COSMIN Tools

Our tools help you improve the selection of the most appropriate outcome measurement instruments in research and in clinical practice.

COSMIN Database of Systematic Reviews

Save time searching for the best available outcome measurement instrument for your construct and population with our database of systematic reviews.

COSMIN systematically collects systematic reviews of outcome measurement instruments. Such systematic reviews are important tools for selecting the instruments for your research or clinical practice and for identifying gaps in knowledge on the quality of outcome measurement instruments, i.e. their measurement properties.

The reviews are available in a searchable database.

The database now contains 1592 reviews. We are continuously working to update the COSMIN database, and we are now working on the update of September 2021 until March 2022.

If you find any imperfections in our database, please notify us at info@cosmin.nl.

To the database of systematic reviews
To the manual for the database of systematic reviews

Systematic reviews of outcome measurement instruments

In a systematic review of outcome measurement instruments the quality of outcome measurement instruments is critically appraised and compared, and an overview is given of feasibility aspects and interpretability of scores of each included instrument.
Systematic reviews of outcome measurement instruments are useful tools for selecting a measurement instrument for a certain purpose. In addition, they are useful tools to identify outcome measurement instruments that need further validation.

Collaboration:

We thank MAPI Research Trust for their support and collaboration to update the COSMIN database, and we thank ZUYD University of Applied Sciences (Heerlen, the Netherlands) for their collaboration.

Several types of systematic reviews of outcome measurement instruments exist:

Examples are:

  • systematic reviews of all available studies on the quality of one instrument
  • systematic reviews of all available studies on the quality of a selection of instruments that aim to measure a particular construct in a particular population
  • systematic reviews of all available studies on the quality of all available validated instruments that aim to measure a particular construct in a particular population.
  • a systematic review of all available studies on the quality of all available instruments (without specifying the construct of interest)

The third type of systematic reviews, in which an overview is given of all available studies on the measurement properties of all available instruments that aim to measure a particular construct in a particular population, are particularly useful when selecting the most suitable outcome measurement instrument. These types of systematic reviews are included in the COSMIN database.