Rationale
The Cochrane review on cognitive behavioural therapy in adolescents from 2020 addresses a high-burden mental health condition in children and adolescents. The 2020 review concludes broadly in support of cognitive behavioural therapy over waitlist controls but less is known about:
- mechanism of delivery (digital versus face-to-face),
- setting (individual versus group),
- family involvement (parent-involved versus child focused),
- combination approaches such as CBT plus pharmacological interventions,
- impact on children and adolescents who are experiencing other chronic conditions,
- barriers and facilitators to the delivery of or access to the intervention.
Call
We are looking for author teams with in-depth content knowledge to undertake one or more evidence synthesis which address some or all the uncertainties outlined above. Teams should provide a strong rationale for the question(s) that they intend to address.
They should consider feasibility of the project, which questions they intend to address and the associated reviews that they propose. They should take into consideration the alignment between the different types of synthesis and the skill mix of the team members. A new protocol will be required for each review proposed. The protocol(s) should reflect current Cochrane methodology.
We particularly welcome applications from teams that include early career researchers and researchers based in low- and middle-income countries, recognizing the importance of developing capacity and ensuring diverse perspectives in evidence synthesis.
Timeline: the team taking this on should be ready to begin work within the next quarter with a protocol produced by Q1 2027 and full review(s) by Q1 2028.
What support is available?
There are no funds to pay authors to conduct these reviews. However, Cochrane can offer the following:
- Commissioning support. Working with the Commissioning Editor means expedited proposal acceptance and responses to queries throughout review production.
- Search support. For those who need it Cochrane Information Specialists can run the searches and (capacity dependent) may be able to use machine learning to reduce some of the screening burden.
- Support from Covidence. For priority intervention reviews, Cochrane can refer authors for Covidence premium support. This service involves support from an advisor within Covidence to facilitate data extraction and transfer (capacity dependent).
- Pre-submission support. If required, one of our Evidence Synthesis Development Editors can perform a pre-submission check about 4–6 weeks prior to submission. If you would like this service, you will need to request it several months before you intend on submitting and it will be provided on a first come, first serve, capacity basis.
- Cochrane Engage. Our online Engage platform can be used to find volunteers for various aspects of the work including volunteer co-authors.
Application
To apply, please send an expression of interest to the Commissioning Editor (rparker@cochrane.org) by 31st December 2027 including:
- Proposal form [.docx]
- Analysis plan:
- Full list of summary of findings table outcomes
- Comparisons
- Subgroup analyses planned
- Sensitivity analyses planned
- Short description of suitability of the author team for the proposal – 300 words max.
Panel for assessment
- Commissioning Editor
- Deputy Editor-in-Chief
- Additional editorial staff and experts from the Cochrane Collaboration as required
Producing an impactful review
This review has been commissioned because we think the topic is important and we think there is sufficient new evidence to support a meaningful synthesis. But until we run the search, we don’t know that the synthesis will be meaningful and impactful. If you run your search and discover that there isn't much evidence to synthesize, please reconnect with me and we will explore whether it is worth continuing with a full Cochrane systematic review or not. It may be that your work can be written up as a shorter piece of work for a different journal such as Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.
