Data collection, quality, and reporting

Comparison of different rating scales for the use in Delphi studies: different scales lead to different consensus and show different test-retest reliability

Consensus-orientated Delphi studies are increasingly used in various areas of medical research using a variety of different rating scales and criteria for reaching consensus. We explored the influence of using...

Authors: Toni Lange, Christian Kopkow, Jörg Lützner, Klaus-Peter Günther, Sascha Gravius, Hanns-Peter Scharf, Johannes Stöve, Richard Wagner and Jochen Schmitt

Charting the landscape of graphical displays for meta-analysis and systematic reviews: a comprehensive review, taxonomy, and feature analysis

Data-visualization methods are essential to explore and communicate meta-analytic data and results. With a large number of novel graphs proposed quite recently, a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of availabl...

Authors: Michael Kossmeier, Ulrich S. Tran and Martin Voracek

A systematic review of methodology used in the development of prediction models for future asthma exacerbation

Clinical prediction models are widely used to guide medical advice and therapeutic interventions. Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases globally and is characterised by acute deteriorations. These ...

Authors: Joshua Bridge, John D. Blakey and Laura J. Bonnett

Validation of the French version of the Vulnerable Elders Survey-13 (VES-13)

Identifying and assessing degree and type of frailty among older persons is a major challenge when targeting high risk populations to identify preventive interventions. The Vulnerable Elders Survey-(VES-13) is...

Authors: Joël Belmin, Lyamna Khellaf, Sylvie Pariel, Witold Jarzebowski, Lucie Valembois, John Zeisel and Carmelo Lafuente-Lafuente

Development of A Guideline for Reporting Mediation Analyses (AGReMA)

There are a growing number of studies using mediation analysis to understand the mechanisms of health interventions and exposures. Recent work has shown that the reporting of these studies is heterogenous and ...

Authors: Aidan G. Cashin, James H. McAuley, Sarah E. Lamb, Sally Hopewell, Steven J. Kamper, Christopher M. Williams, Nicholas Henschke and Hopin Lee

A methodological quality assessment of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of antidepressants effect on low back pain using updated AMSTAR

Antidepressants are prescribed widely to manage low back pain. There are a number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses which have investigated the efficacy of the treatments, while the methodological qualit...

Authors: Mohammad Hossein Panahi, Mostafa Mohseni, Razieh Bidhendi Yarandi and Fahimeh Ramezani Tehrani

Integrated Care Search: development and validation of a PubMed search filter for retrieving the integrated care research evidence

Integrated care is an increasingly important principle for organising healthcare. Integrated care models show promise in reducing resource wastage and service fragmentation whilst improving the accessibility, ...

Authors: Raechel A. Damarell, Suzanne Lewis, Camilla Trenerry and Jennifer J. Tieman

The TRANSFER Approach for assessing the transferability of systematic review findings

Systematic reviews are a key input to health and social welfare decisions. Studies included in systematic reviews often vary with respect to contextual factors that may impact on how transferable review findin...

Authors: Heather Munthe-Kaas, Heid Nøkleby, Simon Lewin and Claire Glenton

A systematic survey of randomised trials that stopped early for reasons of futility

Randomised trial protocols may incorporate interim analyses, with the potential to stop the study for futility if early data show insufficient promise of a treatment benefit. Previously, we have shown that thi...

Authors: S. D. Walter, H. Han, G. H. Guyatt, D. Bassler, N. Bhatnagar, V. Gloy, S. Schandelmaier and M. Briel

A modified Delphi study to identify the features of high quality measurement plans for healthcare improvement projects

The design and execution of measurement in quality improvement (QI) initiatives is often poor. Better guidance on “what good looks like” might help to mitigate some of the problems. We report a consensus-build...

