TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 1. Overview
• 2. The process
  • 2.1 Brainstorming
  • 2.2 Prioritisation
  • 2.3 Approval

1. Overview

GRADEpro also facilitates the initial stages of guideline development. As a Panel Member, you can collaborate with the project admin to determine the list of questions of interest that will be addressed in the project.

2. The process

The process consists of a few stages, including brainstorming when the questions are proposed and prioritisation when the most relevant questions are selected.

You will provide your feedback in the surveys that will be sent to you by the project admin via email. Each email will hold a special link to the survey.

Remember: You don’t need a GRADEpro account to access the survey.

2.1 Brainstorming

In the first stage, the brainstorming, you can provide comments on the questions suggested by the project admin or suggest your own questions. Three types of questions can be added - management questions, diagnostic questions, and free-form questions. The latter is a question with no PICO structure (you can read more about question types and structure here).

You can also submit without adding new questions if you see no need to do so.

Remember: Please be aware that you will not see suggestions from other Panel Members, only the initial list provided by the project admin.

The questions that you yourself add will appear as highlighted:

Once you are satisfied with the added questions and comments, you can submit the form. You can also save it as a draft and return to it later.

After the form is submitted, it can be edited and resubmitted until the form is closed by the project admin.

2.2 Prioritisation

In the next step, you will be sent a new list of questions, updated with the feedback provided by yourself and other Panel Members.

You will be asked to assign priority to each question. More than one question can have the same priority. The questions are prioritised in order to determine which will be included. It is necessary, as quite often the brainstorming stage introduces more questions than can be answered within one guideline.

Similar to the brainstorming stage, you can also add comments to the questions; however, you are no longer able to add new questions.

At any point, you can save the form as a draft. Once you have filled in the answers, you can submit the form. As before, you can edit and resubmit the form until the project admin closes the prioritisation stage.

2.3 Approval

The last stage is approval. You will receive another survey, in which the questions from the previous stages will be divided into three groups according to the actions suggested by the project admin.

The questions can be:

• Answered - such questions will be addressed in the guideline.
• Listed - such questions will not be answered in this particular guideline, but can be addressed in a different guideline later on.
• Excluded - such questions will be deleted from the list as either irrelevant or not a priority regarding the subject of the guideline.

You can either approve the action suggested by the project admin or suggest a change of priority.

When you decide to change the priority, the comment field becomes highlighted - it is there where you should put your suggested decision and the reason for the change. You cannot submit the form without justifying the changes (if you suggested any).

As with the previous forms, you can save it as a draft at any point. Once you provide your feedback, you can submit the form.

You can also edit and resubmit the form unless the project admin closes the voting.

Approval is the final stage of Questions generation. No further actions will be required from you at this stage.

RELATED ARTICLES

1. Outcomes generation -  panelist perspective
2. Types of questions and evidence tables