The feasibility of creating a checklist for the assessment of the methodological quality both of randomised and non-randomised studies of health care interventions

To test the feasibility of creating a valid and reliable checklist with the following features: appropriate for assessing both randomised and non-randomised studies; provision of both an overall score for study quality and a profile of scores not only for the quality of reporting, internal validity (bias and confounding) and power, but also for external validity.A pilot version was first developed, based on epidemiological principles, reviews,...