Synthesising quantitative and qualitative evidence to inform guidelines on complex interventions: clarifying the purposes, designs and outlining some methods

Guideline developers are increasingly dealing with more difficult decisions concerning whether to recommend complex interventions in complex and highly variable health systems. There is greater recognition that both quantitative and qualitative evidence can be combined in a mixed-method synthesis and that this can be helpful in understanding how complexity impacts on interventions in specific contexts. This paper aims to clarify the different purposes, review designs, questions, synthesis methods and opportunities to combine quantitative and qualitative evidence to explore the complexity of complex interventions and health systems. Three case studies of guidelines developed by WHO, which incorporated…

• US
  United States Agency for International Development
• WH
  World Health Organization
• DF
  Direktoratet for Utviklingssamarbeid
• MR
  Medical Research Council

  Award: MR/K023233/1