Characteristics and completeness of reporting of systematic reviews of prevalence studies in adult populations: a meta-research study.

Buitrago-Garcia, Diana; Robles-Rodriguez, William Gildardo; Eslava-Schmalbach, Javier; Salanti, Georgia; Low, Nicola (2024). Characteristics and completeness of reporting of systematic reviews of prevalence studies in adult populations: a meta-research study. (In Press). Journal of clinical epidemiology, 174, p. 111489. Elsevier 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2024.111489

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OBJECTIVE

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement, first published in 2009, has been widely endorsed and compliance is high in systematic reviews of intervention studies. Systematic reviews of prevalence studies are increasing in frequency, but their characteristics and reporting quality have not been examined in large studies. Our objectives were to describe the characteristics of systematic reviews of prevalence studies in adults, evaluate the completeness of reporting and explore study-level characteristics associated with the completeness of reporting.

STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING

We did a meta-research study. We searched 5 databases from January 2010 to December 2020 to identify systematic reviews of prevalence studies in adult populations. We used the PRISMA 2009 checklist to assess completeness of reporting and recorded additional characteristics. We conducted a descriptive analysis of review characteristics and linear regression to assess the relationship between compliance with PRISMA and publication characteristics.

RESULTS

We included 1172 systematic reviews of prevalence studies. The number of reviews increased from 25 in 2010 to 273 in 2020. The median PRISMA score for systematic reviews without meta-analysis was 17.5 out of a maximum of 23 and, for systematic reviews with meta-analysis, 22 out of a maximum of 25. Completeness of reporting, particularly for key items in the methods section was suboptimal. Systematic reviews that included a meta-analysis or reported using a reporting or conduct guideline were the factors most strongly associated with increased compliance with PRISMA 2009.

CONCLUSION

Reporting of systematic reviews of prevalence was adequate for many PRISMA items. Nonetheless, this study highlights aspects for which special attention is needed. Development of a specific tool to assess the risk of bias in prevalence studies and an extension to the PRISMA statement could improve the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews of prevalence studies.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM)

Graduate School:

Graduate School for Health Sciences (GHS)

UniBE Contributor:

Buitrago Garcia, Diana Carolina, Salanti, Georgia, Low, Nicola

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 360 Social problems & social services

ISSN:

0895-4356

Publisher:

Elsevier

Funders:

[73] Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship ; [226] Swiss School of Public Health Global P3HS ; [4] Swiss National Science Foundation

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pubmed Import

Date Deposited:

07 Aug 2024 10:49

Last Modified:

01 Sep 2024 00:19

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.jclinepi.2024.111489

PubMed ID:

39089422

Additional Information:

Salanti and Low are joint senior authors.

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Systematic reviews adults meta-research prevalence reporting risk of bias

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/199442

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/199442

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