The mission of the Methodology Committee is to contribute to the successful use of EBM in rehabilitation. During the past year we promoted a series of initiatives to accomplish our mission.

A survey on methodology of systematic reviews related to rehabilitation was sent to those who had showed interest in contributing to the development of methods on rehabilitation within Cochrane. The survey results were analysed and sent to the European Journal of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine and published in the autumn of 2017 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29110449). The survey contributors have recently been contacted for future collaboration with the Cochrane Methodology Committee.

The Methodology Committee has started a study on pros and cons of RCTs in rehabilitation. The aim of the paper is to describe and discuss the role of RCTs in rehabilitation research in terms of ability to answer relevant research questions, provide internal validity (risk of bias), and generalizability of evidence; and to discuss future needs to advance methodology of effectiveness research in rehabilitation.

In co-operation with the Review Committee a common effort by senior researchers on rehabilitation will be coordinated to bring forward current issues in rehabilitation methodology. Several scientific papers on these topics will be written during the year 2018 following a workshop upon invitation that will be held in Paris before the ISPRM Meeting thanks to a Seeding Grant win after application in New Zealand.

The methodological issues related to rehabilitation have been presented by the Methodology Committee members in several congresses during the year 2017.