Quality of descriptions of treatments: a review of published randomised controlled trials

Sara Schroter · Paul Glasziou · Carl J. Heneghan

63 citations0/0 files storedBMJ Open

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Meta-analysis and systematic reviews Health Policy Implementation Science Clinical practice guidelines implementation

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To be useable in clinical practise, treatments studied in trials must provide sufficient information to enable clinicians and researchers to replicate. We sought to assess the completeness of treatment descriptions in published randomised controlled trials (RCTs) using a checklist and to determine the extent to which peer reviewers and editors comment on the quality of reporting of treatments. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study. SETTING: Trials published in the BMJ, a general medical journal. PARTICIPANTS: Fifty-one trials published in the BMJ were independently evaluated by two raters using a checklist. Reviewers' and editors' comments were also assessed for statements on treatment descriptions. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Proportion of trials rated as replicable (primary outcome). RESULTS: For 57% (29/51) of the papers, published treatment descriptions were not considered sufficient to allow replication. Most poorly described aspects were the actual procedures involved including the sequencing of the technique (what happened and when) and the physical or informational materials used (eg, training materials): 53% and 43% not clear, respectively. For a third of treatments, the dose/duration of individual sessions was not clear and for a quarter the schedule (interval, frequency, duration or timing) was not clear. Although the majority of problems were not picked up by reviewers and editors, when they were detected only about two-thirds were fixed before publication. CONCLUSIONS: Journals wanting to publish the research of use to practising healthcare professionals need to pay more attention to descriptions of treatments. Our checklist, may be useful for reviewers, and editors and could help ensure that important details of treatments are provided before papers are in the public domain.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 63 citations exist upstream.

References

2019Systematic review and meta-analysis 2001The CONSORT Statement: Revised Recommendations for Improving the Quality of Reports of Parallel-Group Randomized Trials 1994The scandal of poor medical research 2006Does the CONSORT checklist improve the quality of reports of randomised controlled trials? A systematic review 2008What is missing from descriptions of treatment in trials and reviews?2006Reporting Randomized, Controlled Trials of Herbal Interventions: An Elaborated CONSORT Statement 2003Evidence-based behavioral medicine: What is it and how do we achieve it?2002Effects of Editorial Peer Review

Cited by

2018On the Reporting of Experimental and Control Therapies in Stroke Rehabilitation Trials: A Systematic Review 2017IMPROVING THE REPORTING OF THERAPEUTIC EXERCISE INTERVENTIONS IN REHABILITATION RESEARCH.2015What's in a name? The challenge of describing interventions in systematic reviews: analysis of a random sample of reviews of non-pharmacological stroke interventions 2014Reporting of interventions in randomised trials: an audit of journal Instructions to Authors

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.