Brewer, D. D. (2016). (2017). An index of the quality of evidence in meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. bioRxiv doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/100081.
The quality of evidence in meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials is the degree to which the estimated effect represents the "truth." Current approaches to assessing the quality of evidence focus on trial design and methods. I describe a new quality of evidence index composed of four sub-indexes that measure pre-registration, independent replication, data availability, and trial design and methods, respectively. This index is systematic, objective, and quantitative. I illustrate the index with an empirical example and provide a spreadsheet for easy calculation.