Instruments assessing risk of bias of randomized trials frequently included items that are not addressing risk of bias issues

OBJECTIVES: To establish whether items included in instruments published in the last decade assessing risk of bias of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are indeed addressing risk of bias. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We searched Medline, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus from 2010 to October 2021 for instruments assessing risk of bias of RCTs. By extracting items and summarizing their essential content, we generated an item list. Items that two …