Innovations in Data Collection,Management, and Archiving for Systematic Reviews

Data abstraction is a key step in conducting systematic reviews because data collected from study reports form the basis of ap-propriate conclusions. Recent methodological standards and ex-pectations highlight several principles for data collection. To support implementation of these standards, this article provides a step-by-step tutorial for selecting data collection tools; con-structing data collection forms; and abstracting, managing, and archiving data for systematic reviews. Examples are drawn from recent experience using the Systematic Review Data Repository for data collection and management. If it is done well, data col-lection for systematic reviews only needs to be done by 1 team and placed into a publicly accessible database for future use. Technological innovations, such as the Systematic Review Data Repository, will contribute to finding trustworthy answers for many health and health care questions