## 4 Experts' Survey on Evidence-Based Systematic Review
### Data Collection and Analysis
#### 4.2.2 Evidence Synthesis Features  
The responses collected for the questions belonging to the evidence synthesis category are discussed below: \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} \hline \hline
**Dimension** & **Information Management** & **Evidence Synthesis** & **Overall Functionality** \\ \hline Academic Discipline & & & \\ \hline Humanities & 3.58 & 3.36 & 3.17 \\ Applied sciences & 4.75 & 4.75 & 4.58 \\ Formal sciences & 3.5 & 2.82 & 2.91 \\ Social sciences & 4.28 & 4.31 & 3.5 \\ Natural sciences & 4.58 & 4.32 & 4.17 \\ \hline Expertise level & & & \\ \hline Medium & 3.22 & 4 & 3.94 \\ High & 3.81 & 4.21 & 3.88 \\ \hline Complete sample & & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: Results of the survey by feature category. First, this section asked the experts about the type of study more frequently conducted or supervised. In this case, four researchers indicated quantitative studies, two researchers indicated qualitative studies and five researchers indicated mixed studies. * Second, they were asked about the techniques used to synthesize collected evidence. In this case, the researchers mentioned the following techniques: grounded theory, content analysis, case survey, meta-study, meta-ethnography, thematic analysis, narrative summary, Bayesian meta-analysis and meta-study. Additionally, they contributed qualitative comparative analysis method and meta-synthesis to the previous list. * Third, the experts were asked about the method used to collect data from primary studies. In this case, the experts responded with: manually, using Mendeley, using online survey data, using face-to-face surveys or phone surveys. Other experts indicated that, in certain disciplines, it is complicated to gather data because \"some studies do not provide data, for example, patient data are not commonly available\". * Fourth, they were asked about tools used to analyze data. In this case, the experts from the Humanities mentioned Atlas.ti, or SPSS, experts from the Social Sciences mentioned R, meta-regression and Forest Plot, and experts from the Natural Sciences named Microsoft Excel. Other researchers indicated that they manually perform the analysis, without using any support tool. * Fifth, the experts were asked about the techniques used to measure the risk of bias assessment. In this case, only the experts from the Applied Sciences and Social Sciences indicated that they used this type of technique. In the case of the Applied Sciences, experts performed a revision using a risk of bias table, whereas they used GRADE and AHQR guidelines in the case of the Social Sciences. * Sixth, they were asked about the methods used for representing results. In this case, seven of them indicated that they used visual representations for synthesizing results; five of them indicated that they used a flowchart to depict the selection process of each study; and three of them indicated that they used visual representations for indicating the included and excluded studies. * Seventh, the experts were asked about their opinion on whether quantitative reports should be different to qualitative ones. In this case, seven of them responded affirmatively and two of them negatively. * Eighth, they were asked about including extra information in the reports. In this case, one expert from the Social Sciences indicated that the addition of summary tables and additional files with the complete information is needed and one expert from the Applied Sciences indicated that it is relevant to include personal opinions. Then, the experts were asked about the relevance score they assigned to the features included in the evidence synthesis category. Table 4 shows the results of the experts' opinions. From the previous results, we can observe:  
* All features included in this category were considered relevant by experts. * The experts from the Humanities and Formal Sciences gave a higher score to the ES features than experts from the Applied Sciences, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences.