How We Work - Guidance Development

The methodology used to develop our guidance mirrors that used to develop high-quality guidelines. It aims to be transparent and systematic and to adhere as far as possible to international standards set out by the Appraisal of Guidelines Research and Evaluation (AGREE) Collaboration. Our guiding principle for developing guidance is to first source existing guidelines, policy documents, legislation or other recommendations and identify relevant systematic reviews. These documents are appraised for their quality of development, evidence base and applicability to the remit of the guidance under development. Where appropriate, to supplement this information, key questions are formulated by each guidance development group and these are used as the basis for designing systematic literature database search strategies to identify further research evidence that may address these questions, using unpublished work where relevant. In the absence of research evidence, guidance is provided based on the opinion of experienced practitioners and experts.

Recommendations

Where research evidence is available, the Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme has developed its own system for presenting recommendations derived from well-established levels of evidence.

Page last edited: 02 October 2008