Authors: Thomas Woodcock, Yewande Adeleke, Christine Goeschel, Peter Pronovost and Mary Dixon-Woods

Software tools to support title and abstract screening for systematic reviews in healthcare: an evaluation

Systematic reviews are vital to the pursuit of evidence-based medicine within healthcare. Screening titles and abstracts (T&Ab) for inclusion in a systematic review is an intensive, and often collaborative, st...

Authors: Hannah Harrison, Simon J. Griffin, Isla Kuhn and Juliet A. Usher-Smith

Validity and bias on the online active Australia survey: activity level and participant factors associated with self-report bias

This study examined the criterion validity of the online Active Australia Survey, using accelerometry as the criterion, and whether self-report bias was related to level of activity, age, sex, education, body ...

Authors: Rachel G. Curtis, Timothy Olds, Ronald Plotnikoff, Corneel Vandelanotte, Sarah Edney, Jillian Ryan and Carol Maher

LEVEL (Logical Explanations & Visualizations of Estimates in Linear mixed models): recommendations for reporting multilevel data and analyses

Authors: Maria Jose Monsalves, Ananta Shrikant Bangdiwala, Alex Thabane and Shrikant Ishver Bangdiwala

Best practices for collecting repeated measures data using text messages

Researchers and clinicians use text messages to collect data with the advantage of real time capture when compared with standard data collection methods. This article reviews project setup and management for s...

Authors: Noa’a Shimoni, Siripanth Nippita and Paula M. Castaño

Using data linkage to enhance the reporting of cancer outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in NSW, Australia

Aboriginal people are known to be under-recorded in routinely collected datasets in Australia. This study examined methods for enhancing the reporting of cancer incidence among Aboriginal people using linked d...

Authors: Hanna E. Tervonen, Stuart Purdie and Nicola Creighton

Reporting guideline for priority setting of health research (REPRISE)

Research priority setting with stakeholders can help direct the limited resources for health research toward priority areas of need. Ensuring transparency of the priority setting process can strengthen legitim...

Authors: Allison Tong, Anneliese Synnot, Sally Crowe, Sophie Hill, Andrea Matus, Nicole Scholes-Robertson, Sandy Oliver, Katherine Cowan, Mona Nasser, Soumyadeep Bhaumik, Talia Gutman, Amanda Baumgart and Jonathan C. Craig

Validating a transnational fracture treatment registry using a standardized method

Subsequent to a three-month pilot phase, recruiting patients for the newly established BFCC (Baltic Fracture Competence Centre) transnational fracture registry, a validation of the data quality needed to be ca...

Authors: Jasper Frese, Annalice Gode, Gerhard Heinrichs, Armin Will and Arndt-Peter Schulz

Self-reported data in environmental health studies: mail vs. web-based surveys

Internet has been broadly employed as a facilitator for epidemiological surveys, as a way to provide a more economical and practical alternative to traditional survey modes. A current trend in survey research ...

Authors: Manuella Lech Cantuaria and Victoria Blanes-Vidal

DEBATE-statistical analysis plans for observational studies

All clinical research benefits from transparency and validity. Transparency and validity of studies may increase by prospective registration of protocols and by publication of statistical analysis plans (SAPs)...

Authors: Bart Hiemstra, Frederik Keus, Jørn Wetterslev, Christian Gluud and Iwan C. C. van der Horst

Effectiveness of incentives and follow-up on increasing survey response rates and participation in field studies

Questionnaires are valuable data collection instruments in public health research, and can serve to pre-screen respondents for suitability in future studies. Survey non-response leads to reduced effective samp...

Authors: Michael G. Smith, Maryam Witte, Sarah Rocha and Mathias Basner

Analysis of reporting completeness in exercise cancer trials: a systematic review

Exercise is an effective therapeutic intervention for cancer survivors. Concerns about the completeness of reporting of exercise interventions have been raised in the literature, but without any formal analysi...

