Informed decision making: an annotated bibliography and systematic review. Executive summary.

An informed decision is defined as a reasoned decision made by a reasonable individual using relevant information about the advantages and disadvantages of all possible courses of action in accord with the individuals beliefs. This study aimed to: 1) provide an unbiased bibliography of controlled studies evaluating interventions that may affect informed patients decision making; 2) classify studies by research design decision making theory type of intervention and health setting; 3) describe the measures of informed patient decision making and other outcomes reported; and 4) identify under-reported areas and direct future research. Studies included were those that reported the results of controlled study of any interventions using real patients making a healthy decision. Overall results revealed that only five were theory driven assessed measures associated with informed decision making and used low risk of bias design. In this perspective it is recommended that future primary research should work under explicit theory of decision making record process measures to permit evaluation of whether the decision was informed and if evaluating experimental interventions use randomized trials with low risk of bias.