Research Protocol for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Elder Abuse Prevalence Studies

Elder abuse is an important public health and human rights issue, yet its true extent is not well understood. To address this, we will conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of elder abuse prevalence studies from around the world. This protocol describes the methodological approach to be adopted for conducting this systematic review and meta-analysis. In particular, the protocol describes the search strategies and eligibility criteria to be used to identify and select studies and how data from the selected studies will be extracted for analysis. The protocol also describes the analytical approach that will be used to calculate pooled prevalence estimates and discusses the use of meta-regression to assess how studies' characteristics influence the prevalence estimates. This protocol conforms to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis - or PRISMA - guidelines and has been registered with the PROSPERO International Prospective Register of systematic reviews.