Methodology notes, from our own team.
Practical, specific guidance from our methodologists and consultants — not general advice you could find anywhere.
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Inter-Rater Reliability in Systematic Reviews: Understanding Kappa Statistics
Reporting screening agreement as a raw percentage overstates reliability, since some agreement would occur by chance alone even without any genuine consistency.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Lauren Ito
Mixed-Methods Systematic Reviews: Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Evidence
Combining quantitative and qualitative evidence in a single review requires a genuine, deliberate integration design, not just two separate syntheses placed side by side.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Elena Kowalski
Quality Appraisal Consulting: When Your Team Needs a Second Opinion
Quality appraisal disagreements that will not resolve internally, or a nagging uncertainty about whether the right tool was even chosen, are the clearest signals a second opinion is worth seeking.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Elena Kowalski
Budgeting for a Systematic Review: A Realistic Breakdown
Budgeting for a systematic review as a single lump sum obscures where cost actually concentrates, and screening volume drives this more than almost any other factor.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Grace Mwangi
What Happens After You Submit: The Peer Review Process for Systematic Reviews
Systematic review peer review often involves a methods-focused reviewer checking specific, predictable things before anyone evaluates your conclusions at all.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Sarah Bennett
A Systematic Review on AI in Public Health: A Practical Guide
AI in public health spans disease surveillance, outbreak prediction, and resource allocation tools, and a systematic review here benefits from explicit attention to equity considerations.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Grace Mwangi
Quality Appraisal Tools Beyond Risk of Bias: AMSTAR, CASP, and More
Risk of bias is not the only quality appraisal a systematic review might need -- several other tools exist for different appraisal purposes entirely.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Elena Kowalski
How Many Studies Do You Need for a Systematic Review?
There is no universal minimum study count for a valid systematic review, but a few specific thresholds do meaningfully affect what your review can and cannot reliably claim.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Samuel Osei
Systematic Reviews of Prevalence and Incidence: A Different Kind of Question
Reviews estimating how common a condition is use genuinely different appraisal tools and pooling methods than reviews asking whether an intervention works.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Grace Mwangi
Piloting Your Data Extraction Process Before You Start
Skipping the pilot step is one of the most common reasons a review team ends up re-reading every included study a second time.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Lauren Ito
Getting Extraction Support for a Large Systematic Review
Extraction volume that felt manageable in planning can become a genuine bottleneck once a review’s actual included study count becomes clear, and support at this stage has a specific, well-defined shape.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Lauren Ito
Bias in Individual Studies vs. Bias in the Review Process Itself
Risk-of-bias assessment addresses one kind of bias entirely, but a review’s own conduct can introduce a genuinely different, equally consequential kind.
Jul 2026 · 5 min read · By Dr. Elena Kowalski
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