Editors: Julian PT Higgins and Jonathan J Deeks.
Key points
Assessment of eligibility of studies, and extraction of data from study reports, should be done by at least two people, independently.
Cochrane Intervention reviews have studies, rather than reports, as the unit of interest, and so multiple reports of the same study need to be linked together.
Data collection forms are invaluable. They should be designed carefully to target the objectives of the review, and should be piloted for each new review (or review team).
Tips are available for helping with the design and use of data collection forms.
Data may be reported in diverse formats, but can often be converted into a format suitable for meta-analysis.
7.6 Extracting data from reports
7.7 Extracting study results and converting to the desired format