Availability bias in road safety systematic reviews and its impact on the meta-analysis findings

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F44994575%3A_____%2F25%3A10002119" target="_blank" >RIV/44994575:_____/25:10002119 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457524004500" target="_blank" >https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457524004500</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2024.107905" target="_blank" >10.1016/j.aap.2024.107905</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Availability bias in road safety systematic reviews and its impact on the meta-analysis findings

Original language description

Meta-analyses, which present the best source of information on the effectiveness of interventions, are influenced by several biases. One category relates to the convenience of selective inclusion of those primary studies, which are more easily available than others. This availability bias includes bias from excluding the grey literature, bias from excluding non-English literature, and bias from excluding older studies. Existing studies are not conclusive about the impacts of this bias; in addition, none of them focus on road safety meta-analyses. To fill this gap, the present paper consisted of two studies: (1) exploring the presence of availability bias in road safety meta-analyses, and (2) demonstrating the impact of availability bias in several example meta-analyses. Based on an analysis of 80 existing meta-analyses, the first study concluded that compared to the medicine meta-analyses, the road safety meta-analyses use a longer time range, are more often restricted in terms of language, and less often involve the grey literature. The second study utilized selected unrestricted data samples to demonstrate the impact of availability bias in seven meta-analyses. The differences in intervention effectiveness in terms of crash frequency changes between unrestricted and restricted scenarios were identified. This shows that the search restrictions clearly lead to availability bias, which influences the differences in meta-analysis results.

Czech name

—

Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

20104 - Transport engineering

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Accident Analysis and Prevention

ISSN

0001-4575

e-ISSN

1879-2057

Volume of the periodical

211

Issue of the periodical within the volume

107905

Country of publishing house

NL - THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS

Number of pages

6

Pages from-to

nestránkováno

UT code for WoS article

001397666900001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85213078596