Evaluating the effectiveness of an educational and feedback intervention aimed at improving consideration of sex differences in guideline development.

Objectives: To investigate the effect of an educational and feedback intervention to enhance consideration of sex differences in clinical guideline development.
Design: Preintervention and postintervention questionnaires in intervention and control groups. Content analysis of intervention guidelines and former versions.
Setting: Guideline consultants, working-group members and guideline documents of two Dutch guideline-developing organisations.
Main Outcome Measures: Attitudes of guideline developers concerning the importance of considering sex differences and the number of the sex-specific statements in the contents of guideline documents.
Results: The attitude of the intervention group did not change significantly relative to the control group. Consideration of sex-related factors within the guidelines increased relative to available previous versions.
Conclusion: Education and expert feedback may increase consideration of sex differences in guidelines. Further efforts are needed to implement and test these interventions.