Articles

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

Using research networks to generate trustworthy qualitative public health research findings from multiple contexts

Qualitative research networks (QRNs) bring together researchers from diverse contexts working on multi-country studies. The networks may themselves form a consortium or may contribute to a wider research agend...

Authors: Lot Nyirenda, Meghan Bruce Kumar, Sally Theobald, Malabika Sarker, Musonda Simwinga, Moses Kumwenda, Cheryl Johnson, Karin Hatzold, Elizabeth L. Corbett, Euphemia Sibanda and Miriam Taegtmeyer

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 computational method to quantitatively measure pediatric drug safety using electronic medical records

Drug safety in children is a major concern; however, there is still a lack of methods for quantitatively measuring, let alone to improving, drug safety in children under different clinical conditions. To asses...

Authors: Gang Yu, Xian Zeng, Shaoqing Ni, Zheng Jia, Weihong Chen, Xudong Lu, Jiye An, Huilong Duan, Qiang Shu and Haomin Li

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

Reliability and validity of a sedentary behavior questionnaire for South American pediatric population: SAYCARE study

Multicenter studies from Europe and the United States have developed specifically standardized questionnaires for assessing and comparing sedentary behavior, but they cannot be directly applied for South Ameri...

Authors: Augusto César Ferreira De Moraes, Marcus Vinícius Nascimento-Ferreira, Claudia Lucia de Moraes Forjaz, Juan Carlos Aristizabal, Leticia Azzaretti, Walter Viana Nascimento Junior, Maria L. Miguel-Berges, Estela Skapino, Carlos Delgado, Luis A. Moreno and Heráclito Barbosa Carvalho

Comparison of Bayesian and frequentist group-sequential clinical trial designs

There is a growing interest in the use of Bayesian adaptive designs in late-phase clinical trials. This includes the use of stopping rules based on Bayesian analyses in which the frequentist type I error rate ...

Authors: Nigel Stallard, Susan Todd, Elizabeth G. Ryan and Simon Gates

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

Clinical risk prediction with random forests for survival, longitudinal, and multivariate (RF-SLAM) data analysis

Clinical research and medical practice can be advanced through the prediction of an individual’s health state, trajectory, and responses to treatments. However, the majority of current clinical risk prediction...

Authors: Shannon Wongvibulsin, Katherine C. Wu and Scott L. Zeger

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

Why do participants drop-out: findings from a prospective pediatric cohort for fever surveillance established at Vellore, southern India

Cohort studies are pivotal in understanding the natural history, and to thereby determine the incidence of a disease. The conduct of large-scale community-based cohort studies is challenging with reference to ...

Authors: Kulandaipalayam Natarajan Sindhu, Manikandan Srinivasan, Sathyapriya Subramaniam, Anita Shirley David, Venkata Raghava Mohan, Jacob John and Gagandeep Kang

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

A patient-centered composite endpoint weighting technique for orthopaedic trauma research

This study aimed to address the current limitations of the use of composite endpoints in orthopaedic trauma research by quantifying the relative importance of clinical outcomes common to orthopaedic trauma pat...

Authors: Ugochukwu N. Udogwu, Andrea Howe, Katherine Frey, Marckenley Isaac, Daniel Connelly, Dimitrius Marinos, Mitchell Baker, Renan C. Castillo, Gerard P. Slobogean, Robert V. O’Toole and Nathan N. O’Hara

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

Correction to: Methods for trustworthy nutritional recommendations NutriRECS (Nutritional Recommendations and accessible Evidence summaries Composed of Systematic reviews): a protocol

Following publication of the original article [1], the authors reported a change in the ‘Competing interests’ section as described below.

Authors: Bradley C. Johnston, Pablo Alonso-Coello, Malgorzata M. Bala, Dena Zeraatkar, Montserrat Rabassa, Claudia Valli, Catherine Marshall, Regina El Dib, Robin W. M. Vernooij, Per O. Vandvik and Gordon H. Guyatt

Simulation and minimization: technical advances for factorial experiments designed to optimize clinical interventions

The Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) is designed to maximize the impact of clinical healthcare interventions, which are typically multicomponent and increasingly complex. MOST often relies on factorial ...

