Quality of Cohort Studies Reporting Post the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) Statement

Abstract

The quality of reporting of cohort studies published in the most prestigious scientific medical journals was investigated to indicate to what extent the items in the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) checklist are addressed. Six top scientific medical journals with high impact factor were selected including New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, British Medical Journal, Archive of Internal Medicine, and Canadian Medical Association Journal. Ten cohort studies published in 2010 were selected randomly from each journal. The percentage of items in the STROBE checklist that were addressed in each study was investigated. The total percentage of items addressed by these studies was 69.3 (95% confidence interval: 59.6 to 79.0). We concluded that reporting of cohort studies published in the most prestigious scientific medical journals is not clear enough yet. The reporting of other types of observational studies such as case-control and cross-sectional studies particularly those being published in less prestigious journals expected to be much more imprecise.

Impact of STROBE Statement Publication on Quality of Observational Study Reporting: Interrupted Time Series versus Before-After Analysis

“…The few studies assessing the quality of observational study reporting, with the STROBE statement as a reference, identified a number of deficiencies consistent with our findings, including marked inadequacies in reporting the management of missing data [11], [12], [21], [22], confounding [21], [22], and sample size [11], [21], [22]. The global STROBE score for 2006–2007 of 58% was close to the median number of reported items per article found by Langan et al (59%, 55%, and 55% for cohort, cross-sectional, and case-control studies, respectively) in five dermatology journals (2005–2007) [11].…”

Reporting Quality of Abstracts Presented at the European Association of Urology Meeting: A Critical Assessment

“…5 The same effect has yet to be demonstrated after the introduction of the STROBE statement for nonRCT articles. 9 A congress abstract often represents the only available documentation of a study when it is not followed by a full-length article, the full text becomes available only years later or the article cannot be retrieved. Abstract should then correctly report all of the main aspects of the study methodology and reflect the full-length article results and conclusions.…”

Evaluation of the endorsement of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) statement on the quality of published systematic review and meta-analyses

“…It has been reported that endorsement of the Consolidated Standards for Reporting Trials (CONSORT) [11] have lead to an improved quality in the reporting of randomized clinical trials [12][13][14]. On the other hand, after endorsement of Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) statement [15], the quality of reporting of published observational studies was still reported as unsatisfactory [16]. Results of one masked randomized trial suggested that additional paper reviews based on reporting guidelines can improve manuscript quality [17].…”