A systematic review of injury/illness prevention and loss control ...

A key part of the literature would be classified as grey literature (i.e. literaturethat has not been peer-reviewed). The grey literature is difficult to identify ina systematic manner. Studies done specifically for a workplace, association orgovernmental body are often not published in documents found in thedatabases we searched, nor are conference proceedings. The grey arealiterature was also tracked with the help of content experts.In addition, a specific author search was conducted on three authors knownby practitioners as experts in the IPC area to ensure the relevance of thesearch.2.3 Level 1 - Selection for relevanceDevelop abstract and screening tool for Level 1 and Level 1 B reviewBecause a large number of articles were identified by the search, therelevancy exclusions had to be completed in two steps. Level 1 reviewinvolved reviewing only the title and abstracts. Level 1 B review involvedreviewing the full article. One person reviewed the articles at Level 1 andLevel 1 B. However, two reviewers had to agree that a study did not have acontrol group or concurrent comparison (see Table 1, question 7).Team members were provided with a “Reviewer Guide” for each level ofreview as the project progressed. Reviewer Guides were developed to reduceindividual biases during the review. The guides listed each question to beanswered and the definitions team members were to use while reviewing thearticles. The guides were developed during the review process, as team inputand group consensus were a vital part of the project. At each stage of thereview process, the review team collectively reviewed a small set of articlesusing a draft guide and met to discuss the review experience. Clarificationsand additions were made to the guides based on team consensus.In Level 1, the preliminary exclusion step, article titles and abstractsidentified during the literature search were evaluated to determine the study’srelevance to the review questions based on the criteria listed in Table 1 (seealso Appendix F for the Level 1 guide to reviewers). The grey blocksindicate answers that led to the automatic exclusion of studies. The studiesthat were not excluded advanced to the next stage of the review. If the answerwas "unclear," the study also moved to the next stage.Level 1 B was a review of the full article using the questions from the Level 1review, as well as an outcome question and a control group question (seeTable 1, questions #6 and #7).A systematic review of injury/illness prevention and loss controlprograms (IPCs)13