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Risk of Bias Assessments and Evidence Syntheses for Observational Epidemiologic Studies of Environmental and Occupational Exposures: Strengths and Limitations — Europe PMC PMID:32924579

Source: Europe PMC (en)
Original: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32924579
DOI: 10.1289/ehp6980
License (as archived): CC0-1.0
Archived: 2026-11-07T12:03:50.547Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: 294e3fa51b761fe25bd87cfa9e49828e9af610dbdddede353a217e21abfe69bd
Stable URL of this page: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_adaaaa4db184

How to cite

Risk of Bias Assessments and Evidence Syntheses for Observational Epidemiologic Studies of Environmental and Occupational Exposures: Strengths and Limitations — Europe PMC PMID:32924579 — Europe PMC (en), https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32924579 (CC0-1.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_adaaaa4db184 (Metraipolis archive dc_adaaaa4db184, sha256 294e3fa51b761fe25bd87cfa9e49828e9af610dbdddede353a217e21abfe69bd)

BibTeX

@misc{dcadaaaa4db184,
  title = {Risk of Bias Assessments and Evidence Syntheses for Observational Epidemiologic Studies of Environmental and Occupational Exposures: Strengths and Limitations — Europe PMC PMID:32924579},
  howpublished = {Europe PMC (en)},
  url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32924579},
  note = {License CC0-1.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_adaaaa4db184; sha256 294e3fa51b761fe25bd87cfa9e49828e9af610dbdddede353a217e21abfe69bd},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC0-1.0. Attribution: Europe PMC (en), https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32924579. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

Background: Increasingly, risk of bias tools are used to evaluate epidemiologic studies as part of evidence synthesis (evidence integration), often involving meta-analyses. Some of these tools consider hypothetical randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as gold standards. Methods: We review the strengths and limitations of risk of bias assessments, in particular, for reviews of observational studies of environmental exposures, and we also comment more generally on methods of evidence synthesis. Results: Although RCTs may provide a useful starting point to think about bias, they do not provide a gold standard for environmental studies. Observational studies should not be considered inherently biased vs. a hypothetical RCT. Rather than a checklist approach when evaluating individual studies using risk of bias tools, we call for identifying and quantifying possible biases, their direction, and their impacts on parameter estimates. As is recognized in many guidelines, evidence synthesis requires a broader approach than simply evaluating risk of bias in individual studies followed by synthesis of studies judged unbiased, or with studies given more weight if judged less biased. It should include the use of classical considerations for judging causality in human studies, as well as triangulation and integration of animal and mechanistic data. Conclusions: Bias assessments are important in evidence synthesis, but we argue they can and should be improved to address the concerns we raise here. Simplistic, mechanical approaches to risk of bias assessments, which may particularly occur when these tools are used by nonexperts, can result in erroneous conclusions and sometimes may be used to dismiss important evidence. Evidence synthesis requires a broad approach that goes beyond assessing bias in individual human studies and then including a narrow range of human studies judged to be unbiased in evidence synthesis. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP6980.

Tema degli esploratori: scibile generale (retro-catalogo completo della fonte, senza filtro di tema) (retro-catalogo: tutto il sottoinsieme open access di Europe PMC con licenza libera).
Pubblicazione: Environmental health perspectives, 2020 (prima pubblicazione 2020-09-14).
Identificativi: PMID 32924579 · PMCID PMC7489341 · DOI 10.1289/ehp6980.
Descrittori MeSH principali: Environmental Exposure.
Pagina: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32924579 — https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp6980. Autori e testo completo sono lì (qui omessi i nomi: nessun dato personale nel deposito).
Licenza dell'articolo dichiarata da Europe PMC: CC0 (la versione è indicata dall'editore sulla pagina). Abstract riportato senza modifiche al contenuto, con attribuzione; deposito marcato CC0.
Letto il 2026-11-07T11:57:55.995Z tramite l'API REST ufficiale di Europe PMC (EMBL-EBI), nel rispetto del robots.txt e del crawl-delay.