Piloting QUADAS-3: a revised tool for the quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies

What is the problem? Doctors often use tests to find out if a person has a certain condition. It is important that these tests can correctly tell people who have the condition from those who do not. This is called test accuracy. Diagnostic reviews are a type of research that bring together results from different studies about the accuracy of a test. In diagnostic reviews, researchers need to check whether the studies they include are reliable. They also need to check whether the studies match the question the review looks at. Researchers can use a tool called QUADAS-2 to do this. QUADAS-2 was made in 2011 and is now out of date. We have made a new version called QUADAS-3. In this paper, we explain how we tested the QUADAS-3 tool before making the final version. What did we do? We tested the tool in four steps. 1. The people making the tool used it on five research papers. 2. It was tested by 16 people at a conference. 3. Seven researchers said their thoughts out loud while using the tool and we gathered their feedback. 4. Seven researchers used the tool in real reviews. They gave feedback in an online survey. We updated the tool after each step. What did we find? Most people liked the QUADAS-3 tool. They also told us ways to make it better. We made changes in response to people's comments. This led to the final version of QUADAS-3.