Authors: Jose Francisco Meneses-Echavez, Indira Rodriguez-Prieto, Mark Elkins, Javier Martínez-Torres, Lien Nguyen and Julia Bidonde

Comparing Skype (video calling) and in-person qualitative interview modes in a study of people with irritable bowel syndrome – an exploratory comparative analysis

Within qualitative research in-person interviews have the reputation for being the highest standard of interviewer-participant encounter. However, there are other approaches to interviewing such as telephone a...

Authors: Matthew Krouwel, Kate Jolly and Sheila Greenfield

Mixing mixed-mode designs in a national health interview survey: a pilot study to assess the impact on the self-administered questionnaire non-response

Many population health surveys consist of a mixed-mode design that includes a face-to-face (F2F) interview followed by a paper-and-pencil (P&P) self-administered questionnaire (SAQ) for the sensitive topics. I...

Authors: Elise Braekman, Sabine Drieskens, Rana Charafeddine, Stefaan Demarest, Finaba Berete, Lydia Gisle, Jean Tafforeau, Johan Van der Heyden and Guido Van Hal

A review and synthesis of frameworks for engagement in health research to identify concepts of knowledge user engagement

Engaging those who influence, administer and/or who are active users (“knowledge users”) of health care systems, as co-producers of health research, can help to ensure that research products will better addres...

Authors: Janet E. Jull, Laurie Davidson, Rachel Dungan, Tram Nguyen, Krista P. Woodward and Ian D. Graham

Interpreter proxy versus healthcare interpreter for administration of patient surveys following arthroplasty: a pilot study

Clinical quality registries and other systems that conduct routine post-discharge surveillance of patient outcomes following surgery may have difficulty surveying patients who have limited proficiency in the l...

Authors: Daniel Xue, Timothy Churches, Elizabeth Armstrong, Rajat Mittal, Justine Maree Naylor and Ian Andrew Harris

Longitudinal inconsistency in responses to survey items that ask women about intimate partner violence

Longitudinal research has demonstrated that experiences of abuse and adversity are not consistently reported over time; however, there is a paucity of available evidence regarding the consistency of reporting ...

Authors: Deborah Loxton, Jennifer Powers, Natalie Townsend, Melissa L. Harris and Peta Forder

Can a ‘consent to contact’ community help research teams overcome barriers to recruitment? The development and impact of the ‘Research for the Future’ community

Recruitment to health research remains a major challenge. Innovation is required to meet policy commitments to help patients take part in health research. One innovation that may help meet those policy goals i...

Authors: Katherine Grady, Martin Gibson and Peter Bower

Acceptability and barriers to implementation of N-of-1 tests in Ethiopia - a qualitative study

Locally produced generic drugs offer a cost–effective alternative to imported drugs to treat patients in Ethiopia. However, due to a lack of bioequivalence testing, additional assurance tests are needed to bui...

Authors: Chalachew Alemayehu, Geoff Mitchell, Jane Nikles, Abraham Aseffa and Alexandra Clavarino

Towards a patient journey perspective on causes of unplanned readmissions using a classification framework: results of a systematic review with narrative synthesis

Several literature reviews have been published focusing on the prevalence and/or preventability of hospital readmissions. To our knowledge, none focused on the different causes which have been used to evaluate...

Authors: R. G. Singotani, F. Karapinar, C. Brouwers, C. Wagner and M. C. de Bruijne

Cross-cultural adaptation of the Pain Medication Questionnaire for use in Brazil

The Pain Medication Questionnaire (PMQ) assesses the risk of opioid abuse in people with non-oncological chronic pain.

Authors: Sheila Raposo Galindo, Manoel Henrique da Nóbrega Marinho, Robert J. Gatchel, Tatiana de Paula Santana da Silva, Eduardo Henrique Soares Viana, Selene Cordeiro Vasconcelos and Murilo Duarte da Costa Lima

A snapshot of pneumonia research activity and collaboration patterns (2001–2015): a global bibliometric analysis

This article describes a bibliometric review of the scientific production, geographical distribution, collaboration, impact, and subject area focus of pneumonia research indexed on the Web of Science over a 15...

