A ‘Risk of bias’ table is available in RevMan for inclusion in a Cochrane review as part of the ‘Table of characteristics of included studies’. For each question-based entry, the judgement (‘Yes’ for low risk of bias; ‘No’ for high risk of bias, or ‘Unclear’) is followed by a text box providing a description of the design, conduct or observations that underlie the judgement. Figure 8.6.a provides an example of how it might look. If the text box is left empty, and the judgement is left as 'Unclear', then the entry will be omitted from the 'Risk of bias' table for the study on publication in CDSR.
Considerations for presentation of ‘Risk of bias’ assessments in the review text are discussed in Chapter 4 (Section 4.5) (under the Results sub-heading ‘Risk of bias in included studies’ and the Discussion recommended sub-heading ‘Quality of the evidence’).
Two Figures may be generated using RevMan for inclusion in a published review. A ‘Risk of bias graph’ Figure illustrates the proportion of studies with each of the judgements (‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Unclear’) across for each entry in the tool (see Figure 8.6.b). A ‘Risk of bias summary’ Figure presents all of the judgements in a cross-tabulation of study by entry (see Figure 8.6.c).