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Table 1 Characteristics of included studies

From: Interventions encouraging the use of systematic reviews by health policymakers and managers: A systematic review

Source

Study Design

Participants and setting

Response rate

Content area of systematic reviews

Intervention

Study outcomes

Quality assessment

Ciliska 1999

Cross-sectional survey

Public health policymakers and managers

Initial survey: 87%

1. Home visiting as a public health intervention

Five systematic reviews disseminated to public health decision makers in 1996

91% requesting systematic review in first survey remembered receiving the information

Inadequate reporting of frequency data

  

N = 225

Three-month follow up: 93%

2. Community-based heart health promotion

 

Of those who remembered, 23% stated it played a part in program planning or decision-making

Discrepancy in number of eligible participants

  

Canada

 

3. Adolescent suicide prevention

 

57% (of the 23%) reported it influenced actual recommendations made to others

- 64% of those recommendations were accepted

Conclusions incongruent with data presented

    

4. Community development

 

Implementation of policies is implied. No specific examples are given

Generalizable only to public health professionals making decisions in Ontario, Canada

    

5. Parent-child health

  

No control group

      

Information is self reported

Clustering effect

Dobbins 2001a

Cross-sectional survey

Public health policymakers and managers

Two year follow up: 95.9%

1. Home visiting as a public health intervention

Follow-up to Ciliska 1999 two years later

63% of respondents reported they had used at least one of the systematic reviews in the past 2 years to make a decision

Large number of independent variables with small sample makes interpretation of statistical analysis uncertain

Dobbins 2001b

 

N = 141

 

2. Community-based heart health promotion

 

Implementation of policies is implied. No specific examples are given

Generalizable only to public health professionals making decisions in Ontario, Canada

  

Canada

 

3. Adolescent suicide prevention

  

No control group

    

4. Community development

 

Information is self reported

Clustering effect

    

5. Parent-child health

   

Dobbins 2009

Randomised controlled trial

Public health policymakers and managers

108 out of 141 health departments participated in study

Healthy body weight promotion in children

Health department randomised to receive one of three interventions over a period of one year:

No significant effect on global evidence-informed decision-making

The rate of successful intervention may have differed across the three intervention groups due to discrepancies in the ability of interventions to be implemented

  

N = 108

Follow up data collected from 88 of 108 health departments

 

1. access to an online registry of systematic reviews

Significant effect observed for tailored messages plus access to online registry of systematic reviews (p < 0.01) in health policies and programs

Investigators were limited by participants' ability to self report

  

Canada

  

2. tailored messages plus access to the online registry of systematic reviews

 

One representative individual for each organization used to provide data

     

3. tailored messages plus access to the registry along with a knowledge broker who worked one-on-one with decision makers

 

30% of participants had limited engagement with knowledge brokers, thus caution recommended with generalizability.