Authors: José M. Ramos-Rincón, Héctor Pinargote-Celorio, Isabel Belinchón-Romero and Gregorio González-Alcaide

Methods of identifying and recruiting older people at risk of social isolation and loneliness: a mixed methods review

Loneliness and social isolation are major determinants of mental wellbeing, especially among older adults. The effectiveness of interventions to address loneliness and social isolation among older adults has b...

Authors: Janet Ige, Lynn Gibbons, Issy Bray and Selena Gray

Insufficient uptake of systematic search methods in oncological clinical practice guideline: a systematic review

The use of systematic review methods are widely recognized to be essential in the development of recommendations in clinical practice guidelines to prove their trustworthiness. The objective of this study was ...

Authors: Chiara Trevisiol, Michela Cinquini, Aline S. C. Fabricio, Massimo Gion and Anne W. S. Rutjes

Hierarchies of evidence applied to lifestyle Medicine (HEALM): introduction of a strength-of-evidence approach based on a methodological systematic review

Current methods for assessing strength of evidence prioritize the contributions of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The objective of this study was to characterize strength of evidence (SOE) tools in recen...

Authors: D. L. Katz, M. C. Karlsen, M. Chung, M. M. Shams-White, L. W. Green, J. Fielding, A. Saito and W. Willett

Validation of diagnosis codes to identify side of colon in an electronic health record registry

The use of real-world data to generate evidence requires careful assessment and validation of critical variables before drawing clinical conclusions. Prospective clinical trial data suggest that anatomic origi...

Authors: Patricia Luhn, Deborah Kuk, Gillis Carrigan, Nathan Nussbaum, Rachael Sorg, Rebecca Rohrer, Melisa G. Tucker, Brandon Arnieri, Michael D. Taylor and Neal J. Meropol

Consolidated criteria for strengthening reporting of health research involving indigenous peoples: the CONSIDER statement

Research reporting guidelines are increasingly commonplace and shown to improve the quality of published health research and health outcomes. Despite severe health inequities among Indigenous Peoples and the p...

Authors: Tania Huria, Suetonia C. Palmer, Suzanne Pitama, Lutz Beckert, Cameron Lacey, Shaun Ewen and Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Indigenous traumatic brain injury research: responding to recruitment challenges in the hospital environment

Hospitals are common recruitment sites for injury and disability studies. However, the clinical and rehabilitation environment can create unique challenges for researchers to recruit participant populations. W...

Authors: Michelle S. Fitts, Taeha Condon, John Gilroy, Katrina Bird, Erica Bleakley, Lauren Matheson, Jennifer Fleming, Alan R. Clough, Adrian Esterman, Paul Maruff and India Bohanna

High-performing physicians are more likely to participate in a research study: findings from a quality improvement study

Participants in voluntary research present a different demographic profile than those who choose not to participate, affecting the generalizability of many studies. Efforts to evaluate these differences have f...

Authors: Simone Dahrouge, Catherine Deri Armstrong, William Hogg, Jatinderpreet Singh and Clare Liddy

Risk of bias judgments for random sequence generation in Cochrane systematic reviews were frequently not in line with Cochrane Handbook

Assessing the risk of bias (RoB) in included studies is one of the key methodological aspects of systematic reviews. Cochrane systematic reviews appraise RoB of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) with the Coc...

Authors: Ognjen Barcot, Matija Boric, Tina Poklepovic Pericic, Marija Cavar, Svjetlana Dosenovic, Ivana Vuka and Livia Puljak

Figure Interpretation Assessment Tool-Health (FIAT-health) 2.0: from a scoring instrument to a critical appraisal tool

Statistics are frequently used in health advocacy to attract attention, but are often misinterpreted. The Figure Interpretation Assessment Tool–Health (FIAT-Health) 1.0 was developed to support systematic asse...

