Interdisciplinary Centre for Health Studies (CIESAL), Universidad de Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, Chile.
Iberoamerican Cochrane Centre, Sant Pau Biomedical Research Institute (IIB-Sant Pau), Barcelona, Spain.
Res Synth Methods. 2022 May;13(3):381-388. doi: 10.1002/jrsm.1557. Epub 2022 Mar 22.
Overlap of primary studies among systematic reviews (SRs) is one of the main methodological challenges when conducting overviews. If not assessed properly, overlapped primary studies may mislead findings, since they may have a major influence either in qualitative analyses or in statistical weight. Moreover, overlapping SRs may represent the existence of duplicated efforts. Matrices of evidence and the calculation of the overall corrected covered area (CCA) are appropriate methods to address this issue, but they seem to be not comprehensive enough. In this article we present Graphical Representation of Overlap for OVErviews (GROOVE), an easy-to-use tool for overview authors. Starting from a matrix of evidence, GROOVE provides the number of included primary studies and SRs included in the matrix; the absolute number of overlapped and non-overlapped primary studies; and an overall CCA assessment. The tool also provides a detailed CCA assessment for each possible pair of SRs (or "nodes"), with a graphical and easy-to-read representation of these results. Additionally, it includes an advanced optional usage, incorporating structural missingness in the matrix. In this article, we show the details about how to use GROOVE, what results it achieves and how the tool obtains these results. GROOVE is intended to improve the overlap assessment by making it easier, faster, and more friendly for both authors and readers. The tool is freely available at http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/U2MS4 and https://es.cochrane.org/es/groovetool.
系统评价（SR）中原始研究的重叠是进行综述时的主要方法学挑战之一。如果没有得到适当评估，重叠的原始研究可能会误导研究结果，因为它们可能对定性分析或统计权重产生重大影响。此外，重叠的 SR 可能代表着重复工作的存在。证据矩阵和整体校正涵盖面积（CCA）的计算是解决这个问题的适当方法，但它们似乎不够全面。在本文中，我们提出了用于综述的重叠图形表示法（GROOVE），这是一种易于使用的综述作者工具。从证据矩阵开始，GROOVE 提供了包含的原始研究和包含在矩阵中的 SR 的数量；重叠和非重叠原始研究的绝对数量；以及整体 CCA 评估。该工具还为每个可能的 SR 对（或“节点”）提供了详细的 CCA 评估，以图形和易于理解的方式表示这些结果。此外，它还包括一种高级可选用法，在矩阵中包含结构缺失。在本文中，我们展示了如何使用 GROOVE 的详细信息，它取得了哪些结果以及工具如何获得这些结果。GROOVE 旨在通过使作者和读者更容易、更快、更友好地进行重叠评估来提高重叠评估的效率。该工具可免费在 http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/U2MS4 和 https://es.cochrane.org/es/groovetool 获得。
