Transfer study results into RevMan

Study centric data management is available by default for new Cochrane reviews from April 25th 2023.  

• Authors with ongoing protocols should consider using study centric data management given the benefits listed on the intro page.
• Authors that have started the data extraction stage or who are updating a review may wish to use study centric data management, but it will require completed work to be repeated to ensure the correct setup. 

After setting up the review criteria (see Step 1), you can enter results for the included studies.

There are three ways to enter study results: 

1. Via an import using CSV files - click to navigate to this article
2. Via a Covidence export and RevMan import - click to navigate to this article
3. Manually - described below on this page

1. Types of study results data 

RevMan can manage two types of results data in the analyses: 

1. Arm level data: When data for all study intervention arms are available, such as the number of cases or events for each arm or mean effect sizes for each arm.
2. Contrast level data: If only effect estimates for comparing the intervention arms are available, e.g. mean difference, (adjusted) odds ratio, hazard ratios. It is possible to use either of these sets of data, or combine them together. With study-centric data-analysis (under ‘Data source’), you can choose to include:
   1. Only arm-level data
   2. Only contrast-level data
   3. Contrast- and arm-level data (preferring arm-level data where both exist)
   4. Contrast- and arm-level data (preferring contrast-level data where both exist) 

Section 5.3.6 of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions provides more guidance on the different types of data and in what circumstances either might be preferred in your analyses. 

Here is an example of arm level data: 

Here is an example of contrast level data:

 2. Enter study results data manually

Below we detail the manual steps for entering study results into RevMan. In this example, you start by entering data for a study ('Herne 1980'). Click Studies in the navigation panel and then Included.

2.a. Enter the study's intervention arms

The study you are entering data for has three intervention arms: Xibornol, Tetracycline and Placebo. The former two intervention arms correspond to the 'Antibiotics' intervention you defined in the first step, while the latter corresponds to the Placebo intervention. You could choose to combine the first two arms manually, but it's better to let RevMan do this so that you have a record of the original extracted data.

Go to the Study arm tab. Click Add Arm and choose 'Antibiotics' as the Intervention. For the Name, enter 'Xibornol' (overwriting the default name provided by RevMan). 
Add the second arm by clicking Add Arm, and choose 'Antibiotics' as the Intervention again. For the Name, enter 'Tetracycline'. Finally, click Add Arm a third time and choose 'Placebo' as Intervention. Leave the default Name as it is.

2.b. Enter the study's result data

After you have entered the study arms, go to the Result Data tab. Click Add result and select the outcome that you defined earlier 'Persistent symptoms after 7 days' from the Outcome list and select what type of results data you will be entering: arm-level or contrast-level and click OK. 

Adding a result will generate a table with one row for each of the study arms, and columns where you can enter the required result data.

In this case with arm-level data, it’s number of Events (participants with symptoms) and the Total (sample size) for each arm.

For Placebo, enter Events 51 and Total 155.
For Aureomycin, enter Events 39 and Total 154.

When adding a Result for contrast-level data, you will also need to specify the effect measure and reference arm.

In this case with contrast-level data, it’s logOdds ratio and standard error for each contrast.

(Tetracycline vs Placebo): logOdds ratio -3.5 and the standard error 0.5
(Xibornolics vs Placebo): logOdds ratio -1.2 and the standard error 1

Move between the included studies to add the Study Arms and Results data analysis for each using the navigation arrows.

2.c. Add covariates to studies

If you predefined covariates for subgroup and sensitivity analyses (in Step 1), assign the relevant covariate categories to each included study. 

The restriction is however that the studies only report one result per covariate in order to assign it. Currently, this is the only type of subgrouping and sensitivity analyses you can do with study centric data management. 

Assuming that all of our (already defined) studies fall into one of the two categories, go to the Covariate tab (still within the Included studies). You will see all your predefined covariates listed with dropdown options for the different predefined categories.

Move between the included studies to add Covariates for each using the Previous and Next navigation arrows.

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