The SOGC has adopted the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) methodology to evaluate the recommendations in each Clinical Practice Guideline. The GRADE approach is a method of grading the quality of evidence and the strength of recommendations in guidelines. This approach is being used by many international organizations to produce rigorous and transparent clinical practice guidelines and other health care recommendations.
GRADE was developed by the GRADE Working Group, which is a collaboration of methodologists, guideline developers, clinicians, and other interested members, with the aim of developing and implementing a common, transparent and sensible approach to grading the quality of evidence and strength of recommendations in health care.
To help our members to apply this new approach, we have compiled links to GRADE resources, and to the documents from the SOGC's workshops and webinars on GRADE below.
Documents from the SOGC's webinars on GRADE
Webinar 1: "Developing guidelines: What's the difference in process if you use GRADE?"
Slides | PDF
Webinar 2: "How to Grade"
Play the recording
Webinar 3: "Risk of Bias Assessment"
Play the recording
"GRADE guidelines" articles
- GRADE guidelines: 1. Introduction—GRADE evidence profiles and summary of findings tables
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(10)00330-6/abstract
- GRADE guidelines: 2. Framing the question and deciding on important outcomes
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(10)00331-8/fulltext
- GRADE guidelines: 3. Rating the quality of evidence
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(10)00332-X/fulltext
- GRADE guidelines: 4. Rating the quality of evidence—study limitations (risk of bias)
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(10)00413-0/abstract
- GRADE guidelines: 5. Rating the quality of evidence—publication bias
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(11)00181-8/abstract
- GRADE guidelines 6. Rating the quality of evidence—imprecision
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(11)00206-X/abstract
- GRADE guidelines: 7. Rating the quality of evidence—inconsistency
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(11)00182-X/abstract
- GRADE guidelines: 8. Rating the quality of evidence—indirectness
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(11)00183-1/fulltext
- GRADE guidelines: 9. Rating up the quality of evidence
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(11)00184-3/fulltext
- GRADE guidelines: 10. Considering resource use and rating the quality of economic evidence
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(12)00134-5/abstract
- GRADE guidelines: 11. Making an overall rating of confidence in effect estimates for a single outcome and for all outcomes
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(12)00025-X/fulltext
- GRADE guidelines: 12. Preparing Summary of Findings tables—binary outcomes
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(12)00032-7/fulltext
- GRADE guidelines: 13. Preparing Summary of Findings tables and evidence profiles—continuous outcomes
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(12)00240-5/fulltext
- GRADE guidelines: 14. Going from evidence to recommendations: the significance and presentation of recommendations
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(12)00138-2/abstract
- GRADE guidelines: 15. Going from evidence to recommendation—determinants of a recommendation's direction and strength
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(13)00054-1/fulltext
GRADE Online Learning Modules
https://cebgrade.mcmaster.ca/