Certainty of evidence

§1Certainty of evidence

§1.1Also known as

Quality of evidence GRADE rating

§1.2Category

Evidence assessment — Terms describing how the Institute judges and reports the strength of evidence.

§1.3Related terms

• High certainty — The Institute is confident that the true effect lies close to the estimate. Further research is very unlikely to change confidence in the estimate. A high rating is not…
• Moderate certainty — The true effect is likely to be close to the estimate, but there is a real possibility that it is substantially different. Further research is likely to have an…
• Low certainty — Confidence in the effect estimate is limited and the true effect may be substantially different. The Institute states in each case whether the limitation arises from…
• Very low certainty — The Institute has very little confidence in the effect estimate. In this document set a very low rating most often reflects an absence of controlled human evidence…
• Downgrading — The reduction of a certainty rating from its starting level because of a concern in one of five domains: risk of bias, inconsistency, indirectness, imprecision and…