Table 4 User patterns of risk of bias implementations in Cochrane and non-Cochrane reviews—evaluation of the Cochrane tool for assessing risk of bias in randomized clinical trials

Risk of bias assessment in reviews

 Any risk of bias (or quality) assessment

100 (100 %)

80 (80 %)

0.30

  Cochrane risk of bias tool

100 (100 %)

31 of 80 (39 %)

0.0002

  Jadad scale

0 (0 %)

19 of 80 (24 %)

0.0001

  PEDro scale

0 (0 %)

5 of 80 (6 %)

0.019

  Own construct or other scale

0 (0 %)

25 of 80 (31 %)^c

0.0001

Descriptive use of risk of bias assessment

 Explicit mentions risk of bias in abstract

80 (80 %)

18 of 31^d (58 %)

0.42

 Explicit mentions risk of bias in discussion/conclusion

89 (89 %)

25 of 31^d (81 %)

0.76

 Explicit mentions risk of bias in both abstract and discussion/conclusion

73 (73 %)

15 of 31^d (48 %)

0.31

Sensitivity and subgroup analyses based on risk of bias

 Review planned (in methods) to do sensitivity analyses

70 (70 %)

8 of 80 (10 %)

0.0001

 Review performed sensitivity analyses

19 (19 %)

11 of 80 (14 %)

0.55

  Based on overall risk of bias

2 of 19 (11 %)

9 of 11 (82 %)

0.015

  Based on individual risk of bias domains

9 of 19 (47 %)

2 of 11 (18 %)

0.45

  Unclear what analyses were based on

8 of 19 (42 %)

0 of 11 (0 %)

0.077

 Review performed, but did not plan sensitivity analyses

1 of 19 (5 %)

8 of 11 (72 %)

0.0084

 Review performed subgroup analyses^a

2 (2 %)

0 of 80 (0 %)

0.50

 Review planned, but did not perform analyses

50 of 70 (71 %)

5 of 8

0.52

  Due to insufficient data^b

41 of 50 (82 %)

3 of 5

0.73

  No explanation provided

9 of 50 (18 %)

2 of 5

0.33

 Review incorporated GRADE

64 (64 %)

4 of 80 (5 %)

0.0001