A tutorial on how to use Gradepro GDT Tool for writing reviews

School of Health Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.2520v1
Subject Areas
Evidence Based Medicine, Science and Medical Education
Keywords
evidence based health, guidelines, tutorial, gradepro, GDT
Copyright
© 2016 Basu
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Basu A. 2016. A tutorial on how to use Gradepro GDT Tool for writing reviews. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2520v1

Abstract

This is a tutorial on how to use the GRADEPro GDT guidelines development tool for appraisal of articles. The tutorial assumes that the student has little experience of working with Gradepro and walks through in several steps how to use this tool. Grading of evidence is an essential action to be taken by practitioners of evidence based medicine and public health yet the tools are not very intuitive. Grading of evidence puts the focus of evidence appraisal on outcomes. Select outcomes first at most seven outcomes and use this tool to appraise articles and bodies of evidence. In this article, we shall use two articles -- one a primary study, and another, a Cochrane Review to critically appraise a body of evidence focused on health outcomes. We will then demonstrate that it is possible not only to appraise one outcome and an individual study but also bodies of studies such as that based on a Cochrane Meta analysis. Taking an example of grommet insertion for children with otitis media with effusion, we show the advantage of using a tool for setting up meta analysis and conducting web based analysis of literature data.

Author Comment

This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints. This is a tutorial, and the examples are used for teaching and illustrative purposes.