Course details
| Faculty | Health Sciences | ||
| Department | Medicine | ||
| Education level | Postgraduate / Master of Science | ||
| Course code | B2 | Semester | 1 |
| Course title | Meta-Research | ||
| Independent teaching activities | Hours per week | ECTS | |
| Lectures | 2 | ||
| Practice | 6 | ||
| Total | 8 | 7,5 | |
| Coursetype | General setting course, skills development | ||
| Prerequisite courses | None | ||
| Teaching and assessment language | English |
Learning outcomes
Objective
Upon completion of the course, students will know the basic principles of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and will have gained the experience of a systematic review, on an own research question. Students will discuss and work on their own question with their colleagues, will go through all stages of a systematic review, they will reflect on and understand all the decisions one needs to take one during a review.
Knowledge
Upon completion of the course, graduate students will be familiar with:
- The basic principles of systematic reviews and meta-analyses
- The stages from start through completion of a systematic review
- The process and existing repositories for publication of systematic reviews protocol
- Reporting guidelines for systematic reviews
Skills
The course participants upon completion will be able to:
- Formulate a clear research question, in a format that can be answered (PICO)
- Formulate a search strategy
- Devise a statistical analysis plan
- Facilitate a search
- Hold literature cleanup and disposal of non-eligible studies
- Perform statistical analysis
- Assess and handle heterogeneity
- Assess the risk of bias
- Integrate risk assessment bias in their results
- Assess quality of their conclusions
Course contents
During the course, students will work on their own research question, and will experience the process of review at all stages. So they will learn how to:
- Formulate a research question that can be answered
- Describe the study selection criteria
- Develop a search strategy
- Develop a data extraction form
- Develop an analysis plan
- Devise a strategy for assessing the quality of studies
- Hold a systematic review
- Hold the meta-analysis
| Teaching methods | Face to face Distance learning | |
| Use of information and communication technologies (ICT) | Use of ICT in Teaching- Moodle Virtual learning environment (VLE) (asynchronous learning, wikis, Online Discussion Fora, Educational Portfolio, assignment submission, assessment process) | |
| Use of ICT in Communication with students (email, instant messaging via Moodle) | ||
| Module structure | Work Hours per Semester | Activity |
| Lectures | 55 | |
| Exercises (Quiz) | 10 | |
| Exercises (Wikis) | 10 | |
| Exercises (Online discussion fora) | 20 | |
| Exercises (Study relevant papers) | 20 | |
| Essay background work | 40 | |
| Essay writing | 45 | |
| Overall work for the course | 200 | |
| Assessment Methods | Written assignment, in English, approximately 2,500 words long, to be submitted by each student at the end of the course | |
| Assessment of knowledge at the beginning and the end of the course with short-answer questions and essays development | ||
| Weekly quizes, with multiple choice questions | ||
| Assessment based on comments submitted by each student in online discussion fora |
Recommended bibliography
- Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. 2nd Edition. Chichester (UK): John Wiley & Sons, 2019.
- Bougioukas KI, Liakos A, Tsapas A, Ntzani E, Haidich A-B. Preferred reporting items for overviews of systematic reviews including harms checklist: a pilot tool to be used for balanced reporting of benefits and harms. J Clin Epidemiol. United States; 2018;93: 9–24. doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2017.10.002
- Bougioukas KI, Bouras E, Apostolidou-Kiouti F, Kokkali S, Arvanitidou M, Haidich A-B. Reporting guidelines on how to write a complete and transparent abstract for overviews of systematic reviews of health care interventions. J Clin Epidemiol 2019;106:70–9. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2018.10.005.
- Chapter “Meta-analysis of nutrition studies”, Emmanouil Bouras, Konstantinos Tsilidis, George Pounis, Anna-Bettina Haidich in the Book “Analysis in Nutrition Research”. Elsevier 2018