Authors: Reinie G. Gerrits, Niek S. Klazinga, Michael J. van den Berg and Dionne S. Kringos

Current approaches to identify sections within clinical narratives from electronic health records: a systematic review

The identification of sections in narrative content of Electronic Health Records (EHR) has demonstrated to improve the performance of clinical extraction tasks; however, there is not yet a shared understanding...

Authors: Alexandra Pomares-Quimbaya, Markus Kreuzthaler and Stefan Schulz

Quality of maternal obstetric and neonatal care in low-income countries: development of a composite index

In low-income countries, studies demonstrate greater access and utilization of maternal and neonatal health services, yet mortality rates remain high with poor quality increasingly scrutinized as a potential p...

Authors: Danielle Wilhelm, Julia Lohmann, Manuela De Allegri, Jobiba Chinkhumba, Adamson S. Muula and Stephan Brenner

The association between influenza vaccination and socioeconomic status in high income countries varies by the measure used: a systematic review

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the literature on the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and influenza immunization and to examine how certain measures of SES may influence i...

Authors: Kelsey Lucyk, Kimberley A. Simmonds, Diane L. Lorenzetti, Steven J. Drews, Lawrence W. Svenson and Margaret L. Russell

Can targeted cover letters improve participation in health surveys? Results from a randomized controlled trial

Improving response rates in epidemiologic studies is important for the generalizability of the outcome. The aim of this study was to examine whether it can be advantageous for participation to target different...

Authors: Anne Illemann Christensen, Peter Lynn and Janne Schurmann Tolstrup

Assessment of the abstract reporting of systematic reviews of dose-response meta-analysis: a literature survey

There is an increasing number of published systematic reviews (SR) of dose-response meta-analyses (DRMAs) over the past decades. However, the quality of abstract reporting of these SR-DRMAs remains to be under...

Authors: Peng-Li Jia, Bin Xu, Jing-Min Cheng, Xi-Hao Huang, Joey S. W. Kwong, Yu Liu, Chao Zhang, Ying Han and Chang Xu

Development and initial psychometric evaluation of the computer-based prostate Cancer screening decision aid acceptance scale for African-American men

To reliably evaluate the acceptance and use of computer-based prostate cancer decision aids (CBDAs) for African-American men, culturally relevant measures are needed. This study describes the development and i...

Authors: Otis L. Owens, Nikki R. Wooten and Abbas S. Tavakoli

Health technology assessment (HTA) of optoelectronic biosensors for oncology by analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and Likert scale

The multicriteria decision method (MCDM) aims to find conflicts among alternatives by comparing and evaluating them according to various criteria to reach the best compromise solution. The evaluation of a new ...

Authors: Giovanni Improta, Antonietta Perrone, Mario Alessandro Russo and Maria Triassi

Development of a measurement system for complex oral information transfer in medical consultations

Information exchange between physician and patient is crucial to achieve patient involvement, shared decision making and treatment adherence. No reliable method exists for measuring how much information physic...

Authors: J. M. Nordfalk, P. Gulbrandsen, J. Gerwing, M. Nylenna and J. Menichetti

Effect of prepaid and promised financial incentive on follow-up survey response in cigarette smokers: a randomized controlled trial

Monetary incentive is often used to increase response rate in smokers’ survey, but such effect of prepaid and promised incentives in a follow-up survey is unknown. We compared the effect of different incentive...

Authors: Yee Tak Derek Cheung, Xue Weng, Man Ping Wang, Sai Yin Ho, Antonio Cho Shing Kwong, Vienna Wai Yin Lai and Tai Hing Lam

Methodology and reporting characteristics of studies using interrupted time series design in healthcare

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard when evaluating the causal effects of healthcare interventions. When RCTs cannot be used (e.g. ethically difficult), the interrupted time se...

Authors: Jemma Hudson, Shona Fielding and Craig R. Ramsay