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

Abstract

Background: 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. Objective: To describe the characteristics of systematic reviews of prevalence studies in adults, evaluate the completeness of reporting, according to the PRISMA 2009 checklist, and explore which publication characteristics are associated with the completeness of reporting. Study design: We did a meta-epidemiological 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 published in 2010 to 273 in 2020. The median PRISMA score for systematic reviews was 17.5 out of 23 maximum and, for systematic reviews with meta-analysis, 22 out of 25 maximum. Completeness of reporting, particularly for key items in the methods section was suboptimal. Systematic reviews published more recently, that included more co-authors, that included a meta-analysis, used a reporting or conduct guideline, or were published in an open access journal were associated with increased compliance with PRISMA 2009. Conclusions: This study highlights aspects of systematic reviews for prevalence studies 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.