Table 5 Recommendations for reporting practice for initial data analyses

1

Information on IDA is sparse and may suffer from selective reporting

Full reporting of relevant results as supplementary material and reporting of all results with impact on analysis/interpretation in the paper

2

Information on IDA can be found in all sections of a paper.

• IDA methodology to be described in Methods;

• IDA results to be described in Methods or Results;

• Impact of IDA on interpretation to be described in discussion.

3

Distinction between pre-planned decisions and IDA-driven decisions are unclear.

Pre-planned decisions should be reported in Methods; IDA driven alterations of the analysis plan should be reported with motivation in Methods.

4

Characteristics of participants are listed without comments.

Participants’ characteristics should be checked for consistency with expectations and for potential impact on analysis and interpretation. At a minimum a statement should be included to confirm no violated expectations.

5

Reporting on missingness is incomplete.

Full reporting of missingness, e.g. a flow chart describes unit missingness and a table for item missingness of variables

6

Associations among variables are not reported.

Associations not involving the research question but with potential impact on interpretation of results should be reported