Abstract: Objective: To appraise the methodological quality of quantitative Systematic Reviews (SR) published in Chinese nursing core journals in recent five years, thus, to provide references for researchers and peer reviewers to standardize the development and publication of SR. Methods: An electronic literature search was performed in China National Knowledge Infrastructure and WanFang database to identify SR published from 2015 to 2019. A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR 2) was used to evaluate the methodological quality of the included SR. Results: A total of 507 SR were included. The results showed that 80.9% was in very low confident level. The main problems were lack of protocols (98.8%), inadequate consideration and discussion of publication bias (71.4%), insufficient search strategies (55.8%), unspecific of definition of each element of PICO (41.4%). Conclusion: The methodological quality of SR in nursing field needs to be further improved with the efforts of researchers and peer reviewers, especially in protocol registration, consideration of publication bias and search strategies.

Key words: nursing; Systematic Review; Meta-analysis; methodological quality