Reporting guidelines on how to write a complete and transparent abstract for overviews of systematic reviews of health care interventions

Βουγιούκας, Κωνσταντίνος; Bouras, Emmanouil; Apostolidou-Kiouti, Fani; Kokkali, Stamatia; Arvanitidou, Malamatenia; Haidich, Anna‐Bettina

doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2018.10.005

Cited by 50 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…So far, however, reporting guidelines mainly target full and/or published papers. Still, some reporting guidelines for abstracts are already available [38][39][40][41], that could be adapted for dissertation research in health science.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Qualitative research methods in medical dissertations: an observational methodological study on prevalence and reporting quality of dissertation abstracts in a German university

Ullrich

Stürmlinger

Wensing

et al. 2020

BMC Med Res Methodol

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Background Qualitative methods offer a unique contribution to health research. Academic dissertations in the medical field provide an opportunity to explore research practice. Our aim was to assess the use of qualitative methods in dissertations in the medical field. Methods By means of a methodological observational study, an analysis of all academic medical dissertations’ abstracts between 1998 and 2018 in a repository databank of a large medical university faculty in Germany was performed. This included MD dissertations (Dr. med. (dent.)) and medical science dissertations (Dr. sc. hum.). All abstracts including “qualitativ*” were screened for studies using qualitative research methods. Data were extracted from abstracts using a category grid considering a) general characteristics (year, language, degree type), b) discipline, c) study design (mixed methods/qualitative only, data conduction, data analysis), d) sample (size and participants) and e) technologies used (data analysis software and recording technology). Thereby reporting quality was assessed. Results In total, 103 abstracts of medical dissertations between 1998 and 2018 (1.4% of N = 7619) were included, 60 of MD dissertations and 43 of medical sciences dissertations. Half of the abstracts (n = 51) referred to dissertations submitted since 2014. Most abstracts related to public health/hygiene (n = 27) and general practice (n = 26), followed by medical psychology (n = 19). About half of the studies (n = 47) used qualitative research methods exclusively, the other half (n = 56) used mixed methods. For data collection, primarily individual interviews were used (n = 80), followed by group interviews (n = 33) and direct observation (n = 11). Patients (n = 36), physicians (n = 36) and healthcare professionals (n = 17) were the most frequent research participants. Incomplete reporting of participants and data analysis was common (n = 67). Nearly half of the abstracts (n = 46) lacked information on how data was analysed, most of the remaining (n = 43) used some form of content analysis. In summary, 36 abstracts provided all crucial data (participants, sample size,; data collection and analysis method). Conclusion A small number of academic dissertations used qualitative research methods. About a third of these reported all key aspects of the methods used in the abstracts. Further research on the quality of choice and reporting of methods for qualitative research in dissertations is recommended.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Qualitative research methods in medical dissertations: an observational methodological study on prevalence and reporting quality of dissertation abstracts in a German university

Ullrich

Stürmlinger

Wensing

et al. 2020

BMC Med Res Methodol

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show abstract

“…The ICMJE does acknowledge that the format of structured abstracts may differ amongst journals (25). Many reporting guidelines now recommend specific abstract formats depending on the study design, such as systematic reviews and randomized trials (28,38,39).…”

Section: Organization Of the Abstractmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Principles of Biomedical Scientific Writing: Abstract and Keywords

Bahadoran

Mirmiran

Kashfi

et al. 2020

Int J Endocrinol Metab

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An abstract is a self-contained, short, powerful statement that describes a larger body of work. It may be incorporated as part of a published paper, book, grant proposal, thesis, research report, or a conference paper. An abstract of a scientific paper will be published online independently, so it should make sense when it is read alone. An abstract of a hypothesis-testing paper consists of at least four key elements, as follows: (1) study question/hypothesis/aim, (2) experiments/material and methods, (3) results, and (4) response to the question/conclusion(s). The abstract usually begins with a background and may end in applications, recommendations, implications, or speculations. The abstract is one of the many features of a manuscript that competes for the readers' attention; therefore, it should be informative, accurate, attractive, and concise. Since a huge amount of work must be compressed into a few sentences, writing an abstract may be a difficult task that needs professional skills. Here, we provide a practical guide to writing an abstract and selecting keywords for a hypothesis-testing medical paper.

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“…58 88 Therefore, the research team will abide with Cooper and Koenka's 44 methodology as a foundation for conducting the OoSR and will be enriched with other literature deemed valuable for producing the highest reporting quality. The abstract of the OoSR will be written according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Overview of Systematic Reviews abstracts outlined by Bougioukas et al 89 Ensuring a robust yet explicit abstract is critical, as the abstract is an important source of information that practitioners and researchers will initially read and rely on. 51 The full text will be presented as outlined in this protocol.…”

Section: Open Accessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the effectiveness of technology-based learning on the educational outcomes of undergraduate healthcare students: an overview of systematic reviews protocol

et al. 2020

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IntroductionRapid technology development due to the introduction of Industrial Revolution 4.0 and Internet of Things has created a demand and gradual transition from traditional teaching and learning to technology-based learning in higher education, including healthcare education. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this process, with educators now required to quickly adapt to and adopt such changes. The abundance of available systematic reviews has made the effectiveness of such approaches ambiguous especially in healthcare education. Therefore, a protocol of the overview of systematic reviews (OoSR) is planned to extrapolate the effectiveness of technology-based learning in undergraduate healthcare education.Methods and analysisScopus, CINAHL, Academic Search Complete, Cochrane Library, MEDLINE and Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection databases were selected. Screening was conducted independently by at least two authors and the decision for inclusion was done through discussion or involvement of an arbiter against a predetermined criteria. Included articles will be evaluated for quality using A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews and Risk of Bias in Systematic Review tools, while primary systematic review articles will be cross-checked and reported for any overlapping using the ‘corrected covered area’ method. Only narrative synthesis will be employed according to the predefined themes into two major dimensions—theory and knowledge generation (focusing on cognitive taxonomy due to its ability to be generalised across disciplines), and clinical-based competence (focusing on psychomotor and affective taxonomies due to discipline-specific influence). The type of technology used will be identified and extracted.Ethics and disseminationThe OoSR involves analysis of secondary data from published literature, thus ethical approval is not required. The findings will provide a valuable insight for policymakers, stakeholders, and researchers in terms of technology-based learning implementation and gaps identification. The findings will be published in several reports due to the extensiveness of the topic and will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and conferences.PROSPERO registration numberCRD4202017974.

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Reporting guidelines on how to write a complete and transparent abstract for overviews of systematic reviews of health care interventions

Cited by 50 publications

References 35 publications

Qualitative research methods in medical dissertations: an observational methodological study on prevalence and reporting quality of dissertation abstracts in a German university

Qualitative research methods in medical dissertations: an observational methodological study on prevalence and reporting quality of dissertation abstracts in a German university

The Principles of Biomedical Scientific Writing: Abstract and Keywords

Exploring the effectiveness of technology-based learning on the educational outcomes of undergraduate healthcare students: an overview of systematic reviews protocol

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