Trial reportJournal of the Royal Society of Medicine2014
How much do you need: a randomised experiment of whether readers can understand the key messages from summaries of Cochrane Reviews without reading the full review.
Trial report in Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT07333924 (How Can we Best Communicate the Findings of Systematic Reviews to the Public? A Study Within A Review), which is not on this map. Cited by 12 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
How Can we Best Communicate the Findings of Systematic Reviews to the Public? A Study Within A Review
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The effectiveness and acceptability of evidence synthesis summary formats for clinical guideline development groups: a mixed-methods systematic review.Implementation science : IS · 2022Pooled it
- Plain language summaries: A systematic review of theory, guidelines and empirical research.PloS one · 2022Pooled it
- Study within a review (SWAR).Journal of evidence-based medicine · 2022Article
- Communication vs evidence: What hinders the outreach of science during an infodemic? A narrative review.Integrative medicine research · 2021Review
- Lessons Learned from Developing Plain Language Summaries of Research Studies.Health literacy research and practice · 2021Article
- Evidence synthesis summary formats for clinical guideline development group members: a mixed-methods systematic review protocol.HRB open research · 2021Article
- How to Put It Plainly? Findings From Two Randomized Controlled Studies on Writing Plain Language Summaries for Psychological Meta-Analyses.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- A mapping study and recommendations for a joint NGO (Think Pink) and Bahrain Government Breast Cancer project.Journal of evidence-based medicine · 2019Review
- Knowledge translation for realist reviews: a participatory approach for a review on scaling up complex interventions.Health research policy and systems · 2018Article
- Cochrane plain language summaries are highly heterogeneous with low adherence to the standards.BMC medical research methodology · 2016Article
- History of evidence synthesis to assess treatment effects: Personal reflections on something that is very much alive.Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 2016Article
- Why do we need evidence-based methods in Cochrane?The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveWe explored whether readers can understand key messages without having to read the full review, and if there were differences in understanding between various types of summary.
designA randomised experiment of review summaries which compared understanding of a key outcome.
participantsMembers of university staff (n = 36).
settingUniversities on the island of Ireland.
methodThe Cochrane Review chosen examines the health impacts of the use of electric fans during heat waves. Participants were asked their expectation of the effect these would have on mortality. They were then randomly assigned a summary of the review (i.e. abstract, plain language summary, podcast or podcast transcription) and asked to spend a short time reading/listening to the summary. After this they were again asked about the effects of electric fans on mortality and to indicate if they would want to read the full Review.
main outcome measureCorrect identification of a key review outcome.
resultsJust over half (53%) of the participants identified its key message on mortality after engaging with their summary. The figures were 33% for the abstract group, 50% for both the plain language and transcript groups and 78% for the podcast group.
conclusionsThe differences between the groups were not statistically significant but suggest that the audio summary might improve knowledge transfer compared to written summaries. These findings should be explored further using a larger sample size and with other reviews.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.