Sexual Violence PSP Question Verification form

The purpose of this Question Verification Form is to enable Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs) to describe clearly how they checked that their questions were unanswered, before starting the interim prioritisation stage of the process.

The JLA requires PSPs to be transparent and accountable in defining their own scope and evidence checking process. This will enable researchers and other stakeholders to understand how individual PSPs decided that their questions were unanswered, and any limitations of their evidence checking.

Name of the PSP

Sexual Violence Priority Setting Partnership

Please describe the scope of the PSP

Inclusion criteria:

The health and social care needs of adults (18 and over) that have experienced sexual violence, in childhood and/or adulthood. All forms of sexual violence and abuse, including penetrative and non-penetrative, will be considered. It will gather responses from survivors who currently live in the UK, who have experienced SV either in the UK or abroad. And from health and social care professionals in the UK currently or previously working directly with survivors.

It did not include:

Focus on prevention (this includes risk/protective factors), specifics of the criminal justice component (except regarding the effects and impacts of this component), prevalence, perpetrator focus, responses from family members/supporters/loved ones of survivors. The PSP acknowledges the complexity of this discussion and decision. Any survey responses received from individuals who live outside the UK. This is because the results from this work will be used to inform future UK research. The survey will collect information from the responder about their country of residence. Any survey responses from children (under 18) affected by sexual violence.

Please provide a brief overview of your approach to checking whether the questions were unanswered

We employed a systematic process to evidence checking in this SVPSP, the steps of which are detailed below.

A literature search was undertaken by a Manchester University Foundation Trust librarian. The following search terms were used: sexual violence, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, rape and sexual assault.
There were 1 852 results in total. Titles, abstracts and full articles were reviewed as appropriate to make decision on what evidence was relevant to the Sexual Violence Priority Setting Partnership (SVPSP).
165 of the publications were considered to be relevant to this SVPSP. Additionally, we used the same search terms to include NICE guidelines and cochrane studies of which there were 6 and 3 respectively.
Once we had a finalised list of 79 indicative questions for our prioritisation survey (survey 2), each question was assessed against the total list of 174 publications.
This process involved creating key terms for each publication and using those to search for answers to each indicative question.
Ultimately, we found that many of our indicative questions were unanswered. When questions were answered, they were often partially answered, details of this are provided in the Data Management spreadsheet. Only 4 indicative questions were fully answered.

Please list the type(s) of evidence you used to verify your questions as unanswered

Systematic reviews/ Meta-analyses

Please list the sources that you searched in order to identify that evidence

MFT library literature search of Medline, CINAHL and PsycINFO.
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, NICE guidelines, SIGN clinical guidelines and Relevant Royal Colleges’ guidance.

What search terms did you use?

"(systematic review OR meta-analysis) AND (sexual violence OR sexual abuse OR sexual exploitation OR rape)"
In titles and keywords used for indexing (i.e. not abstracts and full text)

Please describe the parameters of the search (eg time limits, excluded sources, country/language) and the rationale for any limitations

3 Years as per the JLA Guidebook. 10 years in Cochrane and NICE.
English or English translated due to limited resources.