OBJECTIVES To describe how the methodological quality of primary studies is assessed in systematic reviews and whether the quality assessment is taken into account in the interpretation of results. DATA SOURCES Cochrane systematic reviews and systematic reviews in paper based journals. STUDY SELECTION 965 systematic reviews (809 Cochrane reviews and 156 paper based reviews) published betwee...

conventional treatment for primary dysmenorrhoea has a failure rate of 20% to 25% and may be contraindicated or not tolerated by some women. herbal medicine may be a suitable alternative. the objective of the manuscript, is determine the efficacy and safety of some iranian herbal medicine for primary dysmenorrhea when compared with placebo, no treatment, and other treatment. for this target ele...

Review articles are a means of summarizing the potentially vast volume of research on a topic. However, the methodological quality of review articles varies, and reviews on the same topic may reach different conclusions. We evaluated 65 review articles published between 2000 and 2005 that addressed the effectiveness of microbial food safety interventions, using criteria for methodological sound...

BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to review methodological quality of economic evaluations of lifestyle behavior change interventions (LBCIs) and to examine how they address methodological challenges for public health economic evaluation identified in the literature. METHODS Pubmed and the NHS economic evaluation database were searched for published studies in six key areas for behav...

Methodological dualism in linguistics occurs when its theories are subjected to standards that are inappropriate for them qua scientifi c theories. Despite much opposition, methodological dualism abounds in contemporary thinking. In this paper, I treat linguistics as a scientifi c activity and explore some instances of dualism. By extracting some ubiquitous aspects of scientifi c methodology fr...

BACKGROUND Economic evaluation of newborn screening poses specific methodological challenges. Amongst others, these challenges refer to the use of quality adjusted life years (QALYs) in newborns, and which costs and outcomes need to be considered in a full evaluation of newborn screening programmes. Because of the increasing scale and scope of such programmes, a better understanding of the meth...