Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 2, 2026

Experimental Research Examining How People Can Cope with Uncertainty Through Soft Haptic Sensations
Published on: September 16, 2015
The GRADE Working Group clarifies the construct of certainty of evidence
Monica Hultcrantz1, David Rind2, Elie A Akl3
1Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services (SBU), S:t Eriksgatan 117, SE-102 33, Stockholm, Sweden; Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, Tomtebodav. 18 A, SE-171 77, Stockholm, Sweden.
Objective:
To clarify the grading of recommendations assessment, development and evaluation (GRADE) definition of certainty of evidence and suggest possible approaches to rating certainty of the evidence for systematic reviews, health technology assessments, and guidelines.
Study Design And Setting:
This work was carried out by a project group within the GRADE Working Group, through brainstorming and iterative refinement of ideas, using input from workshops, presentations, and discussions at GRADE Working Group meetings to produce this document, which constitutes official GRADE guidance.
Results:
Certainty of evidence is best considered as the certainty that a true effect lies on one side of a specified threshold or within a chosen range. We define possible approaches for choosing threshold or range. For guidelines, what we call a fully contextualized approach requires simultaneously considering all critical outcomes and their relative value. Less-contextualized approaches, more appropriate for systematic reviews and health technology assessments, include using specified ranges of magnitude of effect, for example, ranges of what we might consider no effect, trivial, small, moderate, or large effects.
Conclusion:
It is desirable for systematic review authors, guideline panelists, and health technology assessors to specify the threshold or ranges they are using when rating the certainty in evidence.
More Related Videos
11:18Using the Threat Probability Task to Assess Anxiety and Fear During Uncertain and Certain Threat
Published on: September 12, 2014
05:47Evidence-based Knowledge Synthesis and Hypothesis Validation: Navigating Biomedical Knowledge Bases via Explainable AI and Agentic Systems
Published on: June 13, 2025
Related Concept Videos
Uncertainty in Measurement: Accuracy and Precision
Uncertainty: Overview
Uncertainty: Confidence Intervals
Propagation of Uncertainty from Random Error
Interpretation of Confidence Intervals
Confidence intervals have confidence coefficients that are crucial for their interpretation. The most common confidence coefficients are 0.90, 0.95, and 0.99, which can be written as percentages–90%, 95%, and 99%, respectively.
Suppose a person calculates a confidence interval with a confidence coefficient of 0.95. In that case, they can...
Confidence Coefficient