Authors: Jocelyn Kuhn, Radley Christopher Sheldrick, Sarabeth Broder-Fingert, Andrea Chu, Lisa Fortuna, Megan Jordan, Dana Rubin and Emily Feinberg

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

Challenges of one-year longitudinal follow-up of a prospective, observational cohort study using an anonymised database: recommendations for trainee research collaboratives

Trainee research collaboratives (TRCs) have pioneered high quality, prospective ‘snap-shot’ surgical cohort studies in the UK. Outcomes After Kidney injury in Surgery (OAKS) was the first TRC cohort study to a...

Authors: Dmitri Nepogodiev

Strategies for recruitment in general practice settings: the iSOLVE fall prevention pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial

Falls are common among older people, and General Practitioners (GPs) could play an important role in implementing strategies to manage fall risk. Despite this, fall prevention is not a routine activity in gene...

Authors: Amy C. W. Tan, Lindy Clemson, Lynette Mackenzie, Catherine Sherrington, Chris Roberts, Anne Tiedemann, Constance D. Pond, Fiona White and Judy M. Simpson

Consent to data linkage in a large online epidemiological survey of 18–23 year old Australian women in 2012–13

Consent to link survey data with health-related administrative datasets is increasingly being sought but little is known about the influence of recruiting via online technologies on participants’ consents. The...

Authors: Anna Graves, Deirdre McLaughlin, Janni Leung and Jennifer Powers

Recommendations to conduct and report systematic reviews in medical literature: a scoping review

This scoping review aims to identify, review and characterize the published recommendations to conduct and/or to report a systematic review in medical interventions area.

Authors: Ana Penedones, Carlos Alves and Francisco Batel-Marques

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

Robustness of the Tariff method for diagnosing verbal autopsies: impact of additional site data on the relationship between symptom and cause

Verbal autopsy (VA) is increasingly being considered as a cost-effective method to improve cause of death information in countries with low quality vital registration. VA algorithms that use empirical data hav...

Authors: Hafizur Rahman Chowdhury, Abraham D. Flaxman, Jonathan C. Joseph, Riley H. Hazard, Nurul Alam, Ian Douglas Riley and Alan D. Lopez

Heckman-type selection models to obtain unbiased estimates with missing measures outcome: theoretical considerations and an application to missing birth weight data

In low-income settings, key outcomes such as biomarkers or clinical assessments are often missing for a substantial proportion of the study population. The aim of this study was to assess the extent to which H...

Authors: Siaka Koné, Bassirou Bonfoh, Daouda Dao, Inza Koné and Günther Fink

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

Value-based healthcare in ischemic stroke care: case-mix adjustment models for clinical and patient-reported outcomes

Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) have been proposed for benchmarking health care quality across hospitals, which requires extensive case-mix adjustment. The current study’s aim was to develop and comp...

Authors: Arvind Oemrawsingh, Nikki van Leeuwen, Esmee Venema, Martien Limburg, Frank-Erik de Leeuw, Markus P. Wijffels, Aafke J. de Groot, Pieter H. E. Hilkens, Jan A. Hazelzet, Diederik W. J. Dippel, Carla H. Bakker, Helene R. Voogdt-Pruis and Hester F. Lingsma

Privacy-protecting estimation of adjusted risk ratios using modified Poisson regression in multi-center studies

Multi-center studies can generate robust and generalizable evidence, but privacy considerations and legal restrictions often make it challenging or impossible to pool individual-level data across data-contribu...

Authors: Di Shu, Jessica G. Young and Sengwee Toh

Development of a healthy ageing index in Latin American countries - a 10/66 dementia research group population-based study

Our population is ageing and in 2050 more than one out of five people will be 60 years or older; 80% of whom will be living in a low-and-middle income country. Living longer does not entail living healthier; h...

Authors: Christina Daskalopoulou, Kia-Chong Chua, Artemis Koukounari, Francisco Félix Caballero, Martin Prince and A. Matthew Prina

Healthy ageing and the prediction of mortality and incidence dependence in low- and middle- income countries: a 10/66 population-based cohort study

In the absence of a consensus on definition and measurement of healthy ageing, we created a healthy ageing index tallying with the functional ability framework provided by the World Health Organization. To cre...

Authors: Christina Daskalopoulou, Martin Prince, Artemis Koukounari, Josep Maria Haro, Demosthenes B. Panagiotakos and A. Matthew Prina

Goal attainment scaling as an outcome measure in rare disease trials: a conceptual proposal for validation

Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) is an instrument that is intended to evaluate the effect of an intervention by assessing change in daily life activities on an individual basis. However, GAS has not been validate...

