Newcastle University

Systematic Reviewing Training School, Newcastle University, 4th-8th January 2016

Systematic Reviews and Their Potential Role in the COST Action

 Background:

The Training School on Systematic Reviewing was held in Newcastle during the week commencing Monday 4^th January 2016 and offered training in Systematic Reviewing techniques and processes, an academic skill that will contribute significantly to the fulfilment of the Action’s Aims for all three Working Groups. The Training School was hosted by Newcastle University, and welcomed 11 Trainees and a total of 6 Trainers, each leading different sessions over the course of the week. The Trainee group, made up of MC Members, MC Substitutes and Working Group Members, contained representatives from Austria, Demark, Hungary, Iceland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey, and The United Kingdom (including Scotland).The trainers included Newcastle University staff in addition to MC Members from Ireland and the United Kingdom.  

This Training School is the first Training School of this COST Action, and was organised by the MC Chair, James Law; the Research Secretary for the Action, Frances Hardcastle; The Training Committee, Kristine Jensen de Lopez and Mila Vulchanova; and other members of the Core Group.

The Training School was advertised through an email that was circulated amongst the Management Committee, for the attention of themselves, their PhD Students, and any other parties that may be interested in participating. Potential applicants were asked to outline their proposed systematic review and its relevance to the Working Groups, and were selected by the MC Chair and Vice-Chair, as mandated by a Management Committee Written Procedure. Trainee Grants were offered on an individual basis to contribute towards the participant’s travel expenses. This was done to fairly account for the variation in air fares from each participating country.

Day One – Monday 4^th January:

The Training School was officially opened by Prof James Law at 1.30pm. Prof Law gave an introduction to the concept of the systematic review, an overview of those in the field, outlined the key criteria for Systematic Reviewing, and led a session introducing the concepts of the research question, the protocol, refining searches, risk of bias, reliability, data extraction and meta-analysis.

Prof Law then led an open discussion on the Trainees’ ideas for their own intended reviews.

Day Two – Tuesday 5^th January

From 9.30 until 1pm, Julia Robinson, the University Liaison Librarian at Newcastle led a teaching session on Systematic Reviewing. This session included:

-          The process of literature searching, tailored towards conducting a Systematic Review

-          Database coverage and overlap

-          Grey literature

-          Open Access resources

The rest of the session included practical exercises and database searching, which allowed each Trainee to access one-to-one support in finding relevant resources for their reviews – making use of controlled vocabulary searching, keyword searching (BOOLEAN, truncation and proximity searching). The trainees were also given an overview of citation management software, EndNote, in order to manage and share their references when conducting their reviews.

From 2-4pm, Dorothy Newbury-Birch (Professor of Alcohol and Public Health Research at Teesside University) led a session on research question design, search strategy, and data extraction.

From 4-5pm, Tom King (Statistician at the Centre for Research Excellence in Child Language, Newcastle University) gave a talk on funnel plots and other statistical methods for quantitative systematic reviews.

Day Three – Wednesday 6^th January

During the morning, Dr. Ciara O’Toole (Lecturer in Speech and Hearing Sciences, University College Cork, Ireland) delivered a teaching session on the Cochrane Review Process, giving a detailed account of this process, from registering a trial protocol through to publication. This session included practical exercises in identifying inclusion/exclusion criteria, data extraction and assessment of risk of bias.

In the afternoon, Sue Roulstone (Emeritus Professor at the University of the West of England, UK) presented on the Service Delivery Review. Using previous reviews conducted with the Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit as examples, this session detailed the relationships between practice and review, surveying and categorising interventions, the challenges associated with searching for evidence, quality appraisal options, synthesis, and presenting the findings of the review. 

The third day of the Training School was concluded with a Networking Dinner in a Newcastle City Centre restaurant.

Day Four – Thursday 7^th January

On Thursday morning, Dorothy Newbury-Birch returned to deliver a session entitled: ‘Narrative Synthesis: How do we write up the results if a meta-analysis isn’t possible?’ which was particularly relevant to several trainees who will be conducting narrative reviews.

In the afternoon, James Law led a workshop on developing the protocol. This session included further discussion of trainee’s developing ideas, one-to-one support, and library time through which the trainees were able to begin formulating their review protocol.

 Day Five – Friday 8^th January

During the final session of the Training School, led by Action Chair James Law, the trainees were able to present their ideas and protocols developed earlier in the week. Within these twenty minute presentations, each trainee discussed the relevance of their review to the aims of the Action Working Groups. Some Proposed review titles that emerged from this presentation session include:

-          “The effectiveness of imitation-based approaches in language intervention for preschool children with (specific) language impairments” (Rob Zwitserlood)

-          “Explicit/metalinguistic versus more implicit interventions to enhance morphosyntax in school-aged children with SLI” (Jessica van Herel)

-          “Systematic Review comparing the effect of specific pragmatic intervention with treatment-as-usual in Children with social communication difficulties” (Hanne Knudsen)

-          “Parent-mediated interventions to promote communication and language development in children with Down Syndrome aged 0-6” (Ciara O’Toole)

-          “Comparison of intervention length among European children with phonological disorders (mild, mild-moderate, moderate-severe, and severe*): a systematic review.” (Dina Caetano Alves)

The Training School was concluded at 2pm. Trainees were asked to complete an evaluation form, and of those returned, the Training School was received very positively. All sessions and trainers were highly praised, with those sessions dedicated to search processes and procedures being ranked as most widely beneficial to the trainees. All trainees have indicated that they plan to conduct their Systematic Reviews, and many intend to take this further, planning publications and future intervention studies which aim to utilise the findings of their upcoming reviews.

The Training Committee have begun discussions on the theme of the next COST Action IS1406 Training School which will be held during the 2016-2017 grant period. 

Last modified: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:37:59 GMT