Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria
For the purposes of PRISMA, researchers need not define why they exclude studies during the Title/Abstract Screening phase. Once you’re in the Full Text Review portion of your systematic review process, however, researchers are strongly encouraged to provide reasoning behind the exclusion of a study.
Covidence provides the systematic review team the flexibility to populate a drop down list with exclusion criteria, and the ability to manage criteria.
You have complete control over your list of exclusion reasons. Covidence currently has two ways to customize the list of exclusion reasons.
Edit the list from the Settings area
Click the Settings tool from your review dashboard, then click the Full-text exclusion reasons button.
Edit the exclusion criteria while performing the full text review
When you vote to exclude a study you will have to select the reason why you feel this study should be excluded.
To do this, first click the Exclude button for the study you want to exclude. This action will reveal a dropdown menu asking you to specify your reason for excluding the study. Select the Edit this list option from the dropdown. You'll then see a pop-up prompting you to add an exclusion reason. Enter your exclusion reason in the text box provided and click the Add button. Your new exclusion reason will appear at the top of the list below. Once you've added all of your exclusion reasons, click Done to save your work, dismiss the pop-up and return to Covidence full text review.
Note, in the image above green highlighting is around the main term of interest in this particular review. When you add Eligibility Criteria, per the earlier image, you can choose to have the Criteria highlighted by toggling the Show/Hide highlights button shown above.