An  abstraction manual was formulated by D.H. to standardize the coding process. Each person was partnered with another so that all of the coding process was reviewed once over. The papers were analyzed for nine specific  pieces of information: outcome, measurement device,metric,  method of aggregation, primacy of outcome, whether the outcome was a harm or side effect  of an intervention, study design,sample size, &  study type. type, metric, & sample size. With regards to metric, when an outcome element was implicitly specified, we considered it specified. E.g., because quantifying survival is, by definition, measuring time to event, specific metric for survival analysis outcomes was coded as time to event. For survival, remission, and relapse, measurement device was coded as “N/A” because, besides a calendar, there is no measurement device. For outcomes reported using scales (e.g., NCI-CTC), metric was coded as "value at a time point" unless otherwise specified within the body of the article.  When coding sample size for studies including non-pediatric-ALL research, all study participants were counted, including adult patients and pediatric patients with a cancer other than ALL.

Analysis: