| Outcome measures | Validated assessment tools |
| Pain | Visual analogue scale (VAS) and numerical-pain-rating-scale (NPRS) pressure pain thresholds (PPT) |
| Functional disabilities | Neck-Disability-Index (NDI), Fear-Avoidance-Belief-Questionnaire (FABQ), the Northwick-Neck-Pain-Questionnaire (NPQ), the cervical-Range-Of-Motion (CROM) |
| Overall-health improvement | Short-form-health-survey (SF-36) |
| Quality of life | Adverse events |
| Overall level of evidence | Conditions description |
| Strong | Consistent findings from multiple high quality trials (level A) (n ⩾ 3) |
| Moderate | Consistent findings among multiple moderate quality (level B) and/or one level A |
| Limited | One level B |
| Conflicting | Inconsistent findings among multiple trials |
| No evidence | No trials |
| Search strategy in MEDLINE | “Manual-Therapy” was used as a free-term in MeSH (MEDLINE). “Musculoskeletal-Manipulations” was the result of the MeSH heading terms, we added “Neck-Pain” to the MEDLINE search box as follows: “Musculoskeletal-Manipulation” [Mesh] and “Neck-Pain” [Mesh] and (“human” [MeSH-Terms] and (“male” [MeSH-Terms] or “female” [MeSH-Terms]) and Randomized-Controlled-Trial [ptyp] and English [lang] and “adult” [MeSH-Terms] and “2000/01/01” [PDat]: “2015/12/31”[PDat]) |