Hello Monali,

If you enter your numeric outcome data for your studies into EPPI-Reviewer 4 you can then generate a report that can be saved and imported into statisitcal software such as Stata. You will find details on how to do this in the user manual on page 69 under 'Exporting effect sizes in reports' as well in the section on Reports. Page 60 has an example of a report of outcomes.

To create a report that exports your outcomes, you should select the report type ‘single’ and should check the ‘outcomes’ box when running the report. The report will list all of the outcome data in columns. You can then save the report as an excel file. Since it is a table of data you can then import the excel file into Stata.

Best regards,

Jeff

Hello Monali,

To answer your question about data extraction and why someone would want to pay to use EPPI-Reviewer I would reply that data extraction is just one part of the many steps in carrying out a systematic review. As well, collecting numeric outcome data is also just one part of most data extractions.

EPPI-Reviewer will help you manage your systematic review by holding all of your data, from search results to screening and data extraction in one location. By having it all within the same system you can then run reports and carry out analysis across all parts of your review. Being a web based system users can work and collaborate while being in different locations. EPPI-Reviewer will also provide quality control as any changes made to screening or coding tools are visible to all users. All users will be working within the same parameters.

You can carry out a systematic review using different pieces of software for the various stages but you will lose the advantages that a specialised tool such as EPPI-Reviewer can provide.

As for using STATA to carry out your meta-analysis, if that is a piece of software that you are most familiar with then it makes sense that you use it. We have tried to make EPPI-Reviewer flexible enough to allow users to export their data into other software. But I would also add that the meta-analysis functions in EPPI-Reviewer are used by many systematic reviewers. If there is some functionality that you required that is not available in EPPI-Reviewer’s meta-analysis functions, we would be interested in hearing from you. EPPI-Reviewer 4 is developed based on the feedback from our users and anything you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Jeff

Hello Monali,

I would have to experiment a bit to see what is possible. I'm assuming those are codes from your review?

If you let me know a couple of items from your review that would have data for those codes I'll see what I can come up with.

Best regards,

Jeff

Hello Monali,

How best to display the data depends on whether the data is entered textually as part of the data extraction or as outcomes. If it is entered as an outcome, you can list all of your outcome data. If it is entered textually as part of the data extraction, then you can get the same effect for your report by going into the detail of a column and saying that you want the free text ‘behind’ the code.

I'm still a bit unsure of what you require but I will explain what I have done.

I created a test report in you review (you will see it if you look at the available reports) and generated a report using 4 items that had outcome data. I will email the report to you for you to tell me if that is what you had in mind.

The 'baseline characteristics (preoperative)' code had a codetype of 'outcome' so I placed it in the report and set the report type to 'Answer'. The other codes below the outcome code were set as classification type codes. The numeric outcome data is in the 'baseline characteristics (preoperative)' code so that is what I included in the report. When I ran the report I made sure the 'outcome' checkbox was selected.

Please have a look at the file I will send and perhaps we can use that as a starting point for further discussion.

Best regards,

Jeff