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PD Dr. med. Dr. phil Stefan Schandelmaier

Department of Clinical Research
Profiles & Affiliations

I trained as a physician and musician in Freiburg, Germany, and as a health research methodologist in Hamilton, Canada. In my work, I aim to improve the quality of health research by strengthening the evidence behind methodological choices and helping researchers find and use trustworthy research methods.


Since February 2025, I have led STREAM (Strategies for developing research methods guidance), an international collaboration with support from an SNSF Ambizione grant. We develop practical recommendations for creating trustworthy and useful methods guidance. With colleagues, I also developed TYPE-ME, which organizes methods research by approach and objective to support planning, reporting, and classification. I founded the Library of Guidance for Health Scientists (LIGHTS) to help researchers find methods guidance. I also led the development of ICEMAN, a tool for assessing the credibility of subgroup claims in randomized trials and meta-analyses.


My expertise includes clinical trials, meta-analyses, clinical practice guidelines, meta-research, methods research, and qualitative research. I collaborate in various international research projects and teach research methods to medical students, PhD students, and postgraduates at the University of Basel.

Selected Publications

Hirt, Julian, Ewald, Hannah, Briel, Matthias, & Schandelmaier, Stefan. (2024). Searching a methods topic: practical challenges and implications for search design. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2023.10.017

URLs
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Guyatt, Gordon, Zhao, Yunli, Mayer, Martin, Briel, Matthias, Mustafa, Reem, Izcovich, Ariel, Hultcrantz, Monica, Iorio, Alfonso, Alba, Ana Carolina, Foroutan, Farid, Sun, Xin, Schunemann, Holger, DeBeer, Hans, Akl, Elie A., Christensen, Robin, & Schandelmaier, Stefan. (2023). GRADE guidance 36: updates to GRADE’s approach to addressing inconsistency. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 158, 70–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2023.03.003

URLs
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Hirt, J., Schönenberger, C. M., Ewald, H., Lawson, D. O., Papola, D., Rohner, R., Suter, K., Lin, S., Germini, F., Zeng, L., Shahabinezhad, A., Chowdhury, S. R., Gao, Y., Bhattacharjee, A., Lima, J. P., Marusic, A., Buljan, I., Agarwal, A., Guyatt, G. H., et al. (2023). Introducing the Library of Guidance for Health Scientists (LIGHTS): a living database for methods guidance. JAMA Netw Open, 6(2), e2253198. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.53198

URLs
URLs

Schandelmaier S, Briel M, Varadhan R, Schmid CH, Devasenapathy N, Hayward RA, Gagnier J, Borenstein M, van der Heijden GJMG, Dahabreh IJ, Sun X, Sauerbrei W, Walsh M, Ioannidis JPA, Thabane L, & Guyatt GH. (2020). Development of the instrument to assess the credibility of effect modification analyses (ICEMAN) in randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses. Cmaj, 192(32), E901–E906. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.200077

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Selected Projects & Collaborations

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STandards for developing REseArch Methods guidance in trials: STREAM

Research Project  | 3 Project Members

Health researchers rely on methods guidance to make decisions about study design, data collection, analysis, reporting, and interpretation. Yet important questions remain about how to develop guidance that reflects methodological evidence and meets researchers’ needs.


STREAM develops practical recommendations for creating trustworthy and useful methods guidance. It addresses how developers can involve relevant people, select and use methodological evidence, formulate recommendations, and present guidance that researchers can understand and apply.


The project combines reviews of existing recommendations and current guidance development practices with interviews with guidance users. An international panel will use these findings to draft STREAM. Guidance developers will then test the recommendations in ongoing projects and provide feedback to refine them.


Stefan Schandelmaier leads STREAM at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel, working with Malena Chiaborelli, Matthias Briel, and international collaborators.


The Swiss National Science Foundation supports the project through an Ambizione grant.


Project website: stream.methods-research.org

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Instrument to assess the Credibility of effect Modification ANalyses (ICEMAN)

Research Project  | 1 Project Members

Subgroup analyses can reveal differences in treatment effects between patient groups, but chance and analytical choices frequently produce misleading findings. ICEMAN helps researchers judge how credible these findings are.


The instrument has separate versions for randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses of randomized trials. It guides users through questions about prior hypotheses, earlier evidence, statistical support, and analytical choices. Users weigh these considerations to rate overall credibility from very low to high.


Stefan Schandelmaier led the development of ICEMAN with an international team. The team published the instrument in 2020. ICEMAN work toegtehr with Cochrane reviews and the GRADE approach.


Access the assessment forms, online tool, user manual, and reporting templates at iceman.help

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Library of Guidance for Health Scientist (LIGHTS)

Research Project  | 4 Project Members

Finding useful methods guidance can be difficult. Relevant articles appear across many journals, use inconsistent terminology, and often lack adequate indexing in general research databases.


LIGHTS brings this literature together in a freely accessible, searchable database. It covers guidance for planning, conducting, analysing, reporting, and appraising health research, including tutorials, methodological recommendations, reporting guidelines, and quality assessment tools.


Users can narrow their searches by study type, methodological topic, research context, and type of guidance. The search also matches alternative terms for methodological concepts, helping users find relevant articles even when authors use different terminology.


Stefan Schandelmaier founded LIGHTS. An international team of health researchers, methodologists, and information specialists develops and maintains the collection. LIGHTS helps researchers make methodological choices, educators find teaching resources, and guidance developers build on existing work. We also use it to research methods guidance as a study type.


Search the library at lights.science