Authors: C. M. W. Gaasterland, M. C. Jansen van der Weide, K. C. B. Roes and J. H. van der Lee

Correction to: Assessment of long-term sickness absence: content and face validity of a new questionnaire based on qualitative data from nominal groups

In the original publication of this article [1] the author Marc Du Bois was omitted. In this correction article the author and the corresponding details are provided. The publisher apologizes to the readers an...

Authors: Kaat Goorts, Charlotte Vanovenberghe, Charlotte Lambreghts, Eline Bruneel, Dorina Rusu, Marc Du Bois, Sofie Vandenbroeck and Lode Godderis

A comparison of methods to estimate the survivor average causal effect in the presence of missing data: a simulation study

Attrition due to death and non-attendance are common sources of bias in studies of age-related diseases. A simulation study is presented to compare two methods for estimating the survivor average causal effect...

Authors: Myra B. McGuinness, Jessica Kasza, Amalia Karahalios, Robyn H. Guymer, Robert P. Finger and Julie A. Simpson

Joint model robustness compared with the time-varying covariate Cox model to evaluate the association between a longitudinal marker and a time-to-event endpoint

The recent progress in medical research generates an increasing interest in the use of longitudinal biomarkers for characterizing the occurrence of an outcome. The present work is motivated by a study, where t...

Authors: Maeregu W. Arisido, Laura Antolini, Davide P. Bernasconi, Maria G. Valsecchi and Paola Rebora

Cross-cultural validation of the Functional Vision Questionnaire for Children and Young People (FVQ_CYP) with visual impairment in the Dutch population: challenges and opportunities

To assess cross-cultural validity between Dutch and English versions of the FVQ_CYP, a patient-reported outcome measure developed in the United Kingdom (UK) for children and adolescents with (severe) visual im...

Authors: Ellen B. M. Elsman, Valerija Tadić, Carel F. W. Peeters, Ger H. M. B. van Rens, Jugnoo S. Rahi and Ruth M. A. van Nispen

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

True and false positive rates for different criteria of evaluating statistical evidence from clinical trials

Until recently a typical rule that has often been used for the endorsement of new medications by the Food and Drug Administration has been the existence of at least two statistically significant clinical trial...

Authors: Don van Ravenzwaaij and John P. A. Ioannidis

Risk-adjusted CUSUM control charts for shared frailty survival models with application to hip replacement outcomes: a study using the NJR dataset

Continuous monitoring of surgical outcomes after joint replacement is needed to detect which brands’ components have a higher than expected failure rate and are therefore no longer recommended to be used in su...

Authors: Alexander Begun, Elena Kulinskaya and Alexander J MacGregor

A comparison of machine learning techniques for classification of HIV patients with antiretroviral therapy-induced mitochondrial toxicity from those without mitochondrial toxicity

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has significantly reduced HIV-related morbidity and mortality. However, therapeutic benefit of ART is often limited by delayed drug-associated toxicity. Nucleoside reverse transcri...

Authors: Jong Soo Lee, Elijah Paintsil, Vivek Gopalakrishnan and Musie Ghebremichael

Dealing with indeterminate outcomes in antimalarial drug efficacy trials: a comparison between complete case analysis, multiple imputation and inverse probability weighting

Antimalarial clinical efficacy studies for uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria frequently encounter situations in which molecular genotyping is unable to discriminate between parasitic recurrence, either ...

Authors: Prabin Dahal, Kasia Stepniewska, Philippe J. Guerin, Umberto D’Alessandro, Ric N. Price and Julie A. Simpson

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

Due to an error introduced during copyediting of this article [1], following corrections need to be made.

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

Analysing detection of chronic diseases with prolonged sub-clinical periods: modelling and application to hypertension in the U.S.

We recently introduced a system of partial differential equations (PDEs) to model the prevalence of chronic diseases with a possibly prolonged state of asymptomatic, undiagnosed disease preceding a diagnosis. ...

Authors: Ralph Brinks, Sophie Kaufmann, Annika Hoyer, Edward W Gregg and Jürgen Saal

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

Comparison of model-building strategies for excess hazard regression models in the context of cancer epidemiology

Large and complex population-based cancer data are becoming broadly available, thanks to purposeful linkage between cancer registry data and health electronic records. Aiming at understanding the explanatory p...

Authors: Camille Maringe, Aurélien Belot, Francisco Javier Rubio and Bernard Rachet