Supporting Policy and Program Decisions: Recommendations for Conducting High Quality Systematic Evidence Reviews

Systematic reviews are a useful tool for decision makers because they identify relevant studies about the effectiveness of a policy or program of interest, assess the quality of the evidence from the relevant studies, and summarize the valid findings. Mathematica's Center for Improving Research Evidence recently released an issue brief offering recommendations for conducting high quality systematic reviews. The recommendations aim to increase the number of such reviews in order to provide decision makers with a greater number of useful evidence summaries that can inform policy and program decisions.