Production of this protocol was funded by the Department of Health Policy Research Programme in England ([PR‐UN‐0409‐10109] Policy Research Unit in Behaviour and Health). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Department of Health in England. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of Julie Glanville (York Health Economics Consortium, University of York, UK) who reviewed a draft of our MEDLINE search strategy, Claire Stansfield (EPPI‐Centre, UCL Institute of Education, UK) who helped to develop our search strategy for the TRoPHI database, and Patrick Condron (Information Specialist, Cochrane Public Health Group) who reviewed further iterations of our MEDLINE and Embase strategies. We would like to thank Jessie Porter, Rebecca Armstrong, Patrick Condron, Jodie Doyle (Managing Editor), and their colleagues in the Cochrane Public Health Group as well as Maureen Dobbins, Anke Rohwer, Sree Nair, Sadequa Shahrook and other external referees who provided helpful comments on this protocol. We would like to thank colleagues at the EPPI‐Centre, UCL Institute of Education, UK, in particular James Thomas and Sergio Graziosi, for their help in developing technological solutions and managing those processes in order to implement a workable study identification process.