Editors: Julian PT Higgins and Douglas G Altman on behalf of the Cochrane Statistical Methods Group and the Cochrane Bias Methods Group.
This chapter should be cited as: Higgins JPT, Altman DG (editors). Chapter 8: Assessing risk of bias in included studies. In: Higgins JPT, Green S (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions Version 5.0.0 (updated February 2008). The Cochrane Collaboration, 2008. Available from www.cochrane-handbook.org.
Contributing authors: Doug Altman, Gerd Antes, Peter Gøtzsche, Julian Higgins, Peter Jüni, Steff Lewis, David Moher, Andy Oxman, Ken Schulz, Jonathan Sterne and Simon Thompson.
Acknowledgements: The material in this chapter was developed by a working group consisting of Doug Altman (co-lead), Gerd Antes, Chris Cates, Mike Clarke, Jon Deeks, Peter Gøtzsche, Julian Higgins (co-lead), Sally Hopewell, Peter Jüni (core group), Steff Lewis, Philippa Middleton, David Moher (core group), Andy Oxman, Ken Schulz (core group), Nandi Siegfried, Jonathan Sterne, Simon Thompson. We thank Hilda Bastian, Rachelle Buchbinder, Iain Chalmers, Miranda Cumpston, Sally Green, Peter Herbison, Victor Montori, Hannah Rothstein, Georgia Salanti, Guido Schwarzer, Ian Shrier, Jayne Tierney, Ian White and Paula Williamson for helpful comments. For details of the Cochrane Statistical Methods Group, see Chapter 9 (Box 9.8.a) for the Cochrane Bias Methods Group, see Chapter 10 (Box 10.5.a);.