Quality of Reporting Randomized Controlled Trials in Cancer Nursing Research

Abstract

Adherence to reporting metrics for cancer nursing RCTs was suboptimal, and further efforts are needed to improve both methodology reporting and overall reporting. Journals are encouraged to adopt the CONSORT checklist to influence the quality of RCT reports.

Completeness of Reporting Is Suboptimal in Randomized Controlled Trials Published in Rehabilitation Journals, With Trials With Low Risk of Bias Displaying Better Reporting: A Meta-research Study

“…Overall, the completeness of reporting was suboptimal, with a mean overall adherence to the CONSORT checklist equal to 65%, with a range from 25% to 97% (Figure 3). The results of this meta-research study are consistent with others in the more general biomedical field [10,21,22]. For example, like in this study, an overview of reviews [23] concludes that, despite having RGs for 21 years, the reporting of RCTs is still suboptimal.…”

“…We used the CONSORT checklist to assess the completeness of reporting, despite it being a guide for writing and not for evaluating quality. We are aware that despite being in line with previous meta-research studies [10,21,22], this fact may represent a limitation [35]. To overcome this issue, we have tried to clearly define how we have reached the scores, and we run a preliminary pilot test to increase inter-assessor agreement, especially on items requiring interpretation (sometimes indicated by phrases like "if relevant" or "if applicable").…”

Conducting omega-3 clinical trials with cardiovascular outcomes: Proceedings of a workshop held at ISSFAL 2014

“…Several common paradigms for measuring the quality of reporting of clinical trials require that the method used to decide the number of samples or participants is described, but adherence to this requirement is low. In a more specialized application, Guo et al [14] examined articles on cancer nursing RCTs published between 1984 and 2010 for compliance to CONSORT [15] quality criteria, and estimated that only 45% of these publications explicitly describe the method by which sample size was selected. Turner et al [16] estimated that only 48% of articles based on RCTs published in medical journals comply with this requirement.…”

Comparison of the Quality of Pediatric Randomized Controlled Trials Published in Both Nursing and Medical Journals: Adherence to the CONSORT Statement

“…In , Parent and Hanley analyzed the quality of RCTs published between 1994 and 1997 in two nursing journals and, in , Guo, Sward, Beck, and Staggers, focused on the quality of abstracts for RCTs published in cancer nursing; both studies concluded that reporting quality of RCTs in nursing research needed improvement. Another study, which compared the reporting quality of RCT articles in four high impact factor nursing journals before and after publication of the CONSORT statement concluded that the quality of RCT reporting had improved only for the one journal that adhered to the CONSORT statement during the study period (Smith et al., ).…”