Study design synopsis: Evidence syntheses—What are they and why do we need them?

A Delphi Study to Determine International and National Equestrian Expert Opinions on Domains and Sub-Domains Essential to Managing Sporthorse Health and Welfare in the Olympic Disciplines

“…This sentiment was echoed by our experts, who articulated a need for greater education and engagement to generate change and promote evidence-informed approaches to sporthorse health and welfare. The use of evidence syntheses or systematic reviews is widespread in human medicine to underpin evidencebased approaches [49] and may be a viable starting point for further evaluation of topics to provide evidence-informed approaches to common elements of sporthorse health and welfare management.…”

A pyramid needs a foundation: Exploding some myths about what EVJ's editors are looking for from authors?

“…EVJ has also recruited the assistance of its Statistical editors and members of its Study Design and Data Analysis board to produce material which we believe is of value to both authors seeking to publish clinical evidence and to enable readers to critically appraise clinical studies. Examples from recent issues include primers on the importance of sample size, 44 time‐to‐event analysis, 45 sources of bias in clinical research, 46 reporting guidelines, 47 Bayesian versus frequentist approaches to data analysis 48 and on how to conduct evidence synthesis 49 . While all this advice is intended to be helpful, have we gone too far?…”

“…Examples from recent issues include primers on the importance of sample size, 44 time-to-event analysis, 45 sources of bias in clinical research, 46 reporting guidelines, 47 Bayesian versus frequentist approaches to data analysis 48 and on how to conduct evidence synthesis. 49 While all this advice is intended to be helpful, have we gone too far? An unintended consequence of our emphasis on improving the quality of clinical research reports may well have signalled a lack of interest from EVJ on the foundations of equine clinical research: the descriptive clinical report.…”