These details refer to the release notes posted HERE.
Additions to fields
There are a few additions to the fields available for annotation. These are OPTIONAL (with one small exception – see Outcome Domain & Measure), and all the fields that were in the old tool are still there.
Please feel free to ignore the new fields and continue annotating as you have been if that works best for you.
The changes involve things we have been asked to include by one Cochrane group or another, so we are expecting that they will be used with increasing frequency over time.
- Number of Participants
Both the I and C sections now have a place to note the number of participants enrolled in each arm of a trial. This clearly does not apply to Review annotations. For study annotations, feel free to add the information if it is available. It often is not included in Characteristics of Studies Tables. - Outcome Endpoints
This field allows annotation of the time(s) at which an outcome was assessed. The AND button is available to use for outcomes that are assessed more than once. - Primary Outcome
The “1ry” tickbox can be ticked to designate a primary outcome and left unticked to designate a non-primary outcome. Unfortunately, this one has a bug that we are working on, so leave it unticked till we get the bug sorted out. - Outcome Domain and Outcome Measure - This is the one exception to changes being optional. The field for Outcome annotation using our controlled vocabulary terms has been split into two.
- Outcome Domain refers to “what” is being measured for the outcome (e.g. anxiety, symptoms, exacerbations, quality of life, pain, etc).
- Outcome Measure refers to the way the outcome was measured. For now, the terms we have available for this field are a set of assessment scales (St George’s Hospital Respiratory Questionnaire, Glasgow Outcome Scale, McGill Pain Questionnaire, Hamilton Depression Index, etc).
If you are annotating an Outcome Measure and find that there is no relevant term available, please request that it be added.
You have the option of annotating a) only the Domain, b) only the Measure or c) both for each Outcome Group (for example Domain: Back Pain, Measure: McGill Pain Questionnaire).
