Artikel
A tool for rapid assessment of risk of bias (raRoB) in observational epidemiological studies
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Autoren
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Kristina Plate
- Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR), Berlin, Germany
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Sven Knüppel
- Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR), Berlin, Germany
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Anselm Hornbacher
- Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR), Berlin, Germany
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Narges Ghoreishi
- Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR), Berlin, Germany
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Christine Müller-Graf
- Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR), Berlin, Germany
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Matthias Greiner
- Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR), Berlin, Germany
| Veröffentlicht: | 6. September 2024 |
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Gliederung
Text
There are numerous instruments for assessing the evidence from individual epidemiological studies, mostly in the course of systematic reviews. However, the available instruments are limited in their applicability, often focusing on interventional studies, which examine interventions in a controlled setting. In contrast, there are few established instruments for observational epidemiological studies, which address exposures under real-world conditions. In addition, most established instruments are complicated to use, require specialized training, and the application process is time-consuming due to the complexity of the assessment.
To enable a rapid and transparent assessment of the risk of bias in observational epidemiological studies, the raRoB tool (rapid assessment of Risk of Bias) was developed by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment. For the development of the tool, domains and items from 152 previously identified instruments were extracted, systematised and implemented into a dialog-oriented and user-friendly software tool. The tool is intended to be used by scientific experts without specific epidemiological knowledge for a rapid and handy assessment of the risk of bias, such as for recently published publication of human epidemiological studies on health risks that need to be assessed in the short term.
With this in mind, the tool has been tested and improved in a pilot study (among epidemiologists and statisticians) and two subsequent test phases (among scientists in the context of risk assessment). The test rounds showed that raRoB allows a concise and transparent assessment of the risk of bias in observational epidemiological studies, which is needed for instance for appraising evidence form epidemiological studies for health risk assessments.
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.
The contribution has already been published: International Conference on Using Epidemiological Studies in Health Risk Assessments 2023 [1]
References
- 1.
- Plate K, Knüppel S, Ghoreishi N, Hornbacher A, Schmidt K, Thole H, Müller-Graf C, Greiner M. A tool for rapid assessment of risk of bias (raRoB) in observational epidemiological studies. In: International Conference on Using Epidemiological Studies in Health Risk Assessments: Relevance, Reliability and Causality. 2023. DOI: 10.17590/20231221-120927-0
