Making Narrative Statements to Describe Treatment Effects
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Mayo Clinic Evidence-based Practice Center, Rochester, MN, USA; 2Scientific Resource Center for the AHRQ Evidence-based Practice Center Program, Portland, OR, USA; 3University of Alberta Evidence-based Practice Center, Edmonton, Canada; 4Minnesota Evidence-based Practice Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA; 5Kaiser Permanente Research Affiliates Evidence-based Practice Center, Portland, OR, USA; 6RTI International– University of North Carolina Evidence-based Practice Center, Chapel Hill, NC, USA; 7University of Connecticut Evidence-based Practice Center, Storrs, CT, USA; 8Southern California/RAND Corporation Evidence-based Practice Center, Santa Monica, CA, USA; 9Pacific Northwest Evidencebased Practice Center, Portland, OR, USA; 10Brown University Evidence-based Practice Center, Providence, RI, USA; 11Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Evidence-based Practice Center Program, Rockville, MD, USA.
Accurately describing treatment effects using plain language and narrative statements is a critical step in communicating research findings to end users. However, the process of developing these narratives has not been historically guided by a specific framework. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Evidence-based Practice Center Program developed guidance for narrative summaries of treatment effects that identifies five constructs. We explicitly identify these constructs to facilitate developing narrative statements: (1) direction of effect, (2) size of effect, (3) clinical importance, (4) statistical significance, and (5) strength or certainty of evidence. These constructs clearly overlap. It may not always be feasible to address all five constructs. Based on context and intended audience, investigators can determine which constructs will be most important to address in narrative statements. KEY WORDS: evidence-based medicine; plain language summary; dissemination; systematic reviews; statistics and numerical data. J Gen Intern Med DOI: 10.1007/s11606-020-06330-y © Society of General Internal Medicine 2020
INTRODUCTION
Accurately describing the effects of medical treatments using plain language and narrative statements is a key component of systematic reviews and critical to broad dissemination and successful implemention of research findings. Systematic reviews include narrative statements of varying details and lengths in different parts of the report, such as the abstract, results, discussion, and sometimes the title. Narrative statements may also be the primary means of communicating Received June 25, 2020 Accepted October 16, 2020
summaries of results, for example, via interviews, lay press, social media, blogs, or as policy/management briefs. When narrative statements accurately summarize research results with easy-to-understand language, they can have an important impact on the understanding and application of findings. A scoping review on the barriers and facilitators to the uptake of systematic reviews by policy makers and health care managers found need for more consistent approaches to report effec
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