Assessing risk of bias in randomized trials

The workshop “Assessing Risk of Bias in Randomised trials: RoB2” was held on Thursday, June 27th, 2019 at the University of Split School of Medicine.

The workshop presenters were Dr Tianjing Li, Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, USA and Dr Jelena Savović, Senior Research Fellow in Evidence Synthesis at the Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol and Evidence Team Lead at the NIHR CLAHRC West.

After the introduction to the new Cochrane risk of bias tool for randomized trials (RoB 2), the presenters have used practical exercises and examples and have guided us through all five domains of the tool: Bias arising from the randomization process, Bias due to deviations from intended interventions, Bias due to missing outcome data, Bias in measurement of the outcome and Bias in selection of the reported result.

This workshop helped us understand the types of bias that can undermine the internal validity of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), understand the key concepts that underpin ROB 2 and be able to use ROB 2 tool to assess risk of bias in RCTs.