Scanning the list of titles, we see that there is only one study or one review that has addressed our needs, that of addressing anxiety disorders using mindfulness based meditation therapy. So we will select this one Cochrane Review for our appraisal:
In the next step, we will show you how to use these four articles to conduct a meta-analysis and/or input them to GRADEpro GDT and work with the evidence. That would be step 3
Step 3. Input data from a Cochrane Review or a group of studies to Gradepro GDT
Now that you have either four randomised controlled trials or one large Cochrane Review, we will use BOTH to generate the evidence tables using Gradepro GDT. First, we will summarise the key points about Gradepro approach:
- Gradepro works on the basis of GRADE, which is used for developing guidelines. Here, however, we will only use GRADE for critical appraisal of a body of evidence
- GRADE is used to appraise a body of evidence specified for an outcome. For more information on GRADE, I recommend you read the article by Gordon Guyatt et al (2011) to learn about the principles of GRADE guidelines \cite{Guyatt_2011}. This article has summarised the key principles of GRADE. In GRADE, an outcome can be studied by multiple studies, or multiple studies can study or report on a single outcome. As outcomes are key issues in clinical decision making and also for making guidelines for action, therefore, in evidence appraisal, how quality of studies affect appraising individual outcomes is important.
- The quality of this overall evidence is appraised on the basis of the strength of association, the risk of bias, whether the outcome was indirectly or directly measured, and whether the outcome was precise or in other words, whether the effect measure of the association was definitely in one direction. In our appraisal we would make these and other considerations as we will explain in the paragraphs below
How to use GRADEpro GDT
- First of all, access the following website: https://gdt.gradepro.org/app/
- If you have not created an account, create an account and log in with the email address you registered.
When you do that, it will look like this: