The AGREE Collaboration

How can a practitioner decide if the guideline that lands on their desk is a document they can trust?

A group of European guideline developers and researchers got together with the aim of addressing this question. They formed a collaboration called the Appraisal of Guidelines Research & Evaluation, or, AGREE.

The AGREE collaboration developed a proforma or checklist, called the AGREE instrument, which can be used to help make an informed judgement about the methods that were used to develop a guideline, and an assessment about the overall quality of the guideline and the recommendations it contains.

The AGREE Instrument

The AGREE instrument considers 6 different aspects, or domains, of guideline development:

More information about each can be found by following the links above.

AGREE and SIGN

SIGN is a member of the AGREE collaboration and is committed to its principles. As guideline developers we aim to meet all of the criteria addressed in the AGREE instrument, but we recognise that in many areas we still have room for improvement.

This section of the website explains the importance of each of the domains covered by the AGREE instrument and describes how SIGN guidelines attempt to address these issues.