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

Appendix G: Quality Appraisal Reviewer GuideQuality Appraisal Guide for ReviewersThe quality assessment will be conducted on the studies that remain following the exclusionstep – Level 1. The quality assessment process involves a review of the full article toevaluate the overall quality of the article and provide a quality ranking. The rankingdetermines if the article should continue to the data extraction step of the review.The guide is designed to provide all reviewers with the same information. Each reviewershould become thoroughly familiar with the guide prior to conducting a quality assessmentreview. Inter-rater variability should be minimized by following the guide. The boldedmaterials below are included in the SRS on-line form.Question 1 is designed to remove articles that could not be removed in Level 1 review due tolack of information. The reviewer is asked to apply the same criteria used in Level 1 reviewas an initial screen of the article.If the reviewer selects a - e to Q1 then only Q1 and Q25 must be answered and thereviewer can submit the form. The remaining questions will be automatically droppedin SRS.Quality ControlQ1. Should the article have been excluded in the Level 1 review for any of the followingreasons? (check all that apply)Choose “f” if the study meets our relevance criteria and should be included with thestudies that are being assessed for quality. Remember to use the definitions forworkplace, IPC/IPC tools and injury/illness outcomes stated in memo 1.Injuries/illnesses can also include reports of pain or discomfort.a) Did not occur in a workplaceb) Does not report on IPC programs or IPC measurement toolsc) Article is a review, commentary, letter to the editor, editorial or 2 pages orless in lengthd) Is not written in English, Spanish or Frenche) Outcome is not injuries/illnesses, workers’ comp claims/costs or relatedsymptomsf) Article is relevant & should proceed through QADesign and ObjectivesQ2. Is the study assessing the effectiveness or reporting on the use of a workplace IPCmeasurement tool ONLY?The studies reporting only on IPC measurement tools will be quality assessed usingdifferent criteria. Studies that report findings for both IPCs and IPC measurement toolsA systematic review of injury and illness prevention and loss controlPrograms (IPCs)65