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Crowdsourcing the identification of studies for COVID-19-related Cochrane Rapid Reviews
Noel-Storr, A., Gartlehner, G., Dooley, G., Persad, E., & Nussbaumer-Streit, B. (2022). Crowdsourcing the identification of studies for COVID-19-related Cochrane Rapid Reviews. Research Synthesis Methods, 13(5), 585-594. https://doi.org/10.1002/jrsm.1559
Background: Utilisation of crowdsourcing within evidence synthesis has increased over the last decade. Crowdsourcing platform Cochrane Crowd has engaged a global community of 22,000 people from 170 countries. The COVID-19 pandemic presented an opportunity to engage the community and keep up with the exponential output of COVID-19 research.
Aims: To test whether a crowd could accurately assess study eligibility for reviews under time constraints. Outcome measures: time taken to complete each task, time to produce required training modules, crowd sensitivity, specificity and crowd consensus.
Methods: We created four crowd tasks, corresponding to four Cochrane COVID-19 Rapid Reviews. The search results of each were uploaded and an interactive training module was developed for each task. Contributors who had participated in another COVID-19 task were invited to participate. Each task was live for 48-h. The final inclusion and exclusion decisions made by the core author team were used as the reference standard.
Results: Across all four reviews 14,299 records were screened by 101 crowd contributors. The crowd completed each screening task within 48-h for three reviews and in 52 h for one. Sensitivity ranged from 94% to 100%. Four studies, out of a total of 109, were incorrectly rejected by the crowd. However, their absence ultimately would not have altered the conclusions of the reviews. Crowd consensus ranged from 71% to 92% across the four reviews.
Conclusion: Crowdsourcing can play a valuable role in study identification and offers willing contributors the opportunity to help identify COVID-19 research for rapid evidence syntheses.
