviews or guidelines based on systematic reviews that presents evidence in a summarized form to policy-makers and health system managers
Summary
Most systematic reviews are written using technical language, are too long, and do not describe contextual information important for policymakers and other users making decisions about how to use the evidence [4]. A needs assessment conducted by Evidence Aid staff found that systematic review summaries could improve understanding of users (i.e., NGOs, health care providers) so that they can make decisions on the applicability of the findings to their local setting [6]. These user-friendly formats highlight the policy-relevant information and allow policy-makers to quickly scan the document for relevance [2, 7]
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