Guideline organizations' guidance documents paper 1: Introduction

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Given the role of practice guidelines in impacting practice and health outcomes, it is important that their development follows rigorous methodology. We present a series of papers exploring various aspects of practice guideline development based on a descriptive summary of guidance documents from guideline-producing organizations. The overall aim is to describe the methods employed by these organizations in developing practice guidelines. This first paper of the series aims to (1) describe the methodology followed in the descriptive summary, including the identification process of a sample of guideline-producing organizations with publicly available guidance documents on guideline development; (2) characterize the included guideline-producing organizations and their guidance documents; and (3) assess the extent to which these organizations cover the topics of the GIN-McMaster Guideline Development Checklist in their guidance documents. METHODS: We conducted a descriptive summary of guideline-producing organizations' publicly available guidance documents on guideline development (eg, guideline handbooks). We exhaustively sampled a list of guideline-producing organizations from multiple sources and searched their websites and the peer-reviewed literature for publicly available guidance documents on their guideline development process. We abstracted data in duplicate and independently on both the organizations and the documents' general characteristics and on whether the organizations covered the topics of the GIN-McMaster Guideline Development Checklist in their guidance documents. We subdivided some of 18 main topics of the checklist to disaggregate key concepts. Based on a discussion between the lead authors, this resulted in 27 examined subtopics. We conducted descriptive statistical analyses. RESULTS: Our final sample consisted of 133 guideline-producing organizations. The majority were professional associations (59%), based in North America (51%), and from the clinical field (84%). Out of the 27 GIN-McMaster Guideline Development Checklist subtopics, the median number covered was 20 (interquartile range (IQR): 15-24). The subtopics most frequently covered were "consumer and stakeholder engagement" (97%), "conflict of interest considerations" (92%), and "guideline group membership" (92%). The subtopics least covered were "training" (40%) and "considering additional information" (42%). CONCLUSION: The number of GIN-McMaster Guideline Development Checklist subtopics covered by a sample of guideline-producing organizations in their guidance documents is both variable and suboptimal.