Risk of Bias assessment helps you evaluate how much confidence to place in the results of each study you include in your review. Rayyan lets you run this assessment directly against your included articles, using a tool suited to the study design. This article covers how to add articles, choose a tool, complete an assessment, and work with your team. Each tool has its own dedicated article with full guidance on completing that specific assessment.
Add articles to your assessment
- Open your review and click the Risk of Bias tab.
- Click Add articles. In the Add Data window, choose a data source from the dropdown: Screening, Full text screening, or Data extraction. You can then choose Included Articles, Maybe Articles, or Labeled Data. If you choose Labeled Data, a label list appears, pick which label(s) to pull from, then click Add.
- The selected articles appear in the assessment table. The Full text column shows whether a PDF is attached to each one.
Choose a tool for each article
Rayyan currently supports two tools, RoB 2 and MMAT (Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool). Each is suited to different study designs, and availability depends on your plan.
| Tool | Study design | Plan availability |
|---|---|---|
| RoB 2 | Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) | All plans |
| MMAT | Mixed methods, qualitative, quantitative RCT, quantitative non-randomized, and quantitative descriptive studies | Advanced, Institutional |
- In the Tool column for an article, click Select tool.
- Choose RoB 2 for randomized trials, or MMAT.
- If you choose MMAT, a submenu opens so you can pick the matching sub-checklist: Qualitative, Quantitative RCT, Quantitative Non-Randomized, Quantitative Descriptive, or Mixed Methods. You need to select a sub-checklist before you can start the assessment.
More tools are in development. If you don't see the one you need yet, you can vote for what should come next from the same dropdown.
Complete an assessment
Once a tool is selected for an article, click Start Assessment or double-click the article to open it. The article's full text opens with the assessment panel for your selected tool alongside it. Steps and requirements differ by tool, so refer to the dedicated article for the one you're using:
Working with a team
Risk of Bias supports the same collaborative workflow as Data Extraction.
- When Blind Mode is on, each reviewer or collaborator assesses articles independently without seeing the other's answers.
- When Blind Mode is turned off, Rayyan flags any differences between reviewers or collaborators at the domain or overall judgment level as unmatched answers.
- The team reviews the flagged articles together, discusses, and updates their answers to reach alignment. There is no automatic resolution.
Save progress and mark as completed
- You can save at any point, even if the assessment is not finished. Your answers are there when you come back.
- The status updates to In Progress after the first save.
- Mark as Completed becomes available once the required questions for the selected tool are answered. Requirements vary slightly by tool, see the dedicated article for exact details.
- Once completed, the status changes to Complete.
Continue to: RoB 2: How to Complete Your Assessment