This module will cover how to discuss your results both in terms of how effective (or ineffective) an intervention may be and how the results of your review may be applied to individual health care situations. We will discuss interpretation of the results of your review as it applies to writing your results and discussion section, not with respect to using the review to making an actual decision about health care.

Learning objectives

• Be able to recognize the components of evidence in health care interventions and understand their relative contributions to the strength of evidence of a systematic review (study design, number of studies, study quality, statistical significance, clinical importance, biological plausibility, and consistency of results)
• Be able to interpret the available evidence as strong, weak or inconclusive and be able to justify these ratings
• Judge whether a particular systematic review is likely to be of limited or wide applicability
• Recognize the features of a particular systematic review that may limit or widen its applicability (considering degree of mismatch between trial characteristics and settings to which the results may be applied)
• Understand the purpose, calculation and application of NNTs to assist assessment of appropriate application

Relevant sections of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions

• Chapter 12: Interpreting results and drawing conclusions

Where does this go in a Cochrane review?

• The information in this Module relates to the Results and Discussion section of your review