Clearing-House Methodology
One of the first PEROSH joint research projects, initiated in 2009, developed a “Clearing-House Methodology” to identify and gather good systematic reviews of key OSH topics in one place (Verbeek et al. 2014). The authors of the Method Paper produced note that: “Without a proper summary of the available research, it is difficult to draw inferences from science to [OSH] practice.”
Project outputs updated
Recently an update was made of the Method Paper of the Clearinghouse Project and the list of relevant literature databases for OSH. The Method Paper includes inclusion criteria, search strategies and quality assessment for systematic reviews. As part of the project, the team searched for and assessed almost 100 available systematic reviews on 27 important OSH topics. This has the added value of identifying to the wider research community areas where there are research needs due to a shortage of robust studies to inform OSH practice. For instance, the PEROSH team identified that there were no systematic reviews related to occupational health and nanotechnologies. This gap was filled later on by the World Health Organization, WHO, that set up an overarching program of such reviews (WHO, 2017). This is a link to this overview.
OSH literature databases
The PEROSH team created a list of the most important literature databases on OSH topics. This list was updated as well and is relevant for searching for reviews and primary studies. The databases are ranked by relevance and the list is kept up-to-date. Please follow this link.
OSH Evidence database
Finally, the OSH Evidence Database the team made, provides an overview of almost 100 systematic reviews on 27 important OSH topics. These are still relevant up till today, in spite of the project ending in 2015 and the reviews not being updated anymore. Here one may find the link to this OSH Evidence Database.
Other outputs and important source
There are some other project outputs available that can be helpful for people doing literature search and work in quality assessment of reviews. If you look for systematic reviews in OSH today or want to write a systematic review, the currently most important source is Cochrane Work.
References
Verbeek, J., Fishta, A., Nold, A., Euler, U., Van den Heuvel, S. 2014. “Clearinghouse of Systematic Reviews: METHODS.” [online] PEROSH. DOI: 10.23775/20201014
WHO guidelines on protecting workers from potential risks of manufactured nanomaterials. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2017. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
More information
Annette Nold, IFA, Annette.Nold@dguv.de
