Confidence assessement
The overall confidence in the evidence is assessed for three categories, the quality of the evidence or information used, the degree to which the evidence is applicable to the assessment and the degree of agreement (concordance) between evidence sources (Tillin & Hull, 2012-2013 Reports I-VII, Tillin and Tyler-Walters, 2014a&b, Tyler-Walters et al., 2023).
|
Confidence level |
Quality of evidence (information sources) |
Applicability of evidence |
Degree of concordance (agreement between studies) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
High |
Based on peer-reviewed papers (observational or experimental) or grey literature reports by established agencies on the feature (habitat, its component species, or species of interest). |
Assessment based on the same pressures acting on the same type of feature (habitat, its component species, or species of interest) in the UK |
Agree on the direction and magnitude (of impact or recovery) |
|
Medium |
Based on some peer-reviewed papers but relies heavily on grey literature or expert judgement on the feature ( habitat, its component species, or species of interest) or similar features |
Assessment based on similar pressures on the feature (habitat, its component species, or species of interest) in other areas. |
Agree on direction but not magnitude (of impact or recovery) |
|
Low |
Based on expert judgement |
Assessment based on proxies for pressures e.g. natural disturbance events |
Do not agree on concordance or magnitude (of impact or recovery) |
