Previous Stages | The People's Review

Previous Stages of The People's Review

Stage 1: Suggest a Question

All good reviews start with a good question. Everyday we make decisions about our health, and we are bombarded with information about how to be healthier, happier, fitter.... But, have you ever wondered about whether there is research to back up the things that you've been advised to do? We asked you to suggest questions we might use for The People's Review. You came up with some great questions.... 185 in total.

This video from Charlene describes the types of questions we asked for.

Green circular icon with white question mark in the middle

Stage 1 is Now Closed

In Stage 1 121 people suggested 185 brilliant questions! The team working behind-the-scenes took a closer look at these. Some people suggested similar questions (great minds think alike, right?). Some of you came up with some great questions that unfortunately we can't answer in this project. For example if the question was not relatable to lots of people or if the question had already been answered with a systematic review (we don't want to waste our time doing a review on a question we already know the answer to, right?). Click here to see the list of questions we didn't bring forward to Stage 2 and the reasons why.

Stage 2: Choose the Question

A really important part of the systematic review process is making sure that the question we tackle is one that people want to know the answer to. Stage 2 involved two rounds of surveys to decide the people's favourite question!

We want to make sure that The People's Review tackles a question that answers a real gap in our knowledge. If we didn't do this then we might waste lots peoples time (and some money!) by trying to answer a question that has already been answered! This step helps us reduce research waste. Research waste shouldn’t happen, but it does. See here for more information on research waste.

In this video Patricia describes the process we will use to decide our review question.

Stage 2 is Now Closed

In Stage 2 we brought forward 21 questions that people voted on in two rounds of surveys. In Round 1, 190 people let us know how much or how little they liked each question. Then, we went back to the public with three* possible options to rank in order of preference. 189 people ranked the questions, to decide the People's favourite question.

*Originally we planned for the public to rank the top 5 questions. But, on closer inspection, we found that some of our top-ranking questions had already been answered by previous research. See the list of questions from Stage 2 here.

Stage 3: Plan the Review

The People's Review question is...

Does resistance training make a difference to quality of life or heart health for older adults compared to aerobic exercise?

We asked the public to help us decide how to answer this question. In particular what we mean by older adults (the population), resistance training (the intervention), aerobic exercise (the comparator), quality of life and heart health (the outcomes).

In this video Laura explains what Stage 3: Plan the Review involves.

Stage 3 is Now Closed

In Stage 3, 231 people were involved in planning how to answer the people's favourite question. The people decided that we will:

Include studies with people over the age of 50
Define resistance training as a type of exercise that involves muscle contraction against an external force. For example, a weight you lift, an elastic band you pull, or resisting gravity using your body weight.
Define aerobic exercise as any activity that increases your heart beat and oxygen consumption, making you breathe more rapidly. Examples of aerobic exercise are walking, running, cycling, or swimming.
Include studies where participants take part in at least 8 sessions of either resistance training or aerobic exercise
Focus on functional fitness as the measure for heart health
Explore the differences between groups including between sex, age categories, co-morbidities

Protocol - the plan for our review

A protocol is the plan for a review. It outlines clearly what and how the review will be done. It is a crucial step in a systematic review because it means we all have a shared understanding.

We used the decisions from Stage 3 to create our protocol. Anyone involved in stages 1 to 3 was invited to contribute to and co-author this paper.

Our review protocol is now published in PLOS ONE - an open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal. Written in plain English with 199 authors, this protocol serves as the blueprint for our review, and a tool for people to learn more about systematic reviews.

Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed to this protocol. We couldn't have done this without you!

Read our protocol

Stage 4: Select the Studies

How do we find all the studies to answer the People's favourite question? Well, we must search far and wide! Our behind-the-scenes team searched lots of resources and found over 5,000 possibly relevant studies. The People helped sift through short summaries of these studies to figure out which ones are relevant for our review - and which ones are not. This process is called screening.

Watch this short video to learn more about Stage 4.

Stage 4 is Now Closed

In total 251 people from around the world sifted through 5798 studies to get one step closer to answering the People's favourite question. The People decided which studies they thought were 'Possibly relevant' or 'Not relevant' for our review.

The team working behind-the-scenes are took a closer look at all the studies the People deemed to be 'Possibly relevant' and finally we have 44 studies to include in our review.

Stage 5: Extract the Data

Next, we took a closer look at the 44 included studies and pulled out key details from each study. This step is called data extraction and brings us one step closer to answering the People's favourite question.

In this video Éle explains what this stage involved.

Stage 5 is Now Closed

190 people extracted the following data information from each study:

where the studies took place
what health conditions participants in the studies had
what participants in the resistance training and aerobic exercise groups did
how many people were in the resistance training and aerobic exercise groups
how many women were in each group
what outcomes (quality of life or functional fitness) were measured and how they were measured

Stage 6: Check for Bias

This stage involved taking an even closer look at the included studies and checking if there are any flaws (also called bias) in how they were done. This helps us know if we can trust the evidence.

Watch this short video to learn more about Stage 6.

Stage 6 is Now Closed

183 people checked if there were flaws (or biases) in how the studies were done using a tool called Risk of Bias (ROB for short). The People checked if :

The participants were allocated to the two exercise groups (resistance training and aerobic exercise) at random.
The people enrolling participants to the study could predict which group participants would be allocated to.
The person measuring functional fitness knew which exercise group participants were in.
The participants and the people delivering the exercise knew which exercise group participants were in and whether this could have impacted the results.

The Technical Team behind the scenes will look for flaws (or biases) in how the studies were done including whether there is any missing data, whether the researchers did everything they said they would and other biases. They will also check for flaws in how the other outcome - quality of life - was collected and analysed.

Stage 7: Interpret the Results

The results are in and we finally have an answer to the People's favourite question. YOU found the studies to for review, extracted the data and checked for bias. The team working behind-the-scenes pooled this information together to synthesise the evidence. In this stage the People made sense of the results and interpreted them in a real-world setting.

Check out this video by our friends at Evidence Synthesis Ireland & Cochrane Crowd about what's involved in synthesising evidence.

Stage 7 is Now Closed

163 people helped make sense of the review findings.The preliminary findings are presented below. The people helped make sense of these results by considering why the results are the way they are and what impact the results might have for clinicians, policy, research and the public.

Stage 8: Share the Results

Sharing the findings of a review is a really important part the systematic review process. In Stage 8, we asked you to decide how we should share the findings of The People's Review.