Benzies Karen M, Premji Shahirose, Hayden K Alix, Serrett Karen
Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, Canada.
Worldviews Evid Based Nurs. 2006;3(2):55-61. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-6787.2006.00051.x.
Increasingly, health policy decision-makers and professionals are turning to research-based evidence to support decisions about policy and practice. Systematic reviews are useful for gathering, summarizing, and synthesizing published and unpublished research about clearly defined interventions. State-of-the-evidence reviews are broader than traditional systematic reviews and may include not only published and unpublished research, but also published and unpublished non-research literature. Decisions about whether to include this "grey literature" in a review are challenging and lead to many questions about whether the advantages outweigh the challenges.
The primary purpose of this article is to describe what constitutes grey literature, and methods to locate it and assess its quality. The secondary purpose is to discuss the core issues to consider when making decisions to include grey literature in a state-of-the-evidence review.
A recent state-of-the-evidence review is used as an exemplar to present advantages and challenges related to including grey literature in a review.
Despite the challenges, in the exemplar, inclusion of grey literature was useful to validate the results of a research-based literature search.
Decisions about whether to include grey literature in a state-of-the-evidence review are complex. A checklist to assist in decision-making was created as a tool to assist the researcher in determining whether it is advantageous to include grey literature in a review.
卫生政策决策者和专业人员越来越多地借助基于研究的证据来支持有关政策和实践的决策。系统评价有助于收集、总结和综合已发表和未发表的关于明确界定的干预措施的研究。证据现状评价比传统的系统评价范围更广，不仅可能包括已发表和未发表的研究，还可能包括已发表和未发表的非研究文献。决定是否在评价中纳入这类“灰色文献”具有挑战性，并引发了许多关于其优势是否大于挑战的问题。
本文的主要目的是描述灰色文献的构成、查找灰色文献的方法及其质量评估。次要目的是讨论在决定将灰色文献纳入证据现状评价时需要考虑的核心问题。
以最近一项证据现状评价为例，阐述在评价中纳入灰色文献的优势和挑战。
尽管存在挑战，但在该实例中，纳入灰色文献有助于验证基于研究的文献检索结果。
决定是否在证据现状评价中纳入灰色文献是复杂的。创建了一个有助于决策的清单，作为协助研究人员确定在评价中纳入灰色文献是否有利